The Gonstead Method
Changing lives for the better since 1923.
Gonstead Method
The Gonstead System of chiropractic care was developed by Dr. Clarence S. Gonstead of Mt Horeb, Wisconsin beginning in 1923. He refined his unique system over a 55-year period.
The Gonstead System focuses on being as specific as possible with the examination and treatment of the patient. The examination includes taking a detailed history, instrumentation, static palpation, motion palpation, neurological testing and often times, full spine x-rays taken in the standing, weight bearing position. Necessity of x-rays is determined during the functional examination.
Treatment is done by administering a very specific hands-on manipulation called an adjustment. By using his or her hands as adjusting tools, the Gonstead practitioner is better able to sense the relaxation of the patient and to control the direction and amplitude of the adjustment needed for each individual patient. No mechanical instrument can match the sensitivity of feel or timing of an applied force from a skilled chiropractor’s hands.
The goal of the Gonstead practitioner is to “do the least to achieve the most”. That is to say, the least amount of segments to be adjusted with the least amount of force the least amount of times. This is case specific to each patient. The Gonstead chiropractor does not treat every patient with the same manipulative procedure of twisting the neck and lower back from both the right and the left and the middle back from top to bottom.
Every patient is a unique case with specific subluxations and must not be given the same course of manipulation. That type of approach could potentially harm individuals with too much impact to the joints of the spinal column and result in neurological insult. The Gonstead chiropractor believes that chiropractic care is not scientific unless the adjustment is specific.
The Gonstead System has hundreds of years of combined clinical experience and has been tried and tested. Through the process of deductive science, the Gonstead chiropractor is confident that if subluxations are found during the functional examination, he or she has a specific protocol for treatment with an expected result.
Furthermore, if a need for additional evaluation is found necessary, he or she will refer the patient to the appropriate doctor or therapist to ensure that the needs of each patient are properly met.
Chiropractor for Children
“Chiropractic care for my child? Why? His back doesn’t hurt.”
Parents who often appreciate the importance of checkups for their child’s teeth, hearing, eyes, ears, nose and throat draw a blank when it comes to the spine.
A spinal checkup could be one of the most important of your child’s life! Why? In addition to the stress of childbirth, the constant jumping, falling, running and bumping of a normal childhood often cause vertebral subluxations, with serious health consequences if left uncorrected.
For more than a hundred years doctors of chiropractic have observed often dramatic responses from some infants after a chiropractic spinal adjustment with conditions as varied as Erb’s Palsy (in which an arm is limp and undeveloped), unbalanced facial and skull symmetry, foot inversion, colic, torticollis (twisted neck), “nervousness,” and ear, nose and throat infections.
Today we find more parents bringing their children to doctors of chiropractic for spinal checkups. With a healthy spinal column, a child’s body can better deal with the sore throats, ear infections, stomach-aches, fevers, measles, mumps and the 101 other problems that often make up young life. Without chiropractic care some children will live in continued sickness, condemned to a life of taking medicines and perhaps even surgery.
The clinical picture ranges from central motor impairment and development [sleeplessness, uncoordination, seizures] through impairments of vegetative regulatory systems [vomiting, digestive problems, elimination problems], to lowered resistance to infections, especially to ear-nose-and-throat infections.
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