Chiropractic care

Most people picture one thing when they hear the word chiropractor: a sudden movement and a loud pop. That is not how we work here, and it never has been.

If you have been avoiding chiropractic specifically because of that, you are the person this page is written for.

It is still an adjustment

Low force does not mean nothing happens. This is hands-on work, on your spine, by someone who has been doing it for thirty years.

The difference is in how. A high-velocity adjustment moves a joint quickly, past its usual range, and that speed is what makes the sound. Low-force adjusting arrives at the same place differently: precise contact at specific points along the spine, sustained rather than sudden, with your own breath working alongside it.

Both are adjusting. One of them is loud.

The gentle version is harder to learn and takes longer to do well, which is part of why it is not the default in most offices. It is also why people drive here from a fair way out.

What it feels like

You stay fully clothed. You lie on a padded table, usually face down. You will be asked to breathe in particular ways at particular moments, and that breath is part of the work rather than something to pass the time.

What people feel varies enormously, and it is worth knowing that in advance.

Some feel very little the first few times, and wonder whether anything is happening. Others feel movement travelling through the body, often somewhere well away from where the hands are. Some people’s breathing changes on its own. Some get emotional, which surprises them and does not surprise us.

None of those reactions is the right one. Feeling a lot does not mean it is working and feeling little does not mean it is not.

If at any point you want it to stop, say so and it stops.

A first visit

Set aside an hour.

It starts with a conversation, because the most useful information in the room is usually yours. What brought you in. How long it has been going on. What you have already tried, including what worked and what made it worse. What you are hoping will be different.

Then a hands-on assessment of your spine and the muscles around it, and the three scans described on the NetworkSpinal page if they would be useful. Those are optional. Skipping them changes nothing about whether you can be seen.

Then, usually, a first session of actual care.

You will leave knowing what care here would involve and roughly what it would cost. Nobody will ask you to commit to a course of treatment in the same conversation where you first heard a price.

Follow-up visits are much shorter. Ten to twenty-five minutes is typical.

Who comes in

People arrive here for the ordinary reasons people see a chiropractor: desks, driving, sleep, lifting something badly, a body that has carried a lot of years. Some arrive having tried several other things first.

A fair number arrive specifically because they do not want to be cracked, and found that most places do not offer an alternative.

What we will not do

We do not diagnose disease. If what you describe needs a medical diagnosis, it needs a physician, and we will tell you that rather than take the appointment.

We do not do imaging. No X-ray, no MRI. If imaging is warranted, that is a referral.

We will not tell you what care will do for a particular condition. What we will tell you is exactly what happens in a session, what the measurements record, and what we do not know. An honest account of that is more use to you than a promise.

Thirty years on the same road

Dr. Todd has practised in Ithaca since 1996, at the same address on North Triphammer Road. He holds a Doctor of Chiropractic from New York Chiropractic College, now Northeast College of Health Sciences, and is licensed by the New York State Education Department under licence number X-007859, which anyone can verify at op.nysed.gov.

More on his background is on his page.