Increased attention to sports medicine and physical health have led many student athletes to seek regular help from chiropractors. With everyone wanting to know the best way to recover or advance in athletic ability, the options for student athletes to improve have become more diverse.

Chiropractors are medical practitioners who treat joint pain that could be affecting other areas of the body. Recently, chiropractors and physical therapists have experienced a steady increase in work, with over 50% of young adults preferring chiropractic help to that of a medical doctor.. This trend, and its overall benefits and detriments, was the topic of discussion in an interview with the school’s athletic trainer, Anthony Santos.

“I think before it was probably just held to people who could afford it,” Santos said. “But now, more and more people have had experiences, and good experiences [with chiropractics].[With] more advertising, with Google and everything now, you can easily find chiropractors and physical therapists.”

The development of chiropractors and athletic trainers becoming more affordable and better advertised could be one of the biggest drivers of this increase in people seeking chiropractic services. But besides the newfound availability of these services, this publicity has shined light on the fact that each clinician has a different paradigm for administering care.

“[Paradigms are] different ways of treating people, different ideas for treating people, or the way that people view treatment clinician-wise, varies from clinician to clinician,” Santos said.

These paradigms are a main reason why this growth in the trend of chiropractors is so prominent, because each patient can find a clinician whose paradigm works best for his or her ailment or situation.

While remaining respectful to his colleagues, Santos gave his opinion on how to evaluate each paradigm and the benefits or drawbacks that come with these practices.

“When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” Santos said. “So for [doctors], they’re just making sure, ‘Knee surgery? Do you not need knee surgery? Pain pills? Do you not need pain pills?’ and then there’s nothing in between…We have a lot more injuries because we have a lot more kids going into sports that–even though the doctor clears them, saying technically everything is well, everything works well–you don’t really have an idea if people actually move well.”

Physical therapy and chiropractics are able to effectively create a transition from the doctors office to the field, which is an important step in maintaining the health of athletes. The services that these clinicians can provide go beyond that of what typical doctors do for recovery.

Santos supports using chiropractors and physical therapists because it is better for people to get support for an ailment that may be unique to them. Everyone is built differently and might need different kinds of help for different kinds of problems, a point Santos emphasized with his final thoughts. 

“You take two people, and they have the same injury, and you do the same treatment on both people,” Santos said. “If both people’s physiology aren’t the same–meaning level of collagen, whether they are hyper mobile or not, etc.–their treatment is not going to work. You have to find a clinician that understands people’s physiology, and you have to understand that treatments are individualized to each person, not just one injury, same thing every time.”