What To Expect From Your Initial Consultation

A lot of the people we meet are interested in finding out more about what we do and how we can help them, so I wanted to write a blog to break down exactly what you can expect from us in our first session together. 

Firstly, we want to know about you. We want to know what your roles are in life, are you a parent, a partner, an animal lover, an athlete? We want to know exactly what activities you need to be able to do day to day, as well as the stuff you’d like to get back to doing again. We don’t ask just to be nosy, we want to know what areas of  your life are being impacted by the symptoms you’re experiencing, or what areas you’d like to develop further. We also want to know who else is being impacted by this. If your back pain is stopping you from playing with your kids or being intimate with your partner then it’s no longer just you that's being affected by it, and we want to figure out what needs to be done to improve it for everyone involved. Knowing what's at stake if nothing changes and why it’s important to you helps us create a tailored assessment for your individual needs.

Once we know how it's impacting your life, we need to figure out what's actually going on. Our assessment is split into three parts that answer three very important questions. 

• What's going on?

We need to understand how your body is functioning at the moment. We check the movement of your joints to see if there’s any restrictions, make sure all your reflexes are present and equal, as well as lots of your muscles to make sure they’re all nice and strong. This will tell us if there's anything that needs further investigation, such as referring you back to your GP, or even straight to A+E if there's something more serious going on. If we don't need to refer you out, it's good news as it means it's something we can help you with. Most people that come to see us will have some noticeable changes as we go through the assessment. Some joints might be a bit stiff or not moving very well, and we’ll often see some muscles that appear weak or poorly controlled. It’s important to know what's going on with the soft tissues in your body, but it doesn't tell us enough to be able to give you recommendations on how to resolve it, which brings us to part two of the assessment.

• Why has it happened?

In some cases it's obvious, if you've had an accident or direct trauma to the area it's going to tell us pretty clearly why it's sore. Most of the time though, it's a problem that's been there for years, progressively getting worse and it’s finally gotten to the point where you’re fed up of dealing with it. This is also the step that makes us different from most other people you’ll have seen in the past. We want to look at your brain. It’s not as scary as it sounds, but as your brain controls everything you do, we want to figure out why it's controlling our body in a way that's causing you pain or impairing your function.  To do this, we use six of the best research backed assessments to look at how well your brain and body are communicating with each other, and to see where any breakdown is happening. This will give us an understanding of why your body is functioning the way it is, and highlight any compensatory patterns you’ve developed to try and cope so far. None of these tests are invasive, but instead involve you doing certain actions or activities to give us an understanding of your function. At this point we’ll know what’s going on and why it’s happened, but there's still one more important thing we need to know before we recommend a treatment plan. 

• How well can your body recover?

There's four tests we do in this part of the assessment, and the results of this give us an idea of how full your fuel tank is. Top scores means your fuel tank is full and your body is in the best position possible to be able to heal and recover, but low scores tell us that your body is getting closer to its limit, and it's going to take longer to be able to heal. We check your oxygen levels to make sure all your tissues are getting sufficient oxygen to function normally. Next is your forced expiratory volume as it’s one of the most important measures of  lung function. Third is your bilateral blood pressure, to give us an idea of the health of your circulatory system. The final test looks at your heart rate variability, which gives us an indication of how well your body can adapt to and cope with stress. These four tests show us how well your body can heal and recover, and therefore how long it will take to resolve the issues identified in parts two and three. 

The final thing we do is a digital postural analysis, as it’s a fantastic way to see how all of these changes are manifesting. 

Once we have all of this information, we can create a tailored plan for exactly what your body needs to heal and to resolve the root cause of all the changes and your symptoms. This is what we discussed on day two, which I will break down in next week's blog. 

If you’re interested in finding out what's going on, why it's happened, and how we can help you resolve the issue you're coping with currently, then get yourself booked in for a consultation with us now!