Frequently Asked Questions

A: Many health insurances cover chiropractic care, and many don’t. Because every plan is different it is impossible for us to know what your benefits are without checking them. It is not that we don’t ‘take’ an insurance as much as that they sometimes ‘don’t cover’ what we do. Insurance is an agreement between you and the insurance company, not between us and the insurance company. Our sole focus is on getting you back to your best you.

We will always collect your insurance information at your first visit and then verify benefits. Because this is a process that can take 30-45 minutes of staff time, we do not do this until you have had a consultation or evaluation with the chiropractor. Because this may be a question or concern for many, we do offer a no charge consultation with the doctor so you can meet the doctor, we can verify benefits, and we can get started with helping you get back to normal life if that’s what you choose to do.

A thought on insurance: Health insurance really should be called “Sick Insurance.” It generally covers sickness and crisis but doesn’t necessarily cover the things that keep you healthy and thriving, like organic food, yoga, etc. Health insurance keeps you healthy about as well as life insurance keeps you alive. For true wellness care, take responsibility for your own health and budget some money every month to go towards health not just “Sick Insurance.”

A: This is a difficult question to answer without knowing what we are trying to accomplish. Depending on weather you suffer from migraine headaches, neck pain, TMJ Disorder, or sciatica with lower back pain, the cost to get you functioning again can vary quite a bit. How long the problem has been going on for is also a concern, as a more chronic pain condition can take longer than something that just happened. While we offer many services in our office, I believe the most frequently asked about price point is our adjustment cost. This varies between $60-80 per visit depending on what needs to be done. Most conditions benefit from more than one treatment so we typically give discounts for different forms of pre-payment if someone chooses to commit to getting healthy again. This varies person to person based on their recommendations. X-Rays with Nerve Scans are typically between $90-155 and are usually recommended for us to be able to know how to help and what to recommend. 1^st time Consultations are always no charge and allow the patient and doctor to decide together if chiropractic is a good option for them.

A: While most people originally come to a chiropractor for crisis care or pain symptoms, the majority of people tend to continue on with chiropractic care even after the pain goes away. They also tend to refer in non-pain patients including kids, spouses and friends. Patients that do this understand that pain reduction is only a piece of what they have gained, and benefits like improved sleep, better digestion, feeling more connected, optimum performance and disease prevention are all benefits they get from wellness chiropractic care. Our doctors, our staff and their families all enjoy a healthier life with regular chiropractic checkups even when they are not in pain. We live the chiropractic lifestyle too!

A: This is a great question and full disclosure one we are not very good at answering accurately. No one is. There are some conditions that we know will respond along certain timelines, but pain is such a multi-faceted metric it can be wildly unpredictable as to when it finally goes away. Sometimes it is gone after the very first treatment and sometimes it can take months. We do know that pain always has a cause, and when we can correct the cause of the pain rather than masking it with pills, potions, lotions, and injections, we can expect the pain to go away.  We are very good at predicting how long it will take to correct the cause of the pain, and this is usually determined by a digital motion X-Ray study, Nerve Scan, and some other testing done in the office after your initial consultation. Depending on whether you are in for lower back pain or neck pain and whether you also have sciatica or migraines or carpal tunnel, these can all complicate the recovery. Your age and health status or vitality level before the pain came into your life all play a role in how fast you will recover. While we all want the pain to go away, we look at pain as valuable information to help us find the cause, what’s really wrong. Without pain (as in taking NSAIDs and pain killers) we often continue to do more damage until the body heads to a complete breakdown. Come in and we will help you correct the cause.

A: The techniques used by our doctors and staff are designed to be gentle yet powerful. There are many ways to correct subluxations (misaligned and stuck vertebrae that irritate nerves, cause pain, and interfere with normal organ function) and depending on the person we will customize our approach for the best results. It should not hurt and most people report that it feels amazing but some of the things we do can be temporarily uncomfortable, like myofascial release and active release technique (ART). The adjustment itself is done by hand or with instruments and other tools, depending on what will get the best results and patient preference. If you are already suffering with increased pain and inflammation, an adjustment can temporarily make that worse. This is rare and not usually something to worry about as long as the pain does not become severe. Ice is recommended after each visit to lower the inflammation locally and a specific diet and lifestyle that targets inflammation will give you lowered pain overall as well as many other health benefits.

A: No, chiropractors are primary care physicians and patients may see them for any condition before seeing another provider. Our Carlsbad chiropractic office will then decide which conditions we can help with and which may require a referral. A growing body of evidence supports chiropractic for much more than low back pain, neck pain and headaches.

A: Chiropractors are NOT medical doctors, and we don’t want to be. Medicine has its place, but the current medical system is failing us. It is too expensive and not working. Medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy, and we are sicker now than we have ever been as a population, despite new drugs and procedures being approved daily for almost every conceivable condition. We believe that chiropractic is the answer to this. Medicine is the study of disease and what causes a man to be sick, Chiropractic is the study of health and what causes a man to be well. It is a completely different way of looking at the body, which acknowledges the patient’s ability to create health for themselves, without drugs or surgery. Our Carlsbad chiropractic center is a place for people to come who are looking for more than ordinary medical care. It is a place for people to find hope and recover health.

A: This can only be answered truthfully by your medical doctor. Dr. Paul personally avoided a neck surgery and was playing high school football again in 2 weeks with chiropractic, when his medical doctor and surgeons told him he would need hardware installed and would never play sports again. This miraculous recovery had a such a profound effect he decided then and there to become a chiropractor and help others.

Most medical doctors are honestly just busy and want what’s best for their patients, but we must also remember they work in a system that is designed by pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies for profit, and there is no profit in referring to a chiropractor when you could recommend drugs or surgery and get paid. There are many biases against chiropractors from medical doctors historically, even some that were taught in medical school and political organizations like the AMA.

Chiropractors have been getting the sick well for over 120 years now, often at great personal expense and persecution including jail time. The only reason it continues to exist as a profession is because it works so well. Chiropractors had to sue the AMA and in an incredibly important lawsuit spanning 10 years (Wilk vs the AMA 1990) it was upheld by the supreme court that a conspiracy to destroy the chiropractic profession had been in operation. There were days not that long ago when chiropractors went to jail for ‘practicing medicine without a license;’ they would adjust the guards, the inmates, and everyone they could get their hands on and continue to make the world a better place, connecting man the physical to man the spiritual through attunement of the nerve system accomplished with the chiropractic adjustment.

Things are looking brighter for chiropractic. A recent guideline by the AMA (yes the same organization that was trying to destroy chiropractic) recently looked at the evidence surrounding back surgery and conservative treatment and issued guidelines that chiropractic and other conservative therapies should be tried, perhaps even multiple attempts and modalities, before surgery is considered.

A: There are so many different chiropractic techniques and so many different applications of those techniques. Chiropractic as a principle always works, like gravity. What this means is that the nerve system always coordinates the body and if the nerve system is restored the body will always function better. If it doesn’t work, question the application, not the principle. Maybe proper nerve function was not achieved in the limited time your chiropractor had to work with you, or maybe there were many other stresses your body had to deal with before it could tackle the project you put in front of it, and maybe a different technique or approach would help you get there faster. New Wave Chiropractic Center in Carlsbad was created to help the difficult cases, the ones that just aren’t getting better, by taking a close look at the patient and treating each and every case like the unique person that they are.