It’s all part of the plan. Chiropractic is an integral part of the overall plan for health and wellness, but there is more to the plan. Proper nutrition and exercise are two important elements that work hand in hand with chiropractic treatment. So it’s our job as chiropractors to discuss the overall wellness plan with our patients and explain how all these parts fit together. Educating our patients about nutrition and exercise—as well as chiropractic—is crucial to their acceptance and compliance. This article will show you effective ways to discuss overall wellness with your patients.

What’s In It for Me?
This is the most successful way to get your patients’ attention. Your patients are always interested in how your treatment plan will affect/help them. This is your opportunity to explain how chiropractic is related to nutrition and exercise. Your patients’ chiropractic care could improve based on their diet and exercise habits, so tell them! It’s easy for patients to feel overwhelmed and think they have no control over their health. But that’s not true. Patients can make simple changes in their diet and exercise habits that can lead to major positive changes in their health. Therefore, it can be empowering for patients to learn that their health isn’t out of their hands.

This discussion is not to be confused with a lecture about diet and exercise. When lectured, patients tend to become defensive—not accepting—so don’t scold them about their lack of exercise or poor diet. Instead, explain all the good things that come from a healthy diet and regular exercise. It’s important to talk with your patients, not at them. This subtle difference affects how your patients accept your recommendations, and it could affect their entire outlook on the wellness concept. So give positive reinforcement and helpful “to do” tips, not a long list of “don’ts,” because patients will respond better to positive encouragement.

Think Big Picture
Get your patients to see the big picture. They need to understand why the wellness concept is important. Chiropractic care is an important part of the big picture, but it’s when all the elements are working together that your patients will see the best results. You may give excellent adjustments, but if your patients continue living unhealthy lifestyles, they will not see much long-term improvement. However, if your patients work with you by watching what they eat and by taking care of their bodies with regular exercise, they will see a huge difference. Encourage them to think about the concept of overall wellness, and ask them to think of ways they can improve their health. Sometimes it only takes a few small changes to make one big difference.

For example, smoking is one of the worst things a person can do for his or her body. Instead of giving the usual lecture about the perils of smoking, you can talk to your patients about the big picture of their health. Create a clear image of what “healthy” means and how changing one thing (such as quitting smoking) could drastically change the outlook of their health—for the future and for the present. If you can talk to them about how smoking fits into their big picture of health, they’ll probably agree it doesn’t. This doesn’t mean they’ll instantly quit smoking, but the more you can encourage them to think about their health, the more they will want to improve their big picture.

Be Like Mike
Next is an effective technique to inspire your patients if you deal with a lot of sports injuries or have a sports-focused practice. Explain that many of the world’s best athletes maintain their top performance with proper nutrition, regular exercise, and chiropractic care. Display a few pictures of the nation’s best and most recognizable athletes around your office. Make clear to your patients that while these athletes have natural skills, they also work hard through proper nutrition and exercise to train their bodies to be the best. Anyone can train his or her body to be the best it can be, but it takes discipline and commitment.

Think back to the sports drink ads that featured people saying they wanted “to be like Mike.” Showing Michael Jordan at the top of his game inspired ordinary people to want to be the best they could be. This is something you can do as well. Inspire your patients to work hard and take control of their bodies. This could be as simple as finding a goal they can strive to achieve: running a 5K or losing 10 pounds. Explain that they can accomplish anything if they put their minds to it, so encourage your patients to pick a goal. It can be as small as walking 10 minutes every day to as large as running a marathon. Whatever it is, be sure they are excited about the goal and find ways to encourage them along the way.

Change Your Routine
Make it a point to include a discussion about the wellness concept in your routine patient exam: height, weight, patient history, and overall health discussion. If we want our patients to change their lifestyles and become more health-conscious, it’s up to us to change our routine as well. We need to go out of our way to spend time with our patients and talk to them about ways to improve their health. We tend to get in a routine when it comes to our patient exams, and it’s important that we stop and evaluate that routine. What questions do we ask our patients? What discussions do we have about their health? It’s crucial that we are efficient, but we must also balance that with the need to do everything in our power to help our patients have healthy lifestyles.

It doesn’t take a long time to explain the basics of the wellness concept, and that 5-minute discussion could make the difference for your patients. You can think of this discussion as a spark to your patients to consider their health plan. The more they think about their health, the more likely they are to do something to improve it. So we need to take extra time with our patients to be a catalyst for change, because it’s worth it. A change in our routine can be uncomfortable for us, but we must consider the health of our patients to be our top priority.

We can’t offer chiropractic care without looking at a patient’s overall health, so we shouldn’t leave other categories—such as nutrition and exercise—out of the treatment plan. Chiropractic can help your patients tremendously, but it works best as part of the larger idea of an overall wellness plan. Incorporate these guidelines in your practice, and you’ll see results. Most importantly, so will your patients.

Mark N. Charrette, DC, is a 1980 summa cum laude graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic. He has lectured extensively on spinal and extremity adjusting throughout the United States, Europe, the Far East, and Australia. Charrette received a bachelor’s degree from Illinois State University (summa cum laude) in 1976, where he was an NCAA All-American in 1974.