Frequently Asked Questions in Watertown SD

 Chiropractic is the art and science of treating musculoskeletal conditions and other chronic conditions through manual manipulation, muscle work, and rehabilitation.

Our office can treat not only spinal conditions, but also shoulder, elbow, knee, ankle, and foot pain. Correcting biomechanics of the extremity joints along with soft tissue treatment can clear up the majority extremity issues (ex: shoulder, hip, knee).

A chiropractic adjustment is a manual treatment that clears joint restrictions or loss of movement in joints.

Chiropractic treatment is very safe. It’s the top conservative choice of treatment for most professional athletes. If it wasn’t’ safe, these athletes wouldn’t risk their careers seeing a chiropractor.

Our usual treatment plan is 2 visits per week for three 3 weeks (6 visits). Some patients are pain free in as few as 2 visits and others may take a bit longer than 6 visits. How fast you’re out of pain and results depend on your condition, age, and how long you’ve had the pain. Chronic pain usually takes longer to calm down.

The benefits of chiropractic care depend upon how much you are willing to change in your daily lifestyle. If you are relying on an adjustment to clear up years of pain, you may be disappointed. Healing entails not only good motion at the joint and muscles (which is what we help you with), but also involves having a healthy diet, adequate sleep, and keeping your sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) under control. We educate all our patients on the importance of a holistic approach to their pain (especially chronic pain). If you’ve been searching for answers for years, we have many of the best researched methods to reduce your pain naturally (with an anti-inflammatory diet and supplements), researched methods for deeper sleep, and researched methods to reduce the fight and flight in your life.

The most common risk is increased pain after treatment. After 20 years in practice, though, we usually know how to treat patients that have a high sensitivity for pain.

 Usually, they are not painful and most often feel great to most people. If for some reason you do not want to be adjusted (like in the neck), we offer other methods of treatment (like Mckenzie overpressure treatments and muscle work) to clear the pain and restrictions in your spine.

You should pick us because we put your needs, worries, and busy life ahead of our own. We listen to what’s going on and try to offer low cost or no cost methods to help with your pain (like at-home relief positions and exercises).

1. Cost: We do not bait and switch you into long treatment plans (like 20 visits or more). The downfall of our profession are the chiropractors that x-ray every patient or run a “spine scan” and then scare you with comments like “you lost your curve in your spine” or “you have a spine of an 80-year-old” in order to sell you 20 visits of care.
2. Convenience: Our typical treatment plan is 2x’s per week for 3 weeks (6 visits). Along with less visits than other places, a typical appointment only lasts about 15-20 minutes.
3. Knowledge: Dr. Dingsor has trained extensively with some of the best chiropractors in the country in manipulation, muscle release/scar tissue work, fascial therapy, McKenzie Therapy, and Nerve Release Work. Learning how to combine these methods and knowing when to use them with the right diagnosis saves you time, money, and PAIN!

15-20 minutes

I did 4 years of biology to earn my Bachelor of Science at South Dakota State University and then did 3 years at Logan University in St. Louis to earn my Doctorate of Chiropractic.

Chiropractic helps pregnant women with back pain from the very first trimester to the delivery. It’s a very safe and proven treatment for pregnancy-related back pain.

It can be addictive to those who only rely on chiropractic for a “cure to their pain”. We avoid this by teaching the patient self-efficacy, which means they can learn how to do exercises at home to manage their pain.

 The “crack sound” is a cavitation of the joint, meaning that movement is being restored to the restricted joint segment.

You can adjust yourself, but usually you are popping areas of your spine that are already hypermobile. Hypermobility is not good because these areas then become chronic areas of tension from the muscles working overtime to stabilize these areas. These patients then typically have to “pop their neck” up to six times a day or more to get relief. We typically see younger people doing this and have to wean them off of their self-popping.

Most common insurances like Blue Cross, Sanford, Avera, and Medica all cover chiropractic care. Each plan is different, and we check your benefits for you before we start treatment.

 Yes. It’s one of the most reliable and most researched forms of treatment for back pain.

 Yes. Neck pain is reliably treated with chiropractic adjustments, along with spine stabilization exercises and postural correction to reduce future flare-ups.

Yes. Chiropractic, if done correctly, can help with the majority of headaches caused by the spine or nerves in that region. We not only adjust the spine, but we treat the surrounding occipital nerves and fascia to reduce inflammation and pressure on the nerves that cause headaches. We’ve weaned patients off of Botox injections with our headache care.

Chiropractic care focuses on restoring joint motion to the spine and extremities, along with applying rehabilitation once the normal and pain free range of motion is restored. PT, in my opinion, focuses too much on exercises too soon, before pain-free range-of-motion is restored. That’s why, in my opinion, chiropractic tends to get better results in less time than PT.

Properly trained and educated chiropractors can help with sports injuries. But I would disagree that all chiropractors can help with sports injuries. It’s like any profession: the doctors who continue to learn constantly and love what they do are usually the best trained in every profession. The doctors, dentists, PTs, or chiropractors who do the bare minimum of continuing education in their state and do not seek out the best education are the ones to avoid.

Yes and no. Any chiropractor who sells you on correcting your posture by telling you that you need 20-30 visits of care is full of hot air. But, finding a chiropractor who treats joints that are restricted (stuck) along with releasing tight fascia/muscles with scar tissue techniques can then allow you to hold a better posture that can be optimized with exercises. Remember, movement is medicine. The better and more you can move, the healthier your whole body will be.

Patients are set up in a comfortable position to relax the joint that is being adjusted and then the doctor applies a short and quick impulse to release the restricted joint.

Yes, chiropractic is very safe for all ages. Children tend to be the easiest patients to treat since their joints and soft tissue around the joint is not all gristled-up with scar tissue from years of wear and tear.