Testimonials

No Pain, No Gain: Fact or Fiction?

The familiar saying "no pain, no gain" implies that without significant effort or cost, you're unlikely to achieve your goals. However, this slogan seems to have metastasized from the original context into a slogan that encourages pain as a metric of success beyond the gym. You know that you're working hard when it hurts, whether that's in your career or home life. But what about pain that comes not from dead lifts, but from working a twelve-hour shift on a concrete floor for years, or an apparently minor fender bender six months ago?

For Angela D, 62, of Martinsburg, such an incident has led to more than a decade of pain and mounting medical bills. A seemingly minor traffic collision ended up having a permanent impact on Mrs. D's mobility, health, and general quality of life. Diagnosed with whiplash, her prognosis was much like many other Americans: take it easy, and you'll get better. But for Mrs. D, the road to recovery was potholed with numbness in her arms, and neck pain so severe that she was driven to seek out every medical intervention available, short of surgery. From radio frequency ablations, which temporarily deaden the nerves, to esoteric stretching programs like the Feldenkrais method, one treatment that remained consistent over the last decade has been the chiropractic care she received from Dr. Brian Erickson and his team at Jefferson Chiropractic Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Mrs. D says, "I appreciate Dr. Erickson's consistence in quality of care, and never pushing a patient beyond what they are comfortable with." Diagnosed with an underlying health ailment that impedes typical recovery, she goes on to say that throughout the many therapies she has tried, it has been the treatment plan at Jefferson Chiropractic Center that has remained the most consistent and beneficial to her goals.

Dr. Erickson has been practicing chiropractic care for twenty-seven years, the last eighteen of which have been in his own practice in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. In his office, Dr. Erickson offers drug-free pain management solutions such as physical medicine, nutritional counseling, sports therapy, rehabilitative therapy, and of course, chiropractic care. While chiropractors treat many different ailments, such as sciatica, poor posture, and jaw pain, Dr. Michael T. Haneline states, "Chiropractors commonly care for patients with neck pain, which is frequently caused by automobile collision that result in whiplash injuries. Neck sprains and strains are the most frequent type of injury claim reported to insurance companies in the United States, comprising 25% of all injury-related claim dollars paid out by insurers each year" ("The Notion of 'Whiplash Culture': A Review of the Evidence"). It has been this skill, knowledge, and experience that Dr. Erickson contributes to the community and helped Mrs. D and others regain and maintain their current quality of health. While recovery is a highly individual journey, it is undeniable that with the compassionate care of the Jefferson Chiropractic team, no pain no gain is indeed, a fiction.

Works Cited

Haneline, Michael T.“The Notion of a ‘Whiplash Culture’: A Review of the Evidence. i ” Journal of Chiropractic Medicine, vol. 8, no. 3, Sept. 2009, pp. 119–24.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcm.2009.04.001.