Having reached intermediate care, you should now be well on the road to recovery. While most obvious symptoms by this phase of care are generally less noticeable, Intermediate Care forms a very important aspect of your longer term care. It is the time of care that your muscles, ligaments, bones and joints adapt and reconstruct to some of your new postural changes. It is the time for strengthening and stretching that will help allow you to have a healthier body and spine into the future. It is also the time to change any poor lifestyle habits that you may have developed.

Depending on the length of time that your original problem was present will determine how long intermediate care may last. For most children they completely skip Basic Care and have only a few visits in Intermediate Care. For adults the length of time in Intermediate Care varies from only a few weeks to up to 18 months - 2 years, dependent upon the severity of the condition.

What can I do to support my adjustments?

Physical, chemical and emotional factors contribute to health and disease. It is your decision as to which way you would like them to contribute. We would like to think that you have chosen health, rather than disease!

The interactions between our physical, chemical and emotional aspects of our life are often underrated in terms of the effect on our health. A vicious cycle between physical, chemical and emotional is created:

If we are not getting any exercise we often lose our appetite for high quality food. If we aren't eating well we don't have the fuel to exercise. If we are not exercising we tend to become more easily stressed and tense. The emotional stress and tension often leads us to the fridge where we again begin to eat poorly which further leads to emotional stress of increasing weight and not feeling good about ourselves.

While this scenario is over simplified, it is what many people describe to us. You can see that each of the physical, chemical and emotional aspects of our life work best when in balance. Balance creates the ideal setting to supporting your adjustments. Keeping this in mind, you can use these factors to help you in the Intermediate Care process. For further information click here (Physical / Chemical / Emotional).

References:
1. Kannus (2000) Phys. & Sportsmed. 28:55-63.
2. Mooney (1995) J. Musculoskeletal Medicine. Oct: 33-39.
3. Croft, P et al. (1999) 24: 1556-1561.
4. Johansson, S.E. & Sundquist, J. (1999) Int. J. Epidemiology 28: 1073-1080.