Practitioners
Lincoln Cotton
- Bachelor of Science (Adelaide)
- Masters of Chiropractic (Macquarie University)
- Currently completing Masters of Chiropractic Paediatrics (Due for completion end of 2008)
As a child, Lincoln had seen a chiropractor, along with the rest of his family and this is what sparked an interest and later developed as his career. For Lincoln, seeing a chiropractor was just the same as seeing the family doctor and as a child, he particularly liked how the chiropractor didn’t hurt.
Lincoln feels privileged that he chose chiropractic as his career, and continues to find it extremely rewarding, with a particular interest in paediatrics. Lincoln loves what he does and the opportunities of working with his colleagues of varying health/medical backgrounds, providing a piece of the jigsaw puzzle, that makes up the total health picture for a person.
Why do I work at Smart Health?
Sometimes patients present with such challenging cases, that a team approach is required. Lincoln works closely with many medical and allied health practitioners, but when the opportunity arose to be a permanent fixture at Smart Health, he jumped at it. This has provided another dimension to Lincoln’s clinical experience and more importantly has provided better patient outcomes.
Russell Hanna
- Bachelor of Arts (La Trobe University)
- Bachelor of Science (Adelaide University)
- Masters of Chiropractic (Macquarie University)
- Currently completing Masters of
Chiropractic Paediatrics
Russell consults with the physiotherapists at Smart Health and other health professionals, as part of a multidisciplinary assessment of a patient. Over the past 5 years, working closely with Greg Campbell, Russell has found that an individual practitioner will look at a particular problem through their own window of expertise and alone, may not appreciate the full extent of the issue and/or potential treatment program. Combined consultations allow the practitioners to bounce ideas and thoughts to one another and challenge current assessment and treatment procedures. This helps to refine the current diagnosis and establish if the current treatment program is appropriate. The open discussion closely involves the patient, helping to provide a better explanation of their problem and ways that they can overcome it. These assessments take between 30 and 60 minutes, with the objective of providing a plan for any further assessment needs and appropriate treatment.
What is chiropractic?
Chiropractic concerns itself with the integrity of the human frame.
The original chiropractic philosophy was that nerve interference (pressure on the nerve) which could occur if the spine was out of alignment (subluxation).
Whilst this has stood our profession in good stead over the past 100 years, we now know that it is more complicated than that.
Cortically (our brain) has a picture of our body and how it is working, the muscles the joints and even the organs. The clarity of this picture can be distorted if the body is sending poor quality messages back to the brain, this can happen due to trauma, chemical or emotional stimulus.
Our job is to assess the body and determine if there is an area which is not working properly. We usually use a detailed history to give us an indicator of the overall health of the body, our examination then focuses on posture and joint movement. These 2 areas are where we can have most impact. Chiropractors use adjustments to improve posture and joint range of motion and this generally results in improved messages being relayed back to the brain with the patient experiencing less pain and improved health.
However some cases are very complicated and the combined approach with physiotherapy is required to establish normality of the physical body. Sometimes the chemical and/or emotional systems are also at fault and we then need further input from other specialised health practitioners, such as general practitioners, specialists and psychologists.
A chiropractor can be an integral part of a health care team, resulting in better outcomes for the patient.
