Pre-emptive Surgery?

I had a discussion with someone today who was telling me about a girl he knows who had her breasts removed because someone in her family had breast cancer. Was it her mother? I can't remember, but apparently she carries the 'gene' for breast cancer and just to be safe, she had hers removed.

I find it amazing that the medical profession, a profession sworn to "do no harm" can actually convince people that by mutilating their bodies like this, they can actually prevent a disease. I also wonder how many of the male surgeons would have their testicles removed if their fathers had had testicular cancer? Probably not a one, yet they have convinced women to do this with their breasts. They even convince them to have their ovaries and uteri removed if there is a familial history of cancer here to. Let's just castrate women to save their lives. Insanity.

The notion that we carry genes that cause cancers is ludicrous. Cell biologist Bruce Lipton has done extensive research on cellular genes and genetic expression, and has shown that genes do not rule our lives as the medics tend to believe. He has shown that if he takes undifferentiated stem cells growing in culture, and puts them in a specific environment, he can get them to become muscle cells. Change the environment and they become nerve cells, or liver cells, or cancer cells. In other words, we are not victims of the genes we inherit. But rather the genes will express certain ways based upon the environment of the cell - change the environment, change the cell.

Just because someone in the family had a form of cancer does not mean that everyone in the family will get the same one, or any at all. It's the environment and various stimuli that get the cells to become what they are. By adopting a healthy life style, one minimizes the risk that they will get cancer. But to pre-emptively remove a body part amounts to mutilation.

My mother had brain cancer. According to this thinking, maybe I should have mine removed just so I don't get it too.

Happy Birthday Chiropractic!

On this date in 1895, in Davenport Iowa, a janitor named Harvey Lillard was working in D.D. Palmer's office. D.D. had been many things, but held a passion for anatomy, physiology, and looking at what made people sick. He had an office in downtown Davenport and was practicing as a magnetic healer. This was a form of laying on of hands, and may have been similar to what we know as Reiki today.

Harvey was hard of hearing and told Palmer that he had been that way for several years after he had lifted something heavy and felt a 'pop' in his back. Palmer had Lillard lie down on his table and felt along his spine. We don't know exactly what Palmer had found, but he described it as a "bone out of place". He thrust into that bone and "reset it". Within a couple of days, Lillard's hearing had returned, and a healing profession was born.

Palmer noted the relationship of the spine with the nerve system, (i.e. spinal cord) and said that Lillard's hearing returned because he removed the interference of the nerves to the ear that was caused by the bones of the spine. He called his new science 'chiropractic' which means "performed by hand" and began treating people with all sorts of conditions by adjusting the spine. People came from all over to be treated by Palmer and his new technique.

Actually there was nothing new about adjusting the spine as people had been doing it for centuries. But this was the first time that someone related the spine to the health of the nerve system.

Palmer wanted to keep the technique to himself, as was quite common for doctors at that time, but his son, B.J., felt that the world needed this healing modality. He founded the Palmer School of Chiropractic in Davenport. And, the rest is history.

Today, there are thousands of chiropractors around the world treating thousands of people every day. Chiropractic is the largest natural healing profession in the world, and the second largest healing profession next to the MD's. And this is all because one man had his hearing restored on a hot afternoon in 1895.

Happy birthday chiropractic!

Relationships

In the book "The 12 Stages of Healing", Donald Epstein, DC describes how we go through each of these stages on our healing path. The first stage is Suffering, and the second stage is Polarities. In the second stage we have gained enough flexibility to seek help in alleviating our suffering, but we also see ourselves as victims of what created the suffering in the first place. Many things may cause suffering such as viruses, being fired from a job, and relationships, to give a couple of examples. The problem with this is that the cause of the suffering always comes from the outside, it is never our fault, it is what happens to us.

Relationships can be a huge cause of suffering. One may get into a relationship that turns sour after a while, and hearts become broken. It is easy to blame the other person for causing the suffering: "He lied all the time", "She cheated on me!", "This person was abusive", and so on. We mend our hearts, and develop another relationship, and the scenario repeats itself. Many people go through this cycle time and again, then lament on why they can't find a decent guy/girl.

As one moves through the second stage, healing occurs when the sufferer stands back, takes a look at the choices that have been made, and realizes that maybe they are involved in how these relationships unfold. They may begin to see that there is a common thread in the people that have been chosen in the relationship and that they keep playing the same scenario over and over, just with different people. At this point, one becomes more whole. The healing comes with the realization that they are not the victim of a continuous stream of whack jobs, but rather they have been involves somehow in the person that they have dated. The same can be said for jobs that continue to fail too, but we will stick to relationships in today's column.

G is a young woman who did not have a healthy relationship with her mother while growing up, and related to me that at one point her mother tried to strangle her. Consequently G continues to hold a great deal of tension in her neck and shoulder area of the upper chest. The nerve system will take the stress of an event and store it in the tissues of the body when it senses that the stress is too much to deal with. The muscles contract and create a 'suit of armor' if you will, to protect us. G and I have made great strides in releasing this tension through her spinal entrainments..

At one point, G dropped out of care for a few months due to personal reasons, but had informed me of having started a relationship with someone at the just before taking a hiatus from care. Last week G returned, and presented with a great deal of neck tension again. G related that the relationship was toxic and had come to an end, and that the person had been a lot like her mother.

For some reason, we tend to gravitate towards the same type of person or situation that creates our suffering, over and over again. Because of this, when the situation turns bad, as it inevitably will, our nerve systems respond the same way as it always has to that circumstance. In this case it is neck stiffness and pain. It could just as easily have been low back pain, or asthma, or any other medical condition. We may see that the people appear to be different, but the nerve system sees them as all the same and responds the same way in its protective mode creating the same scenario in us.

When we have the realization that G had, that they are involved in the choices that have been made, then we can break free of the grip we have placed upon ourselves and move on to healthier choices leaving our suffering behind.

Until next time....

Perceptions

It's funny how people accept that whatever condition they have, they are stuck with it because someone of authority said so. Last friday, Sept 11, D was in for her regular visit. After I clear the nerve system, I like to check for weaknesses in areas of people's discomfort. D has been telling me that her shoulders hurt and feel weak, so I tested them by having her raise her arms away from her sides. Then I pressed down and asked her to resist. She said, "Oh I can't do that, I had surgery on the left and it hurts". She did have trouble resisting, that is, her arms were weak. I lowered her arms and then just put my hands on her shoulders, and imagined them being strong again. I said "Let's test that again". I raised her arms, she made a face as if to say, "Oh it's going to hurt!" I pressed on her arms and they were solidly strong! She looked up in amazement. She said "What did you do?" I told her that I just changed her perception of herself. She came in today and I retested her arms, and they were still strong. I lowered the left one to another angle and she tested weak. I did same thing, and again it was strong. Overall, her arms are stronger, and as she left she announced as she walked down the hall, "I feel so much better!"

D's perception was that since she had surgery, that her left arm was her bad arm and that she will have to live with the cards she was dealt. It's not necessarily so. That is just one perception, and perceptions can change just in the way we look at things. I changed her perception, and her body gave a healthier response.

If we can realize that our bodies are dynamic energy units in a constant state of flux, and not biological machines, then any change in health is possible. In a quantum world, the universe organizes itself based upon the observer. If we expect to "see" things one way, the Universe collapses itself into that reality. If we change our perception, the Universe will collapse into the new reality. Reality is only a hallucination based upon the way we look at things. Modern Medicine tells people that if it has no answers for people then they have to live with whatever it is they have, or die from it. That is just one perception. In a quantum world, no one has to live with anything because we can change that perception, and therefore our experience of ourselves. And that is what makes it all so cool!

Until next time....

A New Start

Yesterday, Pam and I went to see Julie and Julia. If you haven't seen it, it's about a girl in New York who creates a challenge for herself to make every recipe in Julia Child's book in one year. That's over 500 recipes. At the end of each day, she blogs her experiences and thoughts about what she had done. At first no one was reading her blogs but her mother, but eventually she developed a following. Her blogs became very popular, turned into a book, and eventually the movie we saw yesterday. I really enjoyed the movie, and it got me thinking...I have this blog but I haven't been very diligent about using it. I also thought that I could do what she did and share my thoughts about my working day. I deal with people's health, there is plenty of interest in that. I don't know if anyone will read this, but who knows....it worked for Julie! So, let's see where this goes....

Most people tend to think of chiropractic as a health discipline dealing with sprains and strains. Unfortunately so do most chiropractors because, essentially that is what they are teaching the students these days.

The original "Big Idea" is that chiropractic is a total health approach to the body. The purpose of adjusting the spine is not to free up stuck vertebra, but to restore health to a sick nerve system, specifically the spinal cord. The nerve system creates the body, a healthy nerve system creates a healthy body, a sick one creates a sick body. It's as simple as that. So when people come to my office because of real health issues, not just a back pain or headache, it gets me really excited!

I had a consultation today with T (I will never use people's names in this column to protect their privacy) today because he has stage 4 lung cancer. He knows the body can heal itself, but he needs direction. He doesn't want chemotherapy, which is the only method traditional medicine has to offer, because he knows that it just will make him sicker. He came to me. (Please note, that I did not and will not advise him to quit chemotherapy or interfere with his medical care. But we will work on detoxing his system with my methods and clearing his nerve system of interference to give his body the best chance to heal). We'll start in two days, and there will be more about T in future posts.

One mother brought her son in because he was up all night coughing. Another young girl, 15 came in because she hasn't had her period in two months (no, she isn't!).

This is what health care is about. It's not about being someones walking aspirin, but more like being their facilitator and coach. It's about helping them overcome health issues by utilizing their own body's wisdom - seeing where they are stuck and guiding them through it, then allowing them to heal in what ever way that is. Just how cool is that!

Until next time...