What if....

Last evening my wife and I attended a function hosted by a local restaurant.  This was a high profile event with a couple hundred guests.  She introduced me to a friend of hers who, sadly lost her adult daughter to liver failure a couple of months ago.  I'm not certain what caused it, but my wife thinks it may have been acetaminophen toxicity. The mother said that suggested to her daughter that she see me, but her daughter, unfortunately, wanted to stay with the medical approach.

There was another fellow there that had been a practice member of mine almost 20 years ago.  He was a personal injury case, as my practice was much different then.  We talked a bit and he told me that he has had two bouts of cancer, both different kinds.  He's doing ok, but still something going on as he has some kind of cancerous lumps on his hands.

In the spring we like to go to the Lenten fish fries the local churches have.  This past spring I had seen a lady that had also been a member of my practice about 10 years ago.  When she started with me she had told me that she had a lung disease.  I can't remember what it was, but I do remember it was some sort of autoimmune disorder.  During the course of her care, she came in one evening and said that she had been to her MD and the lung disease was gone!  And, she was feeling very well.  When I had seen her at the fish fry earlier this year, she was using a portable oxygen tank.

Sometimes, no matter how much I write or talk about chiropractic, people still think all I do is make pain go away.  And when the pain is gone, so are they.  This always makes me sad because Chiropractic is so much more than that.  In fact, pain doesn't even enter the equation as to what I do.  Pain is a mind/body signal that simply says "Change!".  Change what you are doing, or thinking, but whatever it is, it is not working for us so change!

Health is a matter of function - when the body is doing what it is supposed to be doing when it is supposed to be doing it, it is healthy.  Chiropractic addresses the nerve system, which is the operating system of the body.  Stress makes the nerve system sick resulting in a sick body.  Get the nerve system healthy again, and health can be expressed in a healthy body.

I have seen liver disease clear up.  I have seen cancer disappear.  I have seen lung issues go away.  Do I treat these conditions? No.  I just clear the body of interference so it can HEAL.  If the young lady had come here, she may be alive now, we'll never now.  If the fellow would have stayed under care, would he have come down with cancer? We'll never know.  If the lady with the oxygen would have stayed under care, would she be carrying an oxygen tank around? Probably not, she already had told me she got better.

What if....?

Misconceptions of Health

Something that I continue to find amazing is how people claim they are healthy when they are really incredibly sick. I really believe that most people do not have a concept of what being healthy is.

I had a consultation with a lady today that came to see me because her right shoulder and right hip were in pain. Granted, most people think chiropractic is some kind of physical therapy treatment, but readers of my column and those who know me know that chiropractic as a whole body approach to health. Medical people have their ideas about health and how to treat illness, and chiropractors have a different philosophy.

Since we do have a different philosophy, I take the time with all my new people to get them to understand a different viewpoint. I want them to know that health is not about the presence or absence of symptoms but rather how the body functions. Symptoms are not necessarily s sign of illness but more often a communication from the body that says something needs to be changed. They are warning signs that need to be heeded, not treated. Health is defined by how the body functions and if loss of function is occurring, then there is a loss of health. And function can change without the presence of symptoms.

The lady in my office today had a history of a hip replacement and two episodes of breast cancer. I had performed my exam on her two days ago and we were going over the results. The exam is to find functional changes in the body. Based on what I found I told her that it was going to take at least 2 years to rehabilitate her to a state of higher health. She was shocked. She just wanted me to "fix her spine and shoulder" which should only take a few visits. Once again I explained to her that "fixing" parts of the body is not what this is about. The changes in her shoulder and spine were do to a lifetime of having sick nerve system tha affected every aspect of her being. She then said, "I just don't see why i need to have all that treatment I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN VERY HEATHY (emphasis mine)." I told her that anyone who has ever had cancer cannot sit here and tell me that they are healthy. Healthy people do not get cancer.

Which brings me to my point. She is not alone in that thinking. I hear it over and over again how people tell me that they are missing organs from surgeries, they are on medications, they have a history of cancer. But they are healthy. Really? Do you claim health because you are not dead? At what point do people think they are sick?

It is a sad state of affairs when people think that living like that is being health, when they can have so much more in life. It's even worse when I try to show them that they can get more out of their bodies, that they do not have to live substandardly, and they walk away because they are happy this way or just don't want to do the work that it takes to get better.

An essay about Chiropractic

The following is a response I gave to a friend of my wife's who is studying to get her Bachelor's degree in nursing.  She is taking a course in complimentary/ alternative health and asked me some questions about "chiropractic medicine".  The following is my response to her.

Hi Marji,

Thanks for taking the time to ask me these questions.  My answers may be kind of long, but I like to have a clear understanding of my work and what chiropractic really is.  There is so much mis-understanding about chiropractic, and a lot of it comes from the practitioners, that the public doesn't understand how chiropractic can be of great importance in their lives. 

So, first off, let's drop the term "chiropractic medicine".  That is an oxymoron.  It is strictly chiropractic.  It sounds weird because the word should be an adjective, you feel like something should follow it.  It took me a while to get used to it way back when, but you do after a while.

To describe what I do requires an understanding of what chiropractic health care really is.  Chiropractic is a philosophically based approach to restoring and maintaining health in the body.  It is based upon the premise that the body is a self-healing, self-creating entity.  All living things, whether plant or animal have an Innate, or Inborn Intelligence that creates the body and sustains life.  Think about it.  We all came from a single cell that divided into literally trillions of cells that became a baby.  At first the cells were undifferentiated, but at the right time they became nerve cells, liver cells, muscle cells, and so on. The cells formed organs and systems all working in harmony to sustain life in the newborn.  This is all accomplished without outside interference!  The developing body knows what it needs to do and when.  This power to create and sustain life does not end with the cutting of the umbilical cord, it continues for the lifetime of the individual as the body grows and evolves for the next 60 to 100 years. 

In the developing baby, the first recognizable system to be formed is the Nerve System (NS).  The NS guides the formation of the developing body.  After birth, the NS continues to do this as well as co-ordinate all the functions of the body.  When I ask people what does the NS do, they usually tell me it helps them feel stuff, usually pain.  But sensation is only 6% of NS function.  The NS is operating system of the body.  You have anywhere from 50 to 80 trillion cells in your body and each cell has 3 to 9 nerve endings attached to them.  The brain is in constant communication with every cell in your body, monitoring and guiding everything they do.  Not only does the NS do this, but it is constantly taking in information from your environment to guide you safely through life to minimize risk to your body.  The NS heals, animates, motivates, and co-ordinates your body and life! To have a healthy body, you have to have a healthy NS.  And everything in your life is an expression of your nerve system.  

As we go through life, we are subjected to stress.  Stress always sounds like a bad thing, but it serves to protect us.  If we didn't have stress, we wouldn't know when to protect ourselves from danger.  There are only three forms of stress: emotional, chemical, and physical.  And I list them in that order on purpose.  Emotional stress is a constant.  People don't realize it so much, but we deal with emotional stress all the time.  From the moment of conception and on we have emotional stresses.  As we develop we pick up the emotional stress that Mom may be going through.  Birth is emotional. Then we have to deal with family issues, school, friends, jobs, the news, traffic, bills, and on and on.  Chemical stress is anything that goes in the body that doesn't belong there such as vaccinations, food additives, fumes from gasoline, or the new carpet you put in, insecticides, etc.  And physical stress is what it is - falls, sports, accidents etc.  Most people think physical is the biggie, but it's small compared to the other two.  Even when there is a physical stress, there is an emotional component playing behind it.

The effects of stress are cumulative. And what stress does is that it creates tension in the spinal cord.  This alters the TONE and TENSION of the spinal cord altering the flow of communication between the brain and the body.  If you compare the body to a violin, the spinal cord represents the strings and stress makes them go out of tune.  This leads to changes in body function and therefore health.  If the brain and body cannot communicate properly, the body loses its ability to regulate itself leading to disease and ill health.  

The definition of health is when all the systems of the body are functioning 100% of the time when they are supposed to be functioning.  It is also a state of emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being.  And health exists when people are able to realize their uniqueness and potential as a human being.  Health IS NOT defined by the presence of absence of symptoms.  Symptoms serve to let people know that the body needs help or to warn that something the person is doing is not working for them and they need to change something!  Being pain free is comfortable but not a sign of health.  If that were the case, dead people would be the healthiest - they don't feel pain!  Being healthy is being in tune with the body and knowing what its needs are and making choices that serve the body.  Not being healthy is to ignore its signals and shutting them off when the signals interfere with what we feel we need to do each day.  But I'm digressing. 

What chiropractic care is, as I said before, is an approach to helping to restore and maintain health to the body by ADJUSTING the NS through the spinal column.  By restoring the proper TONE and TENSION to the spinal cord, the brain and the body can communicate better and the NS can once again regulate and heal the body.  Remember, the body is an expression of where the NS is.  A sick NS creates a sick body, a healthy NS creates a healthy body.  There is no other way.  

Now, before I get into what I do, you asked about straights and mixers.  Straight chiropractors are also known as  principled or philosophically based chiropractors.  This what I am.  We do not try to emulate MD's by diagnosing conditions and then trying to treat them with chiropractic methods. Whatever a person is going through is, in our terms, a product of a sick NS.  Restore health to the NS, and the body will heal itself.  The power that created the body, heals the body.  To me it doesn't matter what a person has, it's all an expression of a sick nerve system and a body that has lost it's ability to adapt.  Now you may think " Wow, that could be dangerous! What if a person has something really serious?"  Well, most people have already been to their MD's and diagnosed out the wazoo! And if I suspect something weird, I always tell the person to have it checked out.  That's very rare though.  People come to me with all sorts of issues.  I have worked with people who have hormonal issues, cancer, digestive issues, blood pressure, as well as headaches and stuff.  Many people consider me their primary care physician.

The mixers are chiros that have become more like glorified physical therapists.  They do diagnose, often work with MD's, and "treat" conditions with chiropractic methods such as adjusting everything that is stuck.  They concern themselves with injuries - worker's comp, car accidents, and sports. They use a lot of physical therapy equipment along with their adjusting, if they adjust at all.  They do stick to just a physical approach to the body. 

So what do I do? As you know there are many ways of adjusting the spine.  You probably experienced the high velocity thrust that results in a cracking sound.  I practice Network Spinal Analysis (NSA) which is a light touch approach.  The idea is not to move bones, but to tune the NS to its proper tone and tension.  When I perform my analysis on people, they are lying face down on the table and I check them for spinal cord tension. This shows up as leg length differences, ankle tension, muscle stress in the legs, and so on (without getting too detailed).  The pattern of stress that shows corresponds to spinal areas like in the neck or pelvis.  When I find the pattern, I go to that vertebral level, find the "sweet spot" and touch it very lightly and let go.  The person experiences a release of tension, their breath often gets deep and moves through the body in a wave. Often they will sigh. Sometimes they start to move on the table as the body "unwinds", and sometimes (not often) they may have an emotional release.  The visit is often about 10 minutes long.  Afterwards most people feel relaxed, more at peace, lighter, more centered.  A study performed at the University of California Medical School in Irving (or Irvine? I forget) with almost 3000 people under NSA care found that after 3 months of care people reported feeling better able to deal with stress more constructively, they felt happier and enjoyed life more, they had less concerns with aches and pains, they had less colds and flu, they reduced or eliminated medications (with the help of their MD's), they were able to make healthier decisions, and adapted healthier life styles.  You asked about negative reactions - there are none with this approach.

As far as labeling chiropractic care as complimentary or alternative - it is neither.  Chiropractic, if the practitioner is 'straight', is a stand alone profession independent of medicine.  The philosophy of medicine is that the body is incomplete, nature didn't get it right, and it is system in failure that has to supported with drugs.  When the drugs don't work, then remove the parts that are no longer needed or have died.  This is a mechanistic, Newtonian approach to the body that looks at the body the way a mechanic looks at an automobile.  Chiropractic is holistic.  Life is the expression of Intelligence through Matter.  The body is perfect and knows what it needs to do to maintain life.  Interferences develop to the expression of life in the body, and all we have to do is remove that interference and allow the body to do what it does best.  Chiropractic does not "compliment" medicine in any way.  Nor is it an alternative.  One should not think in terms of "should I take an aspirin for my headache or get my neck cracked?"  Alternative is either/or.  I educate my practice members to realize that their bodies are self-healing, self-regulating organisms, and that keeping them tuned gives them the best opportunities in life.  The healthier a person is, the less they need medicine (which is the leading cause of preventable death in the US today by the way).  

So there you have it.  I know I gave you a lot.  If you have any other questions (I'm sure you do now!) don't hesitate to contact me again. 

Medications and Quality of Life

Last week one of our practice members, handed me a recent newsletter from MetroHealth.  There was an interesting article in there written by Catherine Fallick, MD about blood pressure, medications, and life extension.  She states that high blood pressure (HBP) affects more than 60 million Americans.  It is the silent killer because there are no symptoms of HBP, but in the long run having it can lead to heart disease, kidney damage, and stroke.  This is all true of course.  However, what she says about medication got under my holistic skin!

She states: "People don't understand that every day with high blood pressure is a day that they are aging faster than necessary.  Treating your blood pressure with medication and diet allows you to feel good when you are 70 and 80.  The rate of developing HPB sometime over your lifetime is near 90%.  Part of that is because of the aging population.  Only 10% of the population will never develop HPB.  We need to get used to the fact that we all are eventually going to have to take medications for BP.  If you are against taking medication, you may not have the life expectancy that we have come to expect in the United States. (Italics are mine)."

Oh really?  I looked up a common medication for BP, Lopressor, to see what it does.  It can cause: congestive heart failure (do I need to go on?), heart block, cardiogenic shock, severe slow heart beat, Raynaud's phenomenon, gangrene, hepatitis, hypersensitivity reactions, photosensitivity, Systemic Lupus, and a loss of your white bood cells ( you know, the ones that fight infections!)

There are many contraindications listed for its use, and one of them is to be cautious with elderly people!

So I would like the good doctor to explain to me how taking this drug when I am in my 70's and beyond, which is a high risk group, is going to make me "feel good" if I run the risk of congestive heart failure, liver disease, dead limbs, and possible autoimmune disease?  I would rather take my chances with just HBP!

Dr Fallick says that taking medication is what is necessary for a long, healthy life.  Is she aware that prescription medication is the leading cause of hospital admissions and death in the US today?  Is she also aware of an article that appeared in the AARP magazine not too long ago that referred to a study that said that people who DO NOT take medications have a higher life expectancy and quality of life that those who do?  Apparently not.

To her credit, she does refer to lifestyle changes.  Losing weight, diet changes, and exercise have all been shown to help people drop their BP.  There are also chiropractic studies ( I don't have the references handy at the moment) that show chiropractic care also lowers BP.  None of these activities have adverse affects on one's health as the medications do.

There is no substitute for a healthy lifestyle.  There is no substitute for regular chiropractic care.  There is no reason to believe that medications make people healthier!

Do you "hold" your adjustments?

The other day, someone asked me if anyone ever "holds" their adjustments.  This is based upon the old chiropractic notion that a vertebra "out of place" is pinching a nerve and creating illness.  By "resetting" the vertebra with a thrust the pressure is taken off the nerve and healing occurs.  Therefore, the adjustment should "hold" or always stay in its proper place along the spine.  Unfortunately, this just doesn't happen.

The notion that one can hold an adjustment is believe that the body is a machine - it is a collection of parts that work together like a watch or an automobile.  Your car will hold its front end alignment.  When the wheels go out of alignment, you have that adjusted and it should stay that way until you hit a curb.  The medical people work from the premise that the body is a machine.  They feel that when something breaks down they can replace it with another part, human or artificial.  This is all based on the old Newtonian/ Descartes view that the Universe is just a collection of parts whirling around each other just like an old watch that you have to wind up.

This just isn't true.  The body is not a machine.  It is a living expression of consciousness.  It is the expression of intelligence in matter.  It is energy flowing.  Your body is constantly taking in information from it's environment, beyond your immediate comprehension, and adapting to the constant flux of energy so as to stay alive.  And, the environment goes beyond what you see around you, it is also your thoughts and feelings.

Your body is programmed to do only one thing - keep you alive!  Everything it does is to meet that end.  So by monitoring it's environment, the body will make changes and reposition itself to stay alive.  In other words, it is in a constant changing dynamic with the world within, and without.  When it senses danger,  i.e. stress, it will go into a survival mode.  It will curl up, so to speak, or tense up to protect itself.  Stress is a learned response,  so the body will respond to events not necessarily based upon immediate danger, but rather on what it learned as danger.  So you may not be stressed at the moment, but your body may be reacting to something that on a subconscious level it understands to be stress.  It will also react to all your thoughts and emotions.

Since your environment is constantly changing, your body's response to it is constantly changing.  The nerve system, which reads and interprets the environment, will constantly change and react. The body is an expression of the nerve system.  So if the nerve system constantly changes, the expression in the physical body will also.  And that means the body is in constant flux.

To assume that an adjustment is "holding" is to assume that the body never changes.  It is to assume that the body is a machine just standing still and never moving.  This is impossible.  It is impossible to assume that by "resetting" a vertebra, it will stay that way forever.

People need to be adjusted regularly because the effects of stress are cumulative. And only spinal adjustment can change that and keep a person in a more relaxed state.  Instead of living in survival mode, the body can be relaxed and live in "living"mode.  This in itself will keep the body healthier!  And it doesn't matter if you have to adjust the same vertebra over and over and over.

Can Chiropractic Create World Peace?

Wow!  That's a heavy statement, don't you think?  Quite presumptuous, too.  But, is it really far fetched?

The other day one of my practice members, Mary, sat up after being cleared and said how wonderfully at peace she felt.  Then she asked, "What it would be like if everyone were under chiropractic care?"  I said, "There probably would be world peace!"

Stress is the number one cause of loss of health.  We can't escape stress, it's part of living in a physical body in today's society.  There are only three forms of stress: emotional, chemical, and physical.  I list them in this order on purpose because about 95% of the stress I help people through is emotional.  We have to deal with all elements of society: the economy, family issues, taxes, politics, the ever present war, traffic, our jobs, and so on.  Stress puts our bodies into survival mode also known as 'fight or flight'.  We either have to fight for our lives or run like hell, but the bottom line is that we constantly live on the edge.  We are never at peace.  If we, as individuals, are never at peace within ourselves, we are never at peace with each other, and nations will never be at peace.  Society, as a whole, is in fight or flight.  Then nations are in fight or flight, albeit mostly fight.

The chiropractic adjustment takes a person out of survival mode.  It changes the tone and tension of the nerve system to "living" mode so that we can be at peace within ourselves.  When we are at peace, we are centered, able to deal with life constructively.  If more people lived this way, society would be centered, in "living" mode.  Then nations would be centered and at peace.  If everyone in the world could be cleared of living in survival mode, it is safe to say that there would be peace!

More thoughts on Vaccines

I went with my daughter and granddaughter to visit her pediatrician for my granddaughter's first birthday check-up today.  The pediatrician is very nice, very laid back, and very supportive of our decisions regarding natural health approaches.  We told her way back before Maddi was born that we are choosing not to have her vaccinated.  She has supported this decision, but has asked with the two visits I have attended in the past year if we still do not wish to have vaccinations, or were we waiting for Maddi to be a little older.  Lindsay again told her that there will be no vaccinations, and the doctor noted this in Maddi's chart.

What makes me wonder is how can learned people who claim to be health care providers can still promote the use of vaccines on children.  I just read three articles dealing with vaccines that describe how they don't work and even cause disease.  One article talked about the dangers of the Hepatitis B vaccine in children.  It is linked to the onset of Multiple Sclerosis, Systemic Lupus, sudden infant death, and auto-immune diseases.  Hepatitis B isn't even a childhood disease - it is a disease of drug users and specific sexual habits!

Another article discussed how immunized children in Pakistan are developing polio. 70% of of the polio cases being seen in Pakistan are in children that were vaccinated.  And yet another article talks about how the CDC admits that the flu vaccine doesn't work, it wears off, and that's one of the reasons you have to have a new one every year.  Well the flu vaccine has aluminum and mercury compounds in them, detergents, dead diseased chicken cells, viruses, MSG ( I guess so it will at least taste good), and other toxic substances.

And that is just in the past week.  Everyday articles appear, not in the main stream media of course, that discuss the dangers of vaccines.  Hopefully one day enough people will wake up and vaccinations of our children will go the way of blood letting to cure disease.