terry a. rondberg, d.c. - chiropractic · ¾ chiropractic first ¾ under the influence of modern...
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Terry A. Rondberg, D.C.
the evolution of
CHIROPRACTIC
Terry A. Rondberg, D.C. 2683 Via de la Valle Suite G 629 Del Mar, CA 92014 Copyright © 2011 by Terry A. Rondberg All rights reserved. No part of this book or site may be repro‐duced or redistributed in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retriev‐al systems, without permission in writing from Terry A. Rond‐berg, D.C., except by a reviewer who may quote brief passag‐es in a review. The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or suggest the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a qualified wellness professional, either directly or indirect‐ly. In the event you use any of the information in this book, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions. The author and publisher are in no way liable for any misuse of the material. First edition 2011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN‐10: 0615561330 ISBN‐13: 978‐0‐615‐56133‐2
About the author Few wellness practi‐tioners and authors have had as profound an impact on the chiro‐practic profession as Terry A. Rondberg, D.C. During his 30+ years working in and for the chiropractic community, he’s been called every‐thing from the “modern day BJ Palmer” to “the most dangerous man in chiropractic.”
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ee, non‐invasive, and vitalistic wellness discipline.
Respected by supporters and feared by opponentshis life has been dedicated to safeguarding every person’s right to choose non‐medical wellness ap‐proaches for their health care. Through a commu‐nication network that has reached to all corners of the world, he has communicated, with passion, thfundamental precepts of chiropractic as a drug‐fr
Dr. Rondberg has written and fought against thosecritics who’ve attempted either to categorize chi‐ropractic as a therapy for back pain or to eliminate it altogether as a separate and distinct profession. He’s seen chiropractic evolve from an energy bassystem focused on improving total neurological function to a medicalized subset of physical thera‐py – and back again to its roots as an art, science, and philosophy of “being” that transcends the lim‐its of traditional ideas of disease care. More than a passive spectator, he’s been a driving force for threturn of chiropractic to those roots, and is now leading the way to even greater expansion of the profession by positioning it as the key element in a wellness paradigm that embraces physical, mental,emotio
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nal, environmental, and even spiritual well‐
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b After his graduation from Logan College of Chiro‐practic, Dr. Rondberg built successful private prac‐tices in St. Louis and Phoenix. He was noted for hisemphasis on public and patient educatioa
In 1986, Dr. Rondberg began publishing what has become one of the leading monthly chiropractic newspapers – The Chiropractic Journal – with a worldwide readership of more than 70,000. In an‐nouncing its launch, he stated: “The Journal was born out of a belief that members of the chiroprac‐tic profession need, want and deserve a reliable, credible source of news and information relating to our profession. We want a newspaper that will re‐spect our intelligence by bringing us the facts relat‐ing to important events going on in the associa‐tions, courts, legislative halls, colleges and other places where our future and the future of our pro‐fession is being determined.” He went on to say: “Chiropractic is a wonderful profession practiced by many fine men and wom‐en. We hope to bring an abundance of good news of its accomplishments — and those of individual doctors. We trust in universal principles. We be‐lieve the members of this profession, of whatever school of thought, possess much wisdom, honesty and dedication, but do not have a corner on those or other virtues.”
Today, The Chiropractic Journal remains the prima‐ry source of information on affirmative activities within the profession, including global humanita‐rian efforts, individual achievements, and positive media coverage. Dr. Rondberg also founded and published the Jour‐nal of Vertebral Subluxation Research (now the Journal of Subluxation Research), a peer‐reviewed scientific journal publishing original research on the impact of subluxation on human neurologic func‐tion. In 1989, Dr. Rondberg established the World Chi‐ropractic Alliance as an international professional organization, creating a global network of contacts and resources. Using highly refined motivational methods, a thorough knowledge of electronic communication, and exceptional organizational talents, he guided the group from its earliest stages through its present status as a major association recognized as an NGO (Non‐Governmental Organi‐zation) with the Public Information Office of the United Nations, with members on five continents.
During the course of his career, at critical junctures Dr. Rondberg has been intensely involved in the political process on both the state and national le‐vels. Through his work in Washington, D.C., he formed productive relationships with numerous Senators, Representatives, and other government officials, as well as top lobbyists. Demonstrating a keen understanding of the political process, he was instrumental in the passage of a major piece of leg‐islation that was signed by President George W. Bush in 2001, as well as several other bills and gov‐ernment actions. He also served on the Depart‐ment of Defense Chiropractic Advisory Committee to help establish the protocol for making chiroprac‐tic services available to active duty military person‐nel. Over the past decade, Dr. Rondberg has written and published three highly acclaimed books that have sold more than half a million copies through‐out the world, generating widespread publicity along with a reliable source of revenue. A sought‐after speaker at chiropractic events, he also au‐thors several blogs and websites, taking full advan‐
tage of electronic media to communicate his mes‐sage to the profession and the public. Dr. Rondberg’s latest efforts have been directed to providing several vital tools for wellness practition‐ers and their clients and patients, including Integra‐tive Outcome Measurements, a scientific health‐related quality of life (HRQOL) assessment tool, which provides a subjective evaluation of various components of wellness. In this volume, Dr. Rondberg reviews the evolution of chiropractic from his unique perspective as a chiropractic leader, supporter, and practitioner and explains the stages of its growth. Additionally, he considers its ultimate destiny as a true vitalistic ap‐proach to well‐being that can help all people lead healthier, happier, and longer lives.
Other books by Terry A. Rondberg, D.C.
Chiropractic First Under the Influence of Modern Medicine Chiropractic: Compassion and Expectation The Philosophy of Chiropractic (Green booklets) Chiropractic Malpractice Prevention Program (co‐authored with Timothy Feuling)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 ... The Beginnings Chapter 2 ... Historical Foundations Chapter 3 ... Medicalizing of Chiropractic Chapter 4 ... The Final Step: Energy Healing Chapter 5 ... The New Chiropractic and Science
CHAPTER 1 – The Beginnings
In 1895, there were fewer than two billion people on the planet. Yet, one of them, David Da‐niel (DD) Palmer, founded a profession that would change the face of health care forever. The achieve‐ment can never be over‐stated, especially consi‐dering that his creation (chiropractic) became the first and only alternative approach to loosen the medical industry’s iron grip on health care.
In his book “The Chi‐ropractor,” DD Palmer was open and honest about how he came to “discover” chiropractic. “The me‐thod by which I obtained an explanation of certain physical phenomena, from intelligence in the spiri‐tual world, is known in biblical language as inspi‐ration,” he wrote.
Never restricted by known physical sciences, Palmer established as the basis of his entire concept the existence of a Universal Intelligence that mani‐fests itself in living beings as “Innate Intelligence.”
He further proposed that health is the expres‐sion of this Innate Intelligence through Innate Mat‐ter, via Innate Energy.
As a “magnetic healer,” he understood the work of magnetic and energy forces in play throughout the environment and in our own bo‐dies. His application of chiropractic was his unique way of influencing those subtle energy fields.
Palmer’s son, Bar‐tlett Joshua (BJ) Pal‐mer, later took up the work his father had begun and developed chiropractic into a field that in a few short dec‐ades became so in‐fluential it posed a threat to the domina‐tion of allopathic med‐icine.
These two men –
the founder and developer of chiropractic – were intelligent, far‐sighted, dedicated and determined individuals. The profession, and the entire world, owes them a great debt of gratitude.
They weren’t, however, infallible, which doesn’t make them any less great. It simply means we need to view them in the context of their times to truly understand their concepts and goals.
The same is true of so many other great indi‐viduals in history. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, for example, were true political and so‐cial geniuses who overcame great odds to found a new nation based on ethical and moral principles. Yet, both owned slaves, a situation we now natu‐rally find abhorrent. Would they, if they lived to‐day, own slaves? Of course not. The times and atti‐tudes have changed radically.
No doubt if DD Palmer were alive today, he would alter some of his concepts and conclusions in light of advanced scientific findings and our un‐derstanding of the interconnectedness of all energy forces on earth. He was never reluctant, even in his own lifetime, to change his ideas and conclusions. He wrote his books on paper; he didn’t chisel them in stone.
In his book, “The Glory of Going On,” BJ Pal‐mer told his fellow chiropractors: “You HAVE in YOUR possession a SACRED TRUST. Guard it well.” He admonished them to “keep this principle and practice unadulterated and unmixed.” Still, BJ was an open‐minded teacher, who encouraged his students to use their own reasoning power to arrive at solutions to problems.
And BJ loved new technology. He owned the first automobile in the Davenport, Iowa area. In 1922, when the medium was still in its infancy, he purchased a local radio station to spread the chiro‐practic message. He adapted existing technology to the Palmer School of Chiropractic, and built new instrumentation and research tools. He was un‐afraid of trying new things and of advancing the science of chiropractic to keep up with the sciences of physics, biology, chemistry, and medicine.
Yet, he never forgot the main principles passed down by his father, DD Palmer, that the essence of chiropractic was the elimination of interference to the vital energy forces governed by Innate Intelli‐gence.
In rethinking chiropractic for the 21st century, it’s important to maintain our strong admiration
for the Palmers and all those who worked with them in the opening decades of the profession. We need to remind ourselves of the pioneering and courageous work they did and the remarkable achievements they made.
It’s also essential to keep the basic chiropractic principles at the heart of our understanding of the discipline – the “bottom line” premises about the existence of Universal and Innate intelligence, as well as a grasp of how that intelligence works through matter via energy.
Thanks to advances in quantum physics, an abiding respect for the Palmers is NOT incompat‐ible with a strong scientific grounding. As this book will explore, their original views on chiropractic meshes perfectly with today’s awareness of bio‐energy fields, cellular biology, and body‐mind connection.
CHAPTER 2 – Historical Foundations
Throughout their lives and careers, DD and BJ Palmer refined their ideas about the process of chi‐ropractic, subluxations, nerve interference, and other aspects of the profession. They tried, adapted, and discarded new technologies. Yet, the basic chi‐ropractic foundation never changed.
The major underlying precepts were (and re‐main):
⇒ There exists a Universal Intelligence, which brings organization to all matter and main‐tains its existence;
⇒ All living things have inborn, or “Innate” Intelligence which adapts universal forces and matter for use in the body;
⇒ Every living thing has ALL the Innate Intel‐ligence it requires to maintain its life and optimal health;
⇒ Health is the expression of the Innate Intelli‐gence through Innate Matter, via Innate Energy;
⇒ When there’s interference with the trans‐mission of Innate Energy, the result is a de‐crease in the expression of Innate Intel‐ligence, which chiropractors call dis‐ease (not to be confused with disease!).
A review of these basic precepts is always helpful.
Universal Intelligence Our existence isn’t mere “luck” as nothing in
the natural order of the universe is random. Since chiropractic is a deductive science, it be‐
gins with a major premise upon which all other conclusions are based. That primary assumption is that a Universal Intelligence is in all matter and continually gives to it all its properties and actions, thus maintaining it in existence.
Blind faith or religious fervor had nothing to do with the adoption of this premise. This is a con‐clusion based upon observation of physical evi‐dence. Just look around you. Is it logical to think that everything in the universe is the result of ran‐dom selection or mere chance? Is it luck that a birdʹs wing is perfectly designed for flight, right down to the tiniest pinfeather? Is it just accidental
that a plantʹs roots travel downward into the ground where it will find water and minerals, and its leaves grow upward where it will find sun and air? If we lived in a truly random universe, at least some plants would send their roots straight up‐ward, and bury their leaves in the soil. It’s unlikely anyone has ever reported seeing such a plant.
Believing the universe is devoid of intelligent organization is like thinking that the Great Pyra‐mids of Giza were the result of a rock slide. Could any random action have possibly created them? The Empire State Building? A bird’s wings? The roots and leaves of a plant?
Intelligence is clearly behind the natural ʺwon‐dersʺ that surround us, just as architectural won‐ders owe their existence to human intelligence. Ob‐viously, human intelligence isn’t responsible for the complex order of the universe – it hasnʹt yet begun to understand even a tiny part of it! It had to be something much greater. That ʺsomethingʺ is what we call Universal Intelligence. While we aren’t sure what it is, where it came from, what its intent is – or even if there is an intent involved – we do know that it must exist, or nothing else would.
Is this Universal Intelligence God? No one knows. There’s no way to ʺproveʺ the existence of God, or describe Godʹs characteristics. Nor is there a way to prove the existence of Universal Intelli‐gence, or describe its characteristics. How, then can anyone say whether they mean the same thing?
Some people believe God is the source of that Universal Intelligence. Others can accept the con‐cept of a Universal Intelligence without believing in a God. Either way, through observation and deduc‐tive reasoning we know that such an intelligence has to exist in order to prevent all matter from passing into chaos.
During the Age of Technology such notions were often criticized as being ʺunscientific.ʺ What critics really meant was that the premise couldnʹt be proved, and wasnʹt arrived at through inductive reasoning. Of course, neither was the idea ʺAll men are created equal,ʺ or that there were vacuum cleaners called black holes (a theory, by the way, also scoffed at when first announced). Yet, the first axiom doesnʹt require proof, and the second was valid even before proof was found. And so it is with the premise of Universal Intelligence. It, too, is
a ʺtruthʺ so basic that it transcends science and can be arrived at only through deductive logic.
Today, a broader view is being accepted as science expands in the areas of ʺnew physicsʺ and quantum mechanics. New ideas are cultivated, with deductive reasoning recognized as a valid form of logic. At last, the realization that a Univer‐sal Intelligence must exist is being taken for granted.
Chiropractors smile at the notion that ʺscienceʺ is only now ʺdiscoveringʺ that idea. After all, the entire profession is built around that profound yet simple truth. Doctors of chiropractic understand there’s order and intelligence to the whole uni‐verse. By deductive reasoning, they also know this order and intelligence applies to every part of the universe, including the human body.
That conclusion leads directly to another of the principal premises of chiropractic philosophy: A living thing has an inborn intelligence within its body, called Innate Intelligence.
No word in chiropractic philosophy is as filled with meaning as the word Innate, for it refers to the sole element that sets living beings apart from non‐
living things, and is the reason that chiropractic exists.
Innate Intelligence “Innate Intelligence” is in every living thing
guiding it on the path to health. In discussing Innate Intelligence, it’s necessary
to clarify the concept of intelligence. It’s important to understand we’re not talking about education or the ability to learn things. Human beings can at‐tend school and learn computer programming, or ʺpick upʺ several foreign languages when they tra‐vel. But this isn’t what’s meant when we say intel‐ligence.
The intelligence weʹre talking about is the ʺknowledgeʺ that every living entity is born with, and which allows it to adapt to the environment in order to survive. If you put a plant on the window sill, in a day or so it’ll have positioned its leaves to face the light. Turn the plant around and in another day or so, it again will have turned its leaves to re‐ceive the light it needs to maintain its normal func‐tions.
The plant doesnʹt use logic to figure out that it needs light, or decide to turn its leaves around to face the window. It isn’t self‐aware, and while it doesnʹt ʺthink,ʺ the intelligence it possesses allows it to go from a tiny seed to a lush plant; to send roots into the soil to find water and nutrients; to search out and utilize light and air; to transform those elements into additional leaves, roots, sprouts, and even more seeds, which will be car‐ried on the wind to start the process all over again somewhere else. Not random action, but intelli‐gence. Not education, but inborn knowledge. In‐nate Intelligence.
But what is this intelligence? Where does it come from? How does it work? Nobody has defin‐itive answers to these questions. Living things aren’t chance collections of molecules and atoms. They’re all organized into functioning entities that adapt to their environment. Therefore, we accept as a basic principle that there’s an order to the body, which we’ve chosen to call Innate Intelligence. Like Universal Intelligence, we don’t have the ability to understand exactly what this intelligence is or how it works. We only know it exists.
It’s the Innate Intelligence that regulates the number of heart beats per minute in a newborn ba‐by. It “tells” the baby how to ingest and digest nu‐trients and eliminate waste, how to develop and utilize white blood cells to fight infections, how to communicate its need for outside assistance. No one has to teach an infant these things.
Yet, Innate Intelligence can only guide the child’s internal functioning. It can’t enable her to manipulate her environment or do more than her body will permit. Anymore than a plant can turn on a lamp if it needs more light, the baby canʹt, for instance, walk over to the refrigerator and get a snack if sheʹs hungry. That action will take training and education rather than inborn (Innate) intelli‐gence.
It’s remarkable that every living thing pos‐sesses 100% of the Innate Intelligence it needs. Youʹll never see a plant that ʺknowsʺ its roots need to grow into the soil, but doesnʹt also ʺknowʺ its leaves need to grow upward toward the light. Can you imagine the poor plant pushing both its roots and its leaves downward because it only had 50% of its Innate Intelligence?
By its very definition, Innate Intelligence is al‐ways normal, and its function is always normal. This means our bodies ʺknowʺ exactly what they need and how to adapt to the environment in order to function best.
If our physical and emotional health relied ex‐clusively on our Innate Intelligence, we’d all be ʺperfectlyʺ healthy. But there are other factors at work. A master carpenter might be an expert in building a table, but with his arm in a cast he canʹt apply force to his hammer, or without the proper tools it’s unlikely the table he’s working on will come out very well.
Your Innate Intelligence runs your body ex‐pertly, unless it’s hampered by the lack of force (Innate Energy) or proper tools (Innate Matter). Without these, the result will be a less‐than‐normal‐functioning.
Since Innate Intelligence has the ʺexpertiseʺ to properly maintain the human organism, chiro‐practors donʹt address that area. Neither do they concentrate upon the “tools” – the body and inter‐nal organs. Instead, they’re concerned with the In‐nate Energy (or force) providing the link between the Innate Intelligence and Innate Matter.
Universal Forces ... Innate Energy Tame a lightning bolt and you have the Innate
Force in the human brain. The universe is filled with natural forms of
energy. In fact, astronomers say the universe was created by a burst of energy, which pre‐dated all matter. The ʺbig bangʺ theory is still debated, but we need no theories to witness energy at work all around us. Wind rushes through the trees, water cascades down a mountain, lightning streaks through the sky, solar radiation heats our earth.
For the most part, these environmental forces co‐exist peacefully with all life forms. At times, however, they demonstrate their magnificent pow‐er and destructive potential. The wind increases to hurricane velocity and rips roofs off houses; flood‐waters carry buildings away; lightning sets off rag‐ing fires.
Such destruction can seem meaningless, so we often talk about ʺMother Nature going crazy.ʺ But scientists and environmentalists now acknowledge that the devastation has its purpose in the natural scheme of things.
A fire started by lightning, for example, is an efficient way to thin a stand of trees. When a forest becomes overgrown, the lush vegetation cuts sun‐light off at the ground level, making it impossible for new seedlings to grow. The ʺdestructionʺ of a fire provides the new generation of trees the light and compost it will need if the forest is to survive.
When that same forest is ʺmanagedʺ by hu‐mans, the naturally set fires are often extinguished. Then, these same caretakers deliberately set fires to do the job the extinguished fire would have done. There’s a purpose to the fires, and to the hurricanes and floods.
There’s an order to their appearance, and an intelligence in their functioning. The Universal In‐telligence ʺknowsʺ that forests need thinning, and uses the Universal Matter available to it to accom‐plish this. The link that enables the intelligence to use the matter is natural energy, or Universal Forces.
For most of human history, the most we could do was try and stay out of the way of these forces. In modern times, our educated minds have devel‐oped means of adapting them for constructive pur‐poses. We build wind‐powered generators, hydroe‐
lectric plants, irrigation canals, dams, and solar heating panels to harness these energy sources. Weʹve even learned to adapt for our purposes the electricity showcased in a lightning bolt.
Living things are like microcosms of the un‐iverse. Weʹve seen how they’re each endowed with a portion of the Universal Intelligence, called the Innate Intelligence. They also possess the ʺspecia‐lizedʺ version of Universal Forces, which chiroprac‐tors call Innate Energy. Our Innate Intelligence takes the Universal Force of electricity and adapts it for constructive use, just as our educated minds have adapted natural forces.
It’s well documented that the human body runs on electricity. Many medical testing instru‐ments record and measure the electrical impulses generated (or, some say, converted from some oth‐er source) by the brain for use in the body. There may also be other innate forces at work in our bo‐dies that we haven’t yet identified, but electricity is the one we’ve proven to exist.
Because Innate Energy is being adapted in the body by the Innate Intelligence, it can never be de‐structive as can ʺwildʺ Universal Forces. And, since Innate Energy is created and directed by the Innate
Intelligence, 100% of what’s needed by each partic‐ular living thing is available. The energy is required to impel the cells to function according to the wish‐es of the intelligence. In nature, matter remains in‐ert until energy is applied. Air and water remain stagnant, and the internal molecular structure of the tree stays stable – until energy’s applied. Only then do changes occur in the matter to cause mo‐tion and function.
It’s the same process in the body. The Innate Intelligence can’t manipulate matter without ener‐gy. Muscles are unable to expand or contract ac‐cording to the instructions of Innate Intelligence unless energy is present. In fact, in the absence of Innate Energy, the body ceases to function – ceases to live.
Innate Energy, then, serves as the vital link that enables the intelligence to express itself through matter. Taken together, these three ele‐ments – Innate Intelligence, Innate Energy, and In‐nate Matter – make up the ʺTriune of Life,ʺ one of the most important concepts in chiropractic philos‐ophy.
In some respects, the “energy” component of chiropractic is the key concept. Today, we apply
more scientific terms to it, such as neurological functioning or bioelectrical current, and the field of energy “medicine” is growing in acceptance even among the most empirical scientific researchers.
The importance of the neurological component of the subluxation, and of chiropractic, can’t be un‐derestimated. Time and again, DD and BJ Palmer spoke of this concept and it was an absolutely es‐sential factor.
“We Chiropractors work with the subtle sub‐stance of the soul,” said BJ Palmer.“We release the imprisoned impulse, the tiny rivulet of force that emanates from the mind and flows over the nerves to the cell and stirs them into life. We deal with the magic power that transforms common food into living, loving, thinking clay; that robes the earth with beauty, and hues and scents the flowers with the glory of the air.”
The Triune The Triune of Life = Innate Intelligence + In‐
nate Energy + Innate Matter. According to the precepts of chiropractic phi‐
losophy, every living thing has 100% of the Innate
Intelligence it needs AND 100% of the Innate Force it needs. It also has a given physical form, to make up the third element of the Triune.
In order to have perfect health, there must be 100% of intelligence, 100% of force, and 100% of matter. In other words, all three elements must be present in optimum quantity and quality. We’ve already seen that this is always true of the first two elements. Nevertheless, the structure of our ʺmat‐terʺ – our physical bodies – is sometimes less than 100%. There may be flaws in them or their ability (temporary or permanent) to allow expression of the intelligence.
That means that ʺperfect healthʺ is a relative term for human beings. Each of us can only be as healthy as the limits of our physical matter. Those born with a congenital heart defect, for instance, can only be as healthy as their structures will per‐mit.
People who’ve undergone amputation of an arm can’t re‐grow the limb, even when there’s 100% intelligence and 100% energy. There are limi‐tations inherent in the human body that can’t be transcended by Innate Intelligence.
However, within the limits imposed by our particular physical structure, our Innate Intelli‐gence and Innate Energy will strive to maintain the highest level of health possible. Sometimes, that effort is thwarted by interferences to the normal transmission of the energy.
To see what kind of interference a body may be experiencing, we need to understand how the Innate Intelligence directs the body parts through Innate Energy.
As noted, the brain generates, or converts, the electrical impulses, which spur the individual cells and tell them what they have to do to adapt to the body’s needs. Those impulses are propelled along a complex system of nerves connecting the brain to the organs, tissues, glands, and cells of the body.
Think of the nerve system as a thick rope, made of numerous individual strands bundled to‐gether. When this nerve ʺropeʺ exits the brain, it travels down the spine, protected by a flexible bony structure. As it progresses downward, sections of the rope separate and pass through small openings between the spinal bones (vertebrae). Later, they separate further until each individual strand con‐nects with its designated target.
Occasionally, the vertebrae become subluxated (out of their proper alignment), and close off part of the opening. This can ʺimpingeʺ on the nerve and decrease or distort the normal flow of Innate Ener‐gy through the body. The result is similar to putting a kink in a water hose – the water still flows through the hose, but not at full strength.
When there are subluxations, they interfere with the 100% expression of intelligence through 100% energy and the body is said to be in ʺdis‐ease.ʺ This shouldn’t be confused with the term dis‐ease, which refers to specific conditions medical doctors name, diagnose, and treat.
The chiropractic term dis‐ease refers to a situa‐tion where there’s less than 100% expression of In‐nate Intelligence. Since everyone’s body is different and every bodily change can have many different ramifications, chiropractors don’t become involved in the futile exercise of labeling a condition or try‐ing to administer drugs or therapy to treat its symptoms.
Chiropractic goes to the root of the problem and works to restore the bodyʹs ability to reach 100% expression of its Innate Intelligence. It does this by finding and removing any subluxations that
might interfere with the flow of Innate Energy. Once that flow is restored, the body will resume its natural striving for optimum health.
The working of the Triune of Life – Innate In‐telligence, Innate Energy, and Innate Matter – is the supreme accomplishment of Universal Intelligence. It would be ignorant as well as arrogant to think its design could be improved upon.
Chiropractors donʹt attempt such a task. In‐stead, they focus their efforts on permitting that design to function as it was meant to – without in‐terference.
CHAPTER 3 – Medicalizing Chiropractic
Although many of the first students to receive training in chiropractic were medical doctors, the concept of a drug‐free, non‐invasive way to allow the body to heal itself didn’t appeal to the medical establishment. It wasn’t long before the medical industry perceived chiropractic as the competition; even as a threat. The attacks on chiropractic (and any other alternative form of health care) were swift and aggressive. Chiropractors were thrown in jail, denounced as “quacks,” and threatened with bodily harm as well as professional censure.
Doctors of chiropractic reacted in two different ways.
Some stood their ground, defiantly refusing to change the original chiropractic principles and purpose. They continued to define chiropractic as a way to allow the body to experience normal nerve function, without interference by subluxation. They continued to emphasize the impact of adjustments on neurological function.
Yet, others felt the medical industry might be appeased if they were to carve out a smaller niche for chiropractic. Instead of addressing health issues in general, they pinpointed back pain as the major target of chiropractic care. They backed off the con‐cept of impacting the whole neurological function‐ing of the body, and framed chiropractic as a mus‐culoskeletal therapy. They also adopted medical or quasi‐medical terminology in order to gain at least some acceptance by allopathic medicine.
Applauded by some DCs and condemned by others, the adaptation of medical purpose, vocabu‐lary, techniques, instrumentation and even dress had a profound effect on the chiropractic profes‐sion.
Slowly, a portion of the profession moved into the medical sphere, forgetting or ignoring the neu‐rological component of subluxation and redefining chiropractic solely as a mechanical “manipulation” of vertebrae to relieve musculoskeletal conditions.
At first, this move appeared to reduce the pressure put on chiropractic by the medical profes‐sion. But, as chiropractic grew in popularity, the resistance was renewed.
Until 1983, the American Medical Association (AMA) had labeled chiropractic ʺan unscientific cultʺ and barred its members from even associating with DCs. Finally, in 1976, a group of chiropractors headed by Dr. Chester Wilk took the AMA and other medical groups to court, accusing them of violating antitrust laws and conspiring to destroy chiropractic. They introduced evidence showing that the anti‐chiropractic actions were primarily based on economic factors. The AMA was afraid of the loss of income caused by millions of people mi‐grating from medical to chiropractic care.
In 1987, a federal judge ruled against the AMA, finding it and several other aligned organizations guilty of an unlawful conspiracy in restraint of trade ʺto contain and eliminate the chiropractic pro‐fession.ʺ In her ruling, she noted that the ʺAMA had entered into a long history of illegal behavior.ʺ
While the AMA was no longer permitted to openly forbid members to work with chiropractors, the ruling failed to stop the organization from en‐gaging in more subtle forms of anti‐chiropractic rhetoric and practices. It reinforced the idea of chi‐ropractic as a limited therapeutic approach, push‐ing it into progressively smaller boxes until it was
designated as a possible alternative, under medical supervision, for the treatment of low back pain in adults.
Medical alternatives While the AMA was working to “expose” chi‐
ropractic, the scientific community and the press were becoming more and more open about expos‐ing the risks and faults of medical interventions. Despite efforts to rein in the news media, reports surfaced about dangerous drugs, unnecessary sur‐geries, conflicts of interest in research journals, and government complicity with drug manufacturers.
As stories became more frequent, the drug in‐dustry stepped up its advertising and marketing campaigns. Billions of dollars were poured into print and broadcast media outlets that were reluc‐tant to risk losing income by “offending” their ad‐vertisers with negative news coverage. Increasing‐ly, news stories related the latest so‐called medical “miracle.”
Still, it was impossible to keep a lid on the growing problems of medical errors and risks. Numerous negative statistics, reports, and articles
made it into the news during the post‐Wilk vs. AMA case period. And, it would be an unders‐tatement to say that many – if not a majority – of these problems increased in frequency and severity as health care moved into the 21st century.
The following sections provide a glimpse of the risks inherent in medical treatment, as docu‐mented by scientific research papers or reported by the press.
Plight of the elderly Medicine created the attitude that growing old
is a disease that needs to be treated, practically en‐suring senior citizens would become one of the most vulnerable segments of the U.S. population.
For one thing, misdiagnosis is an ever‐present reality, especially where the expectation exists that a particular condition “comes with the territory” of being old. Despite better knowledge today about the aging process, stereotypes remain – even if sub‐consciously – affecting the way materia medica ap‐proaches seniors’ mental and physical health needs.
Then, there are those countless numbers of el‐derly Americans taking multiple drugs at the same time (it’s been estimated as many as 15 different prescriptions – and frequently many more). Yet, as incredible as it may seem, their doctors often aren’t even aware of the potentially dangerous effects of drug combining. And, as will be shown, it’s unrea‐listic to expect that pharmacies will catch the omis‐sions and mistakes doctors make.
Additionally, there are the not‐infrequent inci‐dents of the elderly being administered inappro‐priate medications.
This unfortunate situation can be partially ex‐plained by doctors and hospitals commonly re‐commending visits, drugs, and tests that will be covered by Medicare or Medicaid. Recommending a diet and exercise program proven to reduce prob‐lems associated with arthritis, for example, doesn’t generate income.
Ultimately, the sole way the profit‐directed medical and pharmaceutical industries can perpe‐tuate themselves is by making certain people con‐tinue to see their doctors and fill their prescrip‐tions. And the only way to guarantee that is to by‐pass natural and relatively inexpensive therapies
that would be likely to make them truly (and safe‐ly) healthy.
Half of all Alzheimer’s patients don’t really have the disease
New research shows that Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia‐type illnesses are often mis‐diagnosed in the elderly, leading to incorrect treatment and medications.
That was the conclusion of a study released in 2011 that was to be presented as part of a plenary session at the American Academy of Neurology’s 63rd Annual Meeting in Honolulu.
“Diagnosing specific dementias in people who are very old is complex, but with the large increase in dementia cases expected within the next 10 years in the United States, it will be increasingly impor‐tant to correctly recognize, diagnose, prevent and treat age‐related cognitive decline,” said study au‐thor Lon White, M.D., M.P.H., with the Kuakini Medical System in Honolulu.
For the study, researchers autopsied the brains of 426 Japanese‐American men who were residents of Hawaii, and who died at an average age of 87
years. Of those, 211 had been diagnosed with a dementia when they were alive, most commonly attributed to Alzheimer’s disease.
The study found that about half of those diag‐nosed with Alzheimer’s disease did not have suffi‐cient numbers of the brain lesions characterizing that condition to support the diagnosis.
Most of those in whom the diagnosis of Alz‐heimer’s disease was not confirmed had one or a combination of other brain lesions sufficient to ex‐plain the dementia. These included microinfarcts, Lewy bodies, hippocampal sclerosis or generalized brain atrophy. In most of these cases, however, the patient had been treated – incorrectly – for Alzhei‐mer’s, based on the misdiagnosis.
Misdiagnoses increased with older age. They also reflected non‐specific manifestations of de‐mentia, a very high prevalence of mixed brain le‐sions, and the ambiguity of most neuroimaging measures.
“Larger studies are needed to confirm these findings and provide insight as to how we may more accurately diagnose and prevent Alzheimer’s disease and other principal dementing disease processes in the elderly,” said Dr. White.
SOURCE: American Academy of Neurology, press release, Feb. 23, 2011.
Pharmacy computers don’t catch dangerous drug interactions
As of 2009, a total of 3.9 BILLION prescriptions for more than 24,000 different drugs were dis‐pensed. The average number of retail prescriptions per person in the US was 12.6.
Given these numbers, it’s not surprising that many people leave the drug counter of their local pharmacy with pills that, when taken together, have harmful or even deadly side effects. It’s esti‐mated that at least 20‐25% of all patients are given prescriptions that pose dangers when taken togeth‐er. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 27,658 unintentional drug deaths occurred in the United States in 2007 alone – most of them caused by prescription “medicines.”
To “solve” this problem, sophisticated com‐puter programs called clinical decision support sys‐tem software were developed to alert pharmacists to potential problems with drug interactions. How‐ever, a study conducted at the University Of Ari‐
zona College Of Pharmacy found that only 28% of pharmaciesʹ clinical decision support software sys‐tems correctly identified potentially dangerous drug‐drug interactions.
The study was conducted at 64 pharmacies across Arizona. Members of the research team tested the pharmacy software using a set of pre‐scription orders for a standardized fictitious pa‐tient. The prescriptions consisted of 18 different medications that posed 13 clinically significant drug‐drug interactions. Of the 64 pharmacies, just 18 correctly identified all of the eligible drug‐drug interactions and non‐interactions.
ʺThese findings suggest that we have a funda‐mental problem with the way interactions are eva‐luated by drug knowledge databases,ʺ said Daniel Malone, Ph.D., UA professor of pharmacy and lead investigator on the study. ʺThe weakness of these systems could lead to medication errors that might harm patients. Pharmacists should become familiar with how their computer system identifies drug interactions. Consumers should always inform their doctor and pharmacist about all medications and other therapies they are using. The risk of harm from dangerous combinations can be reduced
when patients create and maintain a medication list.ʺ
A better approach would be to seek drug‐free care or, at least, reduce the number of prescription and over‐the‐counter medications.
SOURCE: Journal of American Medical Informat‐ics, 2011;18:32‐37 doi:10.1136/jamia.2010.007609
Study: Millions of elderly given wrong drugs
A study published in 2010 revealed that 17% of all elderly patients are given ʺpotentially inappro‐priate medications (PIMs).ʺ The study, which ap‐peared in the March issue of Academic Emergency Medicine journal, reviewed the records of 470,000 patients over 65 who were admitted to an emer‐gency department (ED) between 2000 and 2006.
ʺApproximately 19.5 million patients…of eligi‐ble ED visits were associated with one or more PIMs,ʺ researchers noted in their report.
ʺThere are certain medications that probably are not good to give to older adults because the po‐tential benefits are outweighed by potential prob‐
lems,ʺ admitted lead author, William J. Meurer, M.D.
Examples: The two powerful sedatives prome‐thazine and ketorolac. Promethazine accounted for about 40% of the errors and can cause side effects such as confusion and even, in rare cases, seizures. Ketorolac is a non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drug (NSAID) used as an analgesic, fever reducer, and anti‐inflammatory.
Similar findings had been published more than 15 years ago in a July 1994 Journal of the American Medical Association report, revealing nearly 25% of all elderly patients received wrong drugs.
Among its findings: ** 1.8 million seniors were given prescriptions
for dipyridamole, a blood thinner that, the re‐searchers said, is useless for all except people with artificial heart valves.
** More than 1.3 million older Americans were prescribed propoxyphene, an addictive narcotic no better than aspirin in relieving pain.
** More than 1.2 million were put on the drug diazepam or chlordiazepoxide, long‐acting seda‐tives and sleeping pills that can make patients groggy, dizzy, and prone to falls.
ʺStandard published sources support the view that the 20 drugs in our primary analysis should virtually never be prescribed for the elderly,ʺ re‐searchers stated at the time.
SOURCE: Academic Emergency Medicine journal (2010; 17:231).
The ‘miracle’ of antibiotics When antibiotics were first developed, they
were considered a “miracle” drug because they seemed to be able to aid the body in fighting off infections and invading bacteria. The drugs actual‐ly were helpful for some people with weakened immune systems who needed outside intervention to get through immediate and acute health crises. But even a “miracle” can be abused.
Medical doctors began prescribing the drugs after nearly every office visit – even for conditions that couldn’t be helped at all by antibiotics. They pumped the drug into our systems and now, dec‐ades later, we’re paying the price with antibiotic‐resistant super‐bacteria and impaired natural anti‐body functions. Tragically, despite repeated warn‐ings from the World Health Organization and more
progressive health care experts, M.D.s still rely heavily on the drugs.
Antibiotics can destroy ‘good’ bacteria for years
A research article published Nov. 3, 2010 in the journal Microbiology came to the startling conclu‐sion that even a short course of antibiotics can leave normal gut bacteria harboring antibiotic resistance genes for up to two years after treatment.
What many people forget is that the body is filled with both “good” bacteria – such as the nor‐mal microbial flora of the human gut – as well as “bad” or pathogenic bacteria. Antibiotics can alter the composition of microbial populations and allow micro‐organisms that are naturally resistant to the antibiotic to flourish. This reduces the ability of the body to react to the pathogenic entities, potentially leading to other illnesses.
The impact of antibiotics on the normal gut flo‐ra had previously been thought to be short‐term, with any disturbances being restored several weeks after treatment. However, the review of the long‐term impacts of antibiotic therapy reveals this isn’t
always the case. Studies have shown that high le‐vels of resistance genes can be detected in gut mi‐crobes after just seven days of antibiotic treatment and that these genes remain present for up to two years – even if the individual has taken no further antibiotics.
The consequences of this could be potentially life‐threatening, explained Dr. Cecilia Jernberg, of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Con‐trol, who conducted the review. “The long‐term presence of resistance genes in human gut bacteria dramatically increases the probability of them be‐ing transferred to and exploited by harmful bacte‐ria that pass through the gut. This could reduce the success of future antibiotic treatments and poten‐tially lead to new strains of antibiotic‐resistant bac‐teria.”
The review highlights the necessity of using antibiotics prudently. “Antibiotic resistance is not a new problem and there is a growing battle with multi‐drug resistant strains of pathogenic bacteria. The development of new antibiotics is slow and so we must use the effective drugs we have left with care,” stated Dr. Jernberg. “This new information about the long‐term impacts of antibiotics is of
great importance to allow rational antibiotic ad‐ministration guidelines to be put in place,” she said.
SOURCE: Microbiology 156 (2010), 3216‐3223; DOI 10.1099.
Antibiotic use increases when insurance pays for it
The serious problem of antibiotic overuse is al‐ready well documented and medical doctors have been warned not to yield to patient demands for the drug. M.D.s donʹt seem to be listening, howev‐er.
As soon as Medicare Part D drug coverage was expanded to pay for more antibiotics, doctors be‐gan writing more prescriptions. In a report pub‐lished in the August 9, 2010 issue of Archives of In‐ternal Medicine, researchers noted that antibiotic use appears to have increased among older people since the coverage was added, with the largest in‐creases occurring for broad‐spectrum, newer, and more expensive drugs.
ʺOveruse of antibiotics is a common and im‐portant problem, potentially leading to unneces‐
sary spending for prescription drugs, increased risks of adverse effects with no associated benefit and the development of antimicrobial resistance,ʺ the authors noted in the article. ʺMultiple programs have aimed to reduce inappropriate antibiotic use in inpatient and ambulatory care settings. Al‐though many of these interventions have helped curb antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory tract infections and other conditions, there may still be substantial room for additional reductions.ʺ
Several studies have shown that as medication costs increase, patients are less likely to fill pre‐scriptions or take drugs prescribed for their chronic conditions. The same appears to be true of antibio‐tics, concluded Yuting Zhang, Ph.D., and col‐leagues at the University of Pittsburgh. They looked at the records of 35,102 older adults before and after implementation of Medicare Part D. This expansion of prescription drug coverage was esti‐mated to reduce out‐of‐pocket spending between 13% and 23%.
Participants fell into one of four groups, three of which had no or limited drug coverage between 2004 and 2006; the fourth had stable drug coverage
without caps through their employer throughout the four‐year study.
In Jan. 2006, the three groups with no or li‐mited coverage enrolled in Medicare Part D, which greatly decreased the out‐of‐pocket costs for anti‐biotics. ʺWe found that the use of antibiotics in‐creased in response to reductions in out‐of‐pocket price after Part D implementation,ʺ the authors found. Relative to the comparison group, antibiotic use increased the most among participants who transitioned from no drug coverage to Medicare Part D. These individuals were more likely to fill prescriptions for nearly every class of antibiotic, once Part D Medicare began paying for them. In addition, the two groups with previously limited drug coverage were more likely to fill prescriptions for broad‐spectrum antibiotics after enrolling in Part D.
For the medical researchers, this increase was considered beneficial in a few cases. For pneumo‐nia, for instance, Part D implementation was asso‐ciated with triple the rate of antibiotic treatment among those who previously lacked drug coverage. ʺGiven the high mortality associated with commu‐nity‐acquired pneumonia among the elderly, the
finding that changes in drug coverage improve the likelihood of treatment is encouraging,ʺ the authors commented.
ʺHowever, we also found increases in antibiot‐ic use for other acute respiratory tract infections (sinusitis, pharyngitis, bronchitis and non‐specific upper respiratory tract infection) for which antibio‐tics are generally not indicated,ʺ the authors con‐clude. ʺOur study suggests that reimbursement may play a role in addressing the substantial role of inappropriate antibiotic prescribing and use.ʺ
SOURCE: ʺAmbulatory Antibiotic Use and Prescription Drug Coverage in Older Adults,ʺ Arch Intern Med. 2010;170[15]:1308‐1314.
For the sake of the children Next to the elderly, children are in the greatest
danger from the medical mindset so prevalent in this country. We all want what’s best for our kids, and we’ve been brainwashed to believe that this means pumping drugs into them from the moment they’re born. The belief that medicine is needed to ensure health in children is so strong that parents have actually been accused of child abuse because
they refused to allow their children to be subjected to the risks of vaccines, medications, and other in‐vasive medical procedures.
Most children are born into this world with perfectly healthy bodies, which innately “know” how to maintain the highest level of health possi‐ble. They have the right chemicals, in the right amounts, to function properly in this world. Yet, medical science believes it can improve on the orig‐inal design and immediately bombards that body with dangerous – sometimes potentially deadly – chemicals. Impaired, not improved, function is the result. That tiny body not only has to adapt to its environment, but now has to assimilate foreign chemicals in its system.
Infants, toddlers, adolescents, and teens are all subjected to the same treatment with the obvious result that childhood health problems are soaring. Chronic ear infections, asthma, childhood diabetes, and “new” diseases like attention deficit disorder (ADD), are all at epidemic proportions and getting worse. The reliance on medical treatment hasn’t helped at all, yet parents are reluctant to reject it for a better way and the medical and drug industries continue to hide the truth from them.
While the key phrase of the medical doctor’s Hippocratic Oath is “Do No Harm,” it’s obvious that the overuse and abuse of prescription drugs continues despite the harm it does to our nation’s children. Then, the pharmaceutical industry relen‐tlessly pumps out drugs marketed directly at child‐ren, often using marketing techniques that exploit a parent’s sense of guilt or helplessness.
There’s no question this must stop before we further impair the present and future health of an entire generation.
Yet, it seems unlikely the change will come from the medical community, and it definitely won’t be championed by the drug makers. That means parents must learn to “just say no” to unne‐cessary over‐the‐counter and prescription drugs. If they aren’t the ones to do it, their children will re‐main unprotected from those who apparently are willing to let them become ill and even die rather than sacrifice profit.
70,000 kids hospitalized for accidental drug ‘poisoning’
A study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) found that two‐thirds (68.9%) of the 100,340 emergency department (ED) visits made in 2008 for accidental ingestion of drugs were made by children five years of age or younger.
Two‐fifths (42.3%) of the visits involved two‐year olds, and almost one third (29.5%) involved one‐year‐old patients. The report showed that males accounted for slightly more than half (55.7%) of the ED visits for accidental drug ingestion among children five or under.
The survey also indicated the incidents in‐cluded drugs that act on the central nervous system (CNS) (40.8%), with the two main CNS drugs being pain relievers (21.1%), and drugs for insomnia and anxiety (11.6%). The study also found that 15.7% of the ED visits involved drugs for treating heart dis‐ease, followed by respiratory system drugs (10.3%).
ʺPoisoning is one of the most common child‐hood injuries. Most of the time it happens right at home,ʺ said SAMHSA Administrator Pamela S.
Hyde, J.D. ʺLocking up drugs and properly dispos‐ing leftover or expired drugs can save lives. Studies like this one that measure the impact on the health care system of accidental ingestion of drugs also provides us an opportunity to get the message out to parents and caregivers that there are simple steps they can take to prevent accidental drug in‐gestion.ʺ
The study also looked at whether these young patients needed additional care and treatment, fol‐lowing their initial treatment at the hospital emer‐gency department. Most of the children who were taken to an emergency department because of acci‐dental drug ingestion were treated and released following the visit (85.3%). Yet, about 1 in 10 (8.7%) were admitted for inpatient care and 5% were transferred to other health care facilities.
The study was developed as part of SAMH‐SA’s strategic initiative on data, outcomes, and quality – an effort to inform policy makers and ser‐vice providers on the nature and scope of beha‐vioral health issues.
SOURCE: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies. (September 14, 2010). The DAWN Report: “Emer‐
gency Department Visits Involving Accidental In‐gestion of Drugs by Children Aged 5 or Younger.” Rockville, MD.
Hospitalized children increasingly dying from infections – Antibiotic overuse may be major factor
Hospitalized children in the United States are becoming infected with the bacteria Clostridium difficile more frequently, and children who acquire the infection are more likely to die or require sur‐gery, according to researchers from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. The findings appeared in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
C difficile, which can colonize the gastrointes‐tinal tract and lead to infection, may show no symptoms in infected patients, while others devel‐op diarrhea, toxic megacolon (extreme inflamma‐tion and distention of the large intestine), perfo‐rated bowels or other potentially fatal complica‐tions. “In recent years, the incidence of C difficile infection, number of hospitalizations, associated
deaths and severity in adults have been increas‐ing,” the authors wrote.
Some children appeared more likely to become infected, including those who had other co‐occurring diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease, organ transplant, or cancer. The risk of in‐fection was also higher among those who were white, lived in the West or in urban areas, or had private insurance.
“We don’t know exactly why we see these populations have an increased risk. However, it likely has much to do with antibiotic exposure, which is a major risk factor for development of C difficile,” said study lead author Air Force Maj. (Dr.) Cade Nylund, an assistant professor of Pedia‐trics at the USU and pediatric gastroenterologist at the National Capital Consortium pediatric gastro‐enterology fellowship at Walter Reed Army and National Navy Medical Centers.
According to Dr. Nylund: “When pediatric pa‐tients are finally hospitalized they tend to be more complex and more susceptible to infections like C difficile. At the same time, the patients, especially hospitalized children, are less able to fend off the
serious effects of these infections, making them more likely to die.”
Nylund performed this research during his fel‐lowship in pediatric gastroenterology at Cincinnati Children’s in collaboration with Drs. Anthony Goudie, Jose Garza, Gerry Fairbrother, and Mit‐chell Cohen. Nylund added that a strain of C diffi‐cile found in hospitals, known as the North Ameri‐can Pulse Field type 1 (NAP1), may be a partially to blame for the increasing trend of C difficile infec‐tions in children. “There may also be increasing awareness among health care providers, leading to increased testing in symptomatic patients,” he said.
Based on national hospital discharge data from 1997, 2000, 2003 and 2006 collected by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the research‐ers reviewed records representative of more than 10.5 million patients, of whom 21,274 (0.2 percent) had C difficile. They found the number of cases in‐creased by 15% each year – from 3,565 in 1997 to 7,779 in 2006.
Additionally, children with C difficile infection had an increased risk of death or colectomy (sur‐gery to remove all of part of the colon), longer hos‐pital stays, and higher hospitalization charges.
SOURCE: Clostridium difficile Infection in Hos‐pitalized Children in the United States. CM Ny‐lund, MD; A Goudie, PhD; JM Garza, MD; G Fair‐brother, PhD; MB Cohen, MD. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. Published online January 3, 2011. doi:10.1001/archpediatrics.2010.282
The house of death Hospitals are supposed to be places where sick
people go to get well. Instead, all too often, they’re places where sick people get worse and very sick people die in pain and despair. And, they make hundreds of millions of dollars for medical and pharmaceutical companies.
Of course, there are well‐meaning and caring individuals who work in hospitals, but the main purpose of most hospitals today is to be a profit center for huge health care conglomerates. Admin‐istrative and medical decisions are frequently made on the basis of economic advantage, with little at‐tention paid to the needs of patients or their fami‐lies.
Worse yet is the fact that many hospitals, par‐ticularly those in rural areas, have become the re‐
pository of careless or ill‐trained medical person‐nel. Death rates at some of these hospitals have been so high they’ve prompted government inves‐tigations.
Still, Americans continue to flock to hospitals in record numbers, expecting to find humane and proper health care. We should, instead, be heeding the advice of most health care advocates who warn us to stay out of the hospital at all costs!
Medical errors hurt 18% of hospital patients
A report published in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed some troubling statistics. Near‐ly one fifth (18%) of all patients were injured by medical mistakes during their stay in a hospital. “Our findings validate concern raised by patient‐safety experts in the United States and Europe that harm resulting from medical care remains very common,” researchers admitted.
In almost 3% of the cases in the study, the in‐jury resulted in or contributed to the death of the patient. Another 3% resulted in a permanent injury, and 8.5% were life‐threatening. Nearly 43% of the
injuries – or “harms” as the researchers called them – required some intervention by doctors or nurses and resulted in an extended stay in the hospital.
To reach their conclusions, the researchers randomly selected and reviewed nearly 2,400 records of adult patients from 10 hospitals in North Carolina. North Carolina was selected for the study because it has been noted as one of the leaders in patient safety reform.
The report was particularly disturbing since it indicates little progress has been made since the 1999 Institute of Medicine study showing that med‐ical mistakes were responsible for more than 98,000 deaths and more than one million injuries each year. That report was considered a “wake up call” to hospitals, which were supposed to take greater steps in preventing such errors. The Institute of Medicine had set a goal of a 50% reduction during a five‐year period.
SOURCE: Christopher P Landrigan, MD, MPH; Gareth J Parry, PhD; Catherine B Bones, MSW; Andrew D Hackbarth, MPhil; Donald A Goldmann, MD; and Paul J Sharek, MD, MPH. N Engl J Med 2010; 363:2124‐2134 November 25, 2010.
Hospital charges: up to $18,000 per day
As though news of the rampant infections, medical mistakes, and dismal effectiveness rates werenʹt enough to convince us to avoid hospitals, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has now reported that hospital stays can cost as much as $18,000 per day for conditions such as heart attacks.
According to the analysis by the federal agen‐cy, the average was based on about 2 million pa‐tient stays for the ʺmost expensiveʺ cases such as treatment of septicemia, or blood infection, harden‐ing of the arteries, and heart attacks. These stays lasted an average of 19 days.
Even though these ʺmost expensiveʺ cases ac‐count for only 5% of all hospitalizations, the other 95% didnʹt get off cheap. Daily hospital bills for the remaining 95% of patient stays averaged just under $7,000 and 4 days, and were most likely for child‐birth, pneumonia, and heart failure.
The report used data from the 2008 Nation‐wide Inpatient Sample, a database of hospital inpa‐tient stays in all short‐term, non‐federal hospitals,
and included patients regardless of insurance type, as well as the uninsured.
SOURCE: AHRQ News and Numbers, October 13, 2010. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD.
The ‘other’ drug problem in America The biggest health risk facing the average per‐
son today isn’t cancer or heart disease. It’s the side effects from medication. Prescription drugs can cause more health problems – and even death – than all the major diseases we worry so much about.
More than 90% of all office visits end with the doctor handing the patient at least one prescription, even if the visit lasted only a few minutes. It’s rare for patients to be told about possible dangerous side effects of their medication. Yet, every drug has side effects, and most have a frighteningly long list of them. If as much attention were paid to the dan‐gers of drugs as to their supposed “benefits,” we would treat them with the same concern as we do loaded guns.
Thousands of patients prescribed high‐risk drugs
According to research published at BMJ.com, GPs prescribed high‐risk medications for thou‐sands of patients in Scotland who are especially vulnerable to adverse drug events (ADEs), expos‐ing them to potential harm.
A number of medications or scenarios pre‐viously flagged as high risk included non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs for certain patients, pre‐scribing a new drug to a patient on the blood‐thinning medication warfarin, prescribing drugs when patients have heart failure, and prescribing antipsychotic drugs for patients with dementia.
Prof. Bruce Guthrie from Dundee University and colleagues expanded this list, developing 15 indicators to examine how often patients suscepti‐ble to ADEs were prescribed high‐risk, potentially harmful drugs.
They used the indicators to review data from 315 Scottish General Practices with 1.76 million pa‐tients, of which 139,404 (7.9%) were identified as being particularly vulnerable to ADEs.
The results showed that 19,308 (13.9%) who were in the vulnerable group were prescribed one or more high‐risk medications.
Some prescribing will be appropriate, as pre‐scribers and patients balance risks and benefits when there may be no clearly “correct” course of action, but the study also uncovered significant variation in the prescribing practices between the GPs’ surgeries surveyed. Since the variation couldn’t be explained by the patient case mix, the researchers say it suggests there’s considerable scope to improve those prescribing practices.
Led by Prof. Guthrie, the authors pointed out how prior studies showed GP prescribing can cause considerable harm, and they highlighted that “adverse drug events (ADEs) account for 6.5% of all hospital admissions, over half of which are judged to be preventable.”
Patients might be vulnerable to high‐risk drugs due to their age, other existing illnesses, or because of other prescription medications they may be on. The authors cautioned that GPs need to be alert to these risk factors, and be careful about the drugs they prescribe to these patients.
SOURCE: “High risk prescribing in primary care patients particularly vulnerable to adverse drug events: cross sectional population database analysis in Scottish general practice” BMJ, June 22, 2011.
Fewer drug prescriptions would save lives and money
Lives and money would be saved if a more cautious approach were taken by medical profes‐sionals who prescribe drugs, according to a study from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) College of Pharmacy.
The study appeared in the online edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine as part of the journal’s “Less is More” series.
According to Bruce Lambert, co‐author of the paper and UIC professor of pharmacy administra‐tion, several studies over the past decade have con‐cluded that the use of many new and frequently prescribed medications was either harmful or not beneficial to patients.
Using the prior research as a guide, 24 prin‐ciples were developed that can help prescribers
avoid excessive and harmful prescribing, said Lambert, director of UIC’s Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics.
“None of these principles are particularly nov‐el, nor should they be terribly controversial,” he pointed out. “But taken together they represent a radical shift in the way clinicians think about and prescribe drugs.”
The radical shift is known as “conservative prescribing,” and if adopted by every prescriber, could save many lives and dollars, Lambert said.
Physicians need to move away from the mind‐set that leads them to heavily prescribe the “latest and greatest” new drugs, to “fewer and more time‐ tested is best,” stated Dr. Gordon Schiff, associate professor of medicine at Harvard University, who co‐authored the report. Medical and pharmacy schools should not solely teach the pharmacology of drugs, but principles that would make practi‐tioners better and more cautious prescribers and users of drugs, he said.
The UIC Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics is one of 14 such centers in the United States to study how consumers and clinicians make critical treatment decisions about therapeutic
products and interventions. The program is funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), part of the US Health and Human Servic‐es department.
Other co‐authors on the study were Dr. Wil‐liam Galanter, associate professor of clinical medi‐cine; Amy Lodolce, clinical pharmacist, pharmacy practice; and Michael Koronkowski, clinical assis‐tant professor, pharmacy practice, all of UIC.
SOURCE: “Principles of Conservative Pre‐scribing” by Gordon D. Schiff, MD, et.al. Archives of Internal Medicine. Published online June 13, 2011.
No ‘safe’ drugs Even people who realize that prescription
drugs can be dangerous are often lured into think‐ing that over‐the‐counter (OTC) drugs are “safe.” After all, would the FDA really allow dangerous or ineffective medications to be sold to the American public? They would, and they do. And they fail to regulate any but the most extreme abuses by drug companies.
A Senate investigation on over‐the‐counter drugs once concluded that the majority of these medications were completely useless, and most
posed at least some health dangers. But it didn’t change the pharmaceutical industry or even the regulations that are supposed to keep the drug companies in line.
Since neither they nor the government will do it, it’s left to the American people to protect them‐selves from unsafe medications. We need to read the facts and change the way we think about health care. Wellness won’t be found in pill form on any drugstore shelf.
Common painkillers linked to irregular heart rhythm
Yet another research study has uncovered po‐tentially fatal side effects of commonly used pain‐killers.
Many pills used to treat inflammation (includ‐ing non‐selective non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs [NSAIDS] as well as new generation anti‐inflammatory drugs, known as selective COX‐2 in‐hibitors) were linked to an increased risk of irregu‐lar heart rhythm (atrial fibrillation or flutter), con‐cluded a study published on bmj.com July 5, 2011.
These drugs had already been linked to an in‐creased risk of heart attacks and strokes, but no study had examined whether they increase the risk of atrial fibrillation – a condition which is asso‐ciated with an increased long term risk of stroke, heart failure, and death.
So a team of researchers, led by Professor He‐nrik Toft Sørensen at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, used the Danish National Registry of Pa‐tients to identify 32,602 patients with a first diagno‐sis of atrial fibrillation or flutter between 1999 and 2008.
Each case was compared with 10 age and sex‐matched control patients randomly selected from the Danish population.
Patients were classified as current or recent NSAID users. Current users were further classified as new users (first‐ever prescription within 60 days of diagnosis date) or long‐term users.
The researchers found that use of NSAIDs or COX‐2 inhibitors was associated with an increased risk of atrial fibrillation or flutter.
Compared with non‐users, the association was strongest for new users, with around 40% increased risk for non‐selective NSAIDS and around 70% in‐
creased risk for COX‐2 inhibitors. This is equivalent to approximately four extra cases of atrial fibrilla‐tion per year per 1,000 new users of non‐selective NSAIDS and seven extra cases of atrial fibrillation per 1,000 new users of COX‐2 inhibitors.
The risk appeared highest in older people, and patients with chronic kidney disease or rheumatoid arthritis were at particular risk when starting treatment with COX‐2 inhibitors.
The authors concluded: “Our study thus adds evidence that atrial fibrillation or flutter need to be added to the cardiovascular risks under considera‐tion when prescribing NSAIDs.”
This view is supported by an accompanying editorial by Prof. Jerry Gurwitz from the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He believes that NSAIDS should continue to be used very cautious‐ly in older patients with a history of hypertension or heart failure … regardless of whether an associa‐tion between NSAIDs and atrial fibrillation actually exists.
SOURCE: “Non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drug use and risk of atrial fibrillation or flutter: population based case‐control study,” BMJ, July 5, 2011.
Capsules of gold If medication was given away for free – or if
there were price limits on drugs – the number of prescriptions written in this country would drop tremendously. But in our free market economy, pushing pills (even the legal prescription and over‐the‐counter type) is one of the most profitable businesses around.
This has led to having dangerous and some‐times potentially deadly drugs marketed like breakfast cereal or athletic shoes – using celebrity endorsements, glitzy television ads, coupons, spe‐cial promotions, and full‐page magazine spreads.
The fact that these promotions can be mislead‐ing doesn’t seem to deter drug company execu‐tives, who judge their success solely on their bot‐tom line – without regard to the health and welfare of the people who are lured into taking their prod‐ucts.
US spends $233 billion per year on prescription drugs
A report from the Agency for Healthcare Re‐search and Quality (AHRQ) shows that, in 2008, insurers and consumers spent nearly $233 billion on a wide array of prescription drugs. The number one class of drugs (accounting for $52.2 billion, 22% of the total) was metabolic medicine used to control diabetes and cholesterol.
The next four “biggest sellers” of outpatient prescription drugs in 2008 were :
• Central nervous system drugs, used to re‐lieve chronic pain and control epileptic seizures and Parkinson’s Disease tremors – $35 billion.
• Cardiovascular drugs, including calcium channel blockers and diuretics – $29 billion.
• Antacids, antidiarrheals, and other medi‐cines for gastrointestinal conditions – $20 billion.
• Antidepressants, antipsychotics, and other psychotherapeutic drugs – $20 billion.
Overall purchases of these five therapeutic classes of drugs totaled nearly $156 billion, or two‐thirds of the almost $233 billion that was spent on
prescription medicines used in the outpatient treatment of adults.
Most industry experts say the prescription and spending figures have continued to climb since 2008 and will soon top $300 billion, despite over‐whelming evidence that diet can effectively control both diabetes and cholesterol in almost all cases.
A study published in the Sept. 1, 2009 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that 56% of patients following what has been called the “Medi‐terranean diet” (a diet high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and healthy fats, including olive oil, with an emphasis on lean protein sources such as fish, chicken and nuts) were able to control their blood sugar without medication. That same group also showed improvements in triglyceride and HDL cholesterol levels.
In addition, there is significant clinical evi‐dence that chiropractic care, including correction of subluxation, can impact neurologic function and, as a result, have a beneficial effect on both blood sug‐ar and cholesterol levels. By educating patients about alternatives to prescription drugs, chiroprac‐tors can help reduce the negative effects of these conditions.
SOURCES: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), Statistical Brief #313,“Expenditures for the Top Five Classes of Outpatient Prescription Drugs, Adult ages 18 and Older, 2008,” by Anita Soni, PhD, February 2011.
“Effects of a Mediterranean‐Style Diet on the Need for Antihyperglycemic Drug Therapy in Pa‐tients With Newly Diagnosed Type 2 Diabetes,” Annual of Internal Medicine, Sept. 1, 2009, vol. 151 no. 5 306‐314.
CHAPTER 4 – The Final Step: Energy Healing
To the relief of many, a movement began in the 1980s to restore the vitalistic nature to the chiro‐practic profession, and reinforce its identity as a drug‐free wellness approach separate from the medical sphere.
After veering off into a strictly musculoskeletal paradigm, in keeping with the popularity of the ‘body as machine’ view, chiropractors began to re‐discover the original writings of DD and BJ Palmer that emphasized vitalistic principles and the neuro‐logical component of subluxation. And, at least for a portion of the profession, chiropractic once more became about something far more than the moving of spinal bones to reduce symptoms.
The vitalistic principle was enunciated in the very earliest of DD Palmer’s writings on the new field of chiropractic. The words “Founded on Tone” are inscribed on the opening page of his 1910
text, “Book of the Science, Art and Philosophy of Chiropractic.”
In that volume, DD Palmer stated: “Life is the expression of tone... In that sentence is the basic principle of Chiropractic. Tone is the normal degree of nerve tension… consequently; the cause of dis‐ease is any variation of tone – nerves too tense or too slack.”
Among other writings that reinforced the neu‐rological basis of chiropractic was BJ Palmer’s 1931 essay, “The Hour Has Arrived,” which focused at‐tention on the nerve interference caused by the sub‐luxation, and noted that it was the chiropractor’s job to remove interference, not straighten spines. BJ further stated that the misalignment is but an os‐seous symptom of a subluxation, and any attempt at re‐alignment would be a treatment upon effect, and not an adjustment of cause.
He wrote: “…it is generally believed that you could locate a subluxation by palpation; with an x‐ray; by the location of tender nerves, taut fibers, or contractured muscles. None of these can locate a subluxation. Any or all of these will locate misa‐lignments. The majority of Chiropractors work with the concept that they are the all important fea‐
ture of “adjusting subluxations”; that it is what they do that replaces a subluxation; and it is with this thought they proceed to push vertebra into po‐sitions they think they need to be pushed into. ‘Ad‐justing’ in their minds means pushing bones into adjusted positions.”
BJ continued: “I never have such a concept. To me adjusting a vertebra is what happens when my hands leave the back; it is that reaction that occurs when innate recoils in the body of the patient, which resets the bone into ‘normal’ position.” My work is an enticement to get INNATE to make the adjustment. Invariably, when Innate adjusts the subluxation it stays longer and the (NCM) reading remains absent much longer and the patient gets well much quicker, and I can take more dangerous cases and get them well, where otherwise anything I did would have failed.”
BJ Palmer also said; “A shove and push ad‐justment, where we want to feel something ‘move’ and hear something ‘crack’, think we know where it ought to be put, and proceed to put it there. This Chiropractor wonders why his case gets better, gets worse, and might get well by accident; but leaves him up in the air as to what actually happened. He
knows Chiropractic is right because it occasionally works.”
In short, it was the original premise that there is a critical difference between a subluxation that causes neural interference and a misalignment of the vertebral bones.
While the terminology has been updated, such understanding meshes perfectly with the emerging fields of energy healing based on discoveries of quantum mechanics and cellular biology. The basic premise is that the body is, in essence, a complex energy field and imbalances in that field can result in illness. By re‐balancing the bodyʹs energy field health can be restored.
The ultimate progression in the science, art and philosophy of chiropractic is, in some ways, the completion of a circle in that it returns us to DD Palmer’s roots as a magnetic healer.
Magnetism is one form of energy and the work done in the late 19th and early 20th century in magnetic healing was a forerunner of today’s ener‐gy “medicine.”
The advantages we, as 21st century wellness providers have, are the incredible advances in science and technology that have allowed us to un‐
derstand and even measure the energy inherent in the smallest particle of matter. These advances, par‐ticularly in quantum physics and cellular biology, have proven beyond a doubt that what chiropractic pioneers theorized was correct: the universe con‐sists of energy and intelligence.
The discovery that astounded nearly everyone was that even the particles themselves – at a sub‐atomic or quantum level – are actually a manifesta‐tion of energy. This energy is present even in an absolute vacuum, where no physical particles exist.
Matter, when deconstructed to its absolute smallest units, is energy organized in an intelligent matter. This applies to all matter throughout the universe. There are no truly distinct “bits” since, on a quantum level, there is an interchange of energy within particles and even the space between par‐ticles is filled with energy.
This was hinted at by Einstein in his famous E = mc2 equation: energy is mass vibrating at the speed of light squared. Speed up the vibration suf‐ficiently, and mass turns into energy (an oversim‐plified but fundamentally accurate explanation).
What distinguishes various particles of matter from each other is the speed at which the molecules
vibrate. All matter vibrates to a precise frequency and scientists have even begun to assign vibration‐al quantum numbers to various energy levels. When particles vibrate at a very slow energy fre‐quency, we view it as physical matter. Particles that vibrate at speeds which exceed light velocity are known as “subtle matter.”
Recent research has extended this notion of vi‐brational “signatures” to non‐physical phenomena such as thoughts. Each thought pattern “vibrates” at a specific frequency, making it possible to literal‐ly read an individual’s thoughts. This knowledge is being put to work in the development of brain‐machine interfaces to allow disabled people to ma‐nipulate wheelchairs and other devices via their brainwaves alone.
It has also been shown that the normal har‐monic resonance – or vibrational frequency – can be disrupted in a human being through stress, diet, trauma, subluxation, environment, and other fac‐tors.
Although “rediscovered” by chiropractors and other wellness professionals in the past two dec‐ades, energy healing is ancient, dating back further than any type of allopathic treatment.
Both eastern and western cultures have a long history of perceiving all living things with a dualis‐tic nature: physical and non‐physical. The latter was understood by many ancients to be a form of energy. In Chinese (especially early Daoist philos‐ophy), it was termed “qi” or “ch’i,” indicating vital force. Sanskrit labeled it “prana,” meaning vital life. In Hebrew, the term was “ruach,” or spirit, breath. Ancient Greece called it “pneuma,” vital spirit or creative energy. The Latin equivalent was “spiritus.” The glowing auras and halos found in Christian religious paintings are thought to depict the “spirit” surrounding Jesus and the Saints.
Throughout the ancient world, healers knew that this invisible “something” – energy, spirit, breath, life force, etc. – was an essential element of life and health.
For today’s wellness professions, the concept of the body as an energetic being is vitally impor‐tant and a critical departure from the traditional medical paradigm of the human body as a closed physical and chemical system.
By focusing on an individual’s energy system, we can allow the body to find and maintain its own vibratory signature. This is the ultimate healing
approach and has the potential to eliminate the need for almost all medical interventions. Ironical‐ly, the medical industry is discovering this as well, although it tends to put a distinctly medical spin on the approach.
A number of “mainstream” hospitals – includ‐ing Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut (a major academic affiliate of Yale University School of Medicine and a member of the Yale‐New Haven Health System) – have begun using a form of ener‐gy therapy known as Healing Touch. Trained vo‐lunteers place their hands on or above the “energy centers” of a person’s body to strengthen the body’s ability to heal itself by restoring balance and harmony to the body’s energy system.
“Energy healing therapy involves the channe‐ling of healing energy through the hands of a prac‐titioner into the patient’s body to restore normal energy balance and, therefore, health, as described by the National Institutes of Health’s National Cen‐ter for Complementary and Alternative Medicine,” stated the Greenwich hospital in a press release.
It will be a long time before the medical indus‐try truly embraces this advanced approach (if it ev‐er does). That gives chiropractors a distinct edge
since we have been at the forefront of the energy healing movement from the start. We pioneered the modern field of hands‐on healing and have spent more than a century facilitating the flow of vital energy through the body.
The next advance for chiropractic and other wellness approaches will be a total recognition of the human body as a network of complex energy fields interacting with the greater field of energy surrounding it.
Spiritual implications Despite the ridicule heaped on the early lead‐
ers of the New Thought movement, DD Palmer never hid the fact that he was a spiritual seeker and openly stated he received his inspiration for chiro‐practic from the non‐physical realm. In fact, at the beginning, he reportedly explored the religious and spiritual ramifications of his discovery and consi‐dered putting chiropractic forth as a spiritual prac‐tice rather than as a health care regime. This is what other teachers of the time did. Religious Science (today primarily known as Centers for Spiritual Living), Unity School of Practical Christianity (now
referred to as Unity), the Church of Divine Science, and others all have strong health applications.
In retrospect, we can see that the New Thought teachings of the late 19th century were touching on concepts that would be validated later by quantum physics, and interpreting them in a way that was consistent with their spiritual and religious beliefs.
DD Palmer’s references to Universal Intelli‐gence and Innate Energy are what we, today, call the “information and energy” found in the quan‐tum level throughout the universe. He understood that the “innate energy” within the human body is the same energy as within the stars in the further galaxies, what Alan T. Williams calls the “funda‐mental, irreducible primordial energy” and what others call the “zero point field” – that sea of ener‐gy, which by logical deductive reasoning, had to pre‐exist matter.
This energy, as Williams puts it “exists in the absence of matter, but matter is entirely dependent upon nonmaterial primordial energy and cannot exist in the absence of primordial energy.”
Since this energy is the ultimate source of all matter, it is also known as the creative source ener‐gy, or simple “the Source.”
As noted before, all matter is made up and ex‐ists as part of this energy, although our unique vi‐brational frequency (or rate of vibration) gives us the sensory illusion of separate entities.
Author Wayne Dyer aptly described the rela‐tionship between the individual and the Source us‐ing the metaphor of the ocean. If you watch a wave crested toward the shore, that wave is an “indivi‐dualized” entity. You can see it, photograph it, measure it, and surf on it. But the appearance of a wave as separate from the ocean is quickly dis‐pelled when it hits the shoreline and merges back into the ocean. It was never truly separate from the ocean, despite the “evidence” of our physical senses.
Humans exist as a bundle of energy within the vast ocean of energy, constantly exchanging energy with the Source at gross and subtle levels. While we can never be totally separated from the Source, our health and well being (on all levels, including mental, emotional and physical) depend on our at‐tunement to the Source and on the free flow of energy between the two.
But let’s not forget the other component of the equation: Intelligence or information. The way
energy is organized and behaves, even at a sub‐atomic level, isn’t random. As Einstein put it, God doesn’t play dice with the Universe (the actual quote, in a letter to Max Born, was “I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.”). All the stored wisdom of creation exists within and as part of the Source, which is both Source Energy and Universal Intelligence.
DD Palmer emphasized this point in his 1910 book, ʺThe Chiropractorʹs Adjusterʺ when he stated: ʺ... the Intelligent Energy that operates the human machine is derived from an Infinite Source, the Universal Intelligence, and is, therefore, limited only by the capacity of the brain to transform and individualize it...”
Another underlying precept is that this Uni‐versal Intelligence is “loving” – to put it in human terms. That is, to ensure the survival of all creation, it’s always directed toward preservation, expan‐sion, and growth. To put it in more spiritual terms, we live in a beneficent Universe.
This omnipresent (everywhere present), om‐niscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful) and beneficent (all loving) Source Energy is what humankind has always thought of and called the
Divine, or – when imbued with a more personal nature – God.
Discussing it in these terms takes the entire topic out of the strictly scientific realm and into that gray area between science and spirituality or reli‐gion. But when we shed the problematic terminol‐ogy, we see there is common ground between the two camps. In fact, science and religion both dis‐cuss the same thing, but in different ways.
While most (mainly western) religions have traditionally seen the desire for evidence as a lack of faith and therefore required of their adherents belief without proof, science has long limited itself to the world of physical phenomena. It has re‐mained concerned with what can be seen and measured or at least (at both the macro and quan‐tum levels) theorized through deductive reasoning based on existing evidence – anything beyond the physical being considered too “airy fairy” for scien‐tific scrutiny.
Today, many scientists are acknowledging the existence of unseen energy fields and of an under‐lying Universal Intelligence. At the same time, deeply spiritual believers are embracing quantum theory as a way to substantiate the existence of a
divine presence. The two camps are drawing closer and chiropractic is poised at the intersection of the two.
It’s impossible to ignore the spiritual implica‐tions of chiropractic’s ability to help the body re‐store its innate energy balance and achieve reson‐ance with the surrounding energy field.
By embracing that remarkable ability and fully comprehending the immensity of the impact we can have, we’ll be taking chiropractic to the next and possibly ultimate stage of development.
CHAPTER 5 – The New Chiropractic
and Science
Jeff Rockwell, D.C., a 1986 graduate of Life University, and a prac‐ticing D.C. in California, is a long‐time teacher of chiropractic philosophy and technique. He has become one of the lead‐ing proponents of chiro‐practic as a bastion of vitalism, naturalism, and holism. He explains in remarkable detail and clarity how the understanding of chiropractic as a type of energy healing is both revolutionary and a return to its origins.
The following are selected articles by Dr. Rockwell, reprinted especially for this volume, with his permission.
Closing the gap between what we are and what we could be
by Dr. Jeff Rockwell, D. C. Several months prior to matriculating to Life
University in Marietta, Georgia (then Life College of Chiropractic) I had the privilege of spending a day alone with the late R. Buckminster Fuller. I could write a book about that day and maybe someday will, but I want to invoke his ever‐evolving spirit as I begin this article and share a piece of what I learned from him that day.
I made the trip to Venice Beach, California to visit him at the rather ramshackle motel he was staying in, my head brimming with many ques‐tions. One question I asked him was what he con‐sidered to be our greatest challenges in the years to come. He quickly responded, ʺThere are three, as I see it: the first is disbelief in science, where we choose to ignore the scientific findings that may challenge our assumptions and turn our long‐cherished theories on their head. The next I refer to as “escapee mysticism,” where people stick their heads in the sand and refuse to see what is going
on in the world around them. The last challenge facing us is what I refer to as radical relativism, in which the truth can be made into whatever you want it to be. I see these three challenges as being intimately connected.ʺ
Science is not our enemy and, in the field of chiropractic, is coaxing us to allow a new, ex‐panded description of the subluxation to emerge. Some choose to ignore current trends in the new sciences, like the person with his head in the sand. Others cling to what the forefathers of the profes‐sion said as if it was religious doctrine. And still others, in spite of the mounting evidence, revel in not moving forward, much like the old hippie dec‐laring that the summer of love is still going on to‐day.
The chiropractic profession currently attracts into its various offices between 6‐12% of the popu‐lation. Even if we still saw 20% of the population, however, I would not declare this a success – not for a profession that has been in existence since 1895. The purpose of this article is to consider even the possibility of a more contemporary, expanded view of the vertebral subluxation.
BJ Palmer, the son of the founder of chiroprac‐tic, said in 1909, that ʺChiropractors have found in every disease that is supposed to be contagious a cause that lies in the spine.ʺ There is no doubt in this authorʹs mind that whatever the vertebral sub‐luxation may or not be, it can adversely affect the health of an individual by interfering with commu‐nication between the central nervous system and the organs, muscles, and glands of the body. There has been a good deal of research on this, much of which was done under the auspices of the late os‐teopathic researcher Irwin Korr, Ph.D. Much less has been done by our own profession, perhaps be‐cause Dr. Korr was taking a less‐linear approach to the spine, namely a functional one, while the ma‐jority of chiropractic research has long focused on a linear, Newtonian view of the spine as a stack of building blocks needing to be in perfect alignment.
It is remarkable that in 2011, the profession still refers to the vertebral subluxation as a ʺbone out of place,ʺ or, worse, the “silent killer.” It seems we have taken a symptom, as much so as a runny nose or the flu or heart disease, and have sought to era‐dicate it through the chiropractic adjustment.
Some more enlightened chiropractors today view the subluxation not as the cause of anything, but as a manifestation of another, even more causa‐tive factor. The application of contemporary science to this issue sheds new light and offers an empo‐wering perspective on chiropractic theory.
Traditionally, we have used the term “subluxa‐tion” strictly in terms of the spine and nervous sys‐tem. We are entering into a newer era, which if we continue to grow as we should, will someday be supplanted by yet another, even more‐partially correct idea of the subluxation.
For starters, it may be worthwhile to drop the word “vertebralʺ from how we describe the clinical entity that we address. The subluxation is more of a nervous system ʺthing,ʺ and less of a spinal ʺthing.ʺ Additionally, to define the subluxation in such terms – limiting the scope of chiropractic to the spine and nervous system – while it made sense based upon the science available at the time of the discovery and development of chiropractic, makes little sense today. I seriously doubt that Dr. DD Palmer, the founder and “intender” of the profes‐sion, would still choose to use mechanistic, reduc‐tionist terms to describe his clinical intent.
It is now known by everyone not living under a rock that the nervous system is not the only communication system utilized by living systems. Dr. Candace Pert has shown, for three decades now, that the nervous system is not the only com‐munication system in the body. She has eloquently detailed the role that the biochemical/neuropeptide system plays in functioning as a circulating com‐munication system outside the jurisdiction of the central nervous system.
Neurocardiologists have described the heart as another brain, and the good people at the Heart Math Institute in Boulder Creek, California have created many elegant ways of enhancing it and, by doing so, the whole body‐mind.
European researchers such as L. Stecco and R. Schleip have demonstrated how the entire connec‐tive tissue system functions as a ʺconnective tissue nervous system,ʺ one which through its piezoelec‐tric properties helps the central nervous system to heal itself, something the CNS is too slow to do on its own. The list goes on.
We were never meant to simply feel lumps and bumps and misalignments. We have sufficient in‐formation on the bodyʹs basic inherent rhythms
and interconnectivity to understand, and work from the knowledge of, how the linked systems of the body act together. This would be a very differ‐ent use of the hands than is done in any other type of manual, not to mention medical, care.
The ways in which sensory impressions come to our hands could, if we were settled enough with‐in ourselves and took the time to develop the skills, tell us what might historically have been health for that person or what might become health someday.
Putting this into words is, admittedly, as diffi‐cult as describing exactly what we hear and feel when we listen to great music. However, as doc‐tors, if we can sense what a state of health would actually physically feel like in a particular patient, we could work with that individual without inter‐fering in their ongoing process of health.
We need to work not only with the relation‐ship between structure and function, body and mind, and parts to whole, but individual to envi‐ronment, personal to transpersonal. Our goal might be – I hesitate to say ʺshould be – to carefully, yet effectively, encourage the body, via its own phys‐ics, into a remembrance and reinvention of its health. How and where to adjust will be dictated
by the body’s own purposeful direction and ex‐pression of its inherent design.
This may seem like rather nebulous speech but I donʹt think it to be any less practical and specific than beloved terms such as ʺmental forceʺ and ʺin‐nate intelligence.ʺ Speaking of which, embryolo‐gists in Germany have, since the 1940s, been able to detect a rhythm that pulsates through the embryo and fetus – and can even be taught to be perceived in an adult – every 100 seconds, a pulse which they believe to be a manifestation of what we would call innate intelligence.
Through clinical experience, I have noted reli‐ably positive changes, some of which have seemed miraculous, when I allow that rhythm within my‐self to synchronize with that of the patient’s. Even if, as doctors, we simply learn how to sit each morning consciously engaging or perceiving this rhythm, we would go a long way toward being able to find the health both within ourselves and the patients we seek to serve. To not do so, in light of what has long been known by those outside of our profession, is, in my opinion, chiropractic mal‐practice.
If you went to chiropractic college in the last decade you receive an education that hopefully was much richer than you might have received in the 1930s. Depending on the school you went to, you might have been able to use a little, or even a lot, more chiropractic training, but the scientific in‐formation available to us now – assuming it is be‐ing presented in chiropractic colleges – is breath‐taking.
There are many areas within the new sciences that serve to deepen their understanding of the on‐going, evolving chiropractic principle. One such area is the field of embryology. I have long felt that the best textbook on innate intelligence is an em‐bryology text. Embryology – particularly the branch of it referred to as biodynamic – is the science of a process; it details the universal guide‐lines of the physical history of a human being. If we understand how the body develops, we can get a better picture of its history and how its inherent plan for health is dealing with it. We can conscious‐ly work along with the vast memory of a very pro‐found process that takes a long time to etch itself into the human form.
Letʹs say, for example, you have a valuable machine and it breaks. The parts are all there, but the problem seems to be with some essential inte‐ractions. You donʹt know which ones to repair. You can bring in a repair service to make adjustments, zap it with chemicals, or replace some parts. Or you can call on an engineer who knows the design. The way the machine was materially created offers insight into how it might be retuned for the expres‐sion of greater health.
The engineer is not just the chiropractor. The engineer is the patient. The chiropractor exists to heighten, with receptive attention and informed action, the health universally inherent in the pa‐tientʹs design. The result isnʹt just an increase of health, but also an increase in awareness and other psychosocial qualities.
At the foundation of the philosophy of chiro‐practic, of course, are the major premise and the Triune of life. The major premise states: ʺUniversal intelligence is in all matter and continually gives to it all its properties and actions.ʺ This is a beautiful statement and one which can be consciously per‐ceived. It is also not singular to chiropractic. DD Palmer studied the metaphysics of his day both
with and apart from Dr. A. T. Still, the founder of osteopathy. For decades, chiropractors have been reluctant to admit the connection between the two men, especially reluctant to acknowledge that Pal‐mer was a student of Still’s at the Kirkland College of Osteopathy. To do so does not diminish chiro‐practic one iota. Instead, it reconnects us with a very important piece of our history, our lineage, even. It helps us to recognize that just as the body is a living system of interacting relationships, so is chiropractic.
I, for one, value the sometimes overtly spiritual quality of DDʹs writings and feel that we have im‐poverished ourselves as a profession by hiding from them. I draw great inspiration daily from his saying that ʺThe purpose of chiropractic is to reu‐nite God the spiritual with man the physical.ʺ In‐vestigating the new field of neurophysiology and integrating the best it has to offer with the best that both of the Palmers had to say on the subject of spi‐rituality and health would only empower the direc‐tion our profession moves in.
So, how many research articles do you read daily? The day I met Buckminster Fuller he asked me how many books I read in a year. He was not
pleased with my answer, replying, ʺIf you told me that you slept more than two hours a day and read less than one book a day I would fire you from the universe forever.ʺ Hopefully he was using some hyperbole here. I like my sleep and I do not read a book every day, but I dig into the scientific litera‐ture daily and feel that it greatly enriches both my clinical practice and my understanding of my pro‐fession. Thereʹs no need to fear the scientific litera‐ture – it will not bite you and if it does it will not kill you.
We have a responsibility to allow our profes‐sion, as a living system, to be what it wants to be, to be alive and evolving. We also, concurrently, have the responsibility to be both practitioners and scho‐lars. Could you explain, for example: the principle of tensegrity and how it relates to chiropractic care; the work of Dr. Bruce Lipton and the nuances of the ʺmental subluxation;” Dr. Candace Pertʹs work on the neurochemistry of emotion; the cellular me‐chanics of touch and its relation to the reflexive ef‐fects of preparing to give and giving an adjustment; the relation of autonomic balance to both sympto‐matic and non‐symptomatic subluxations; how the patientʹs body instinctively moves towards correc‐
tion, normal function and pain relief, and how not to interfere with that; what neural tension feels like and how, both in the central and peripheral nerv‐ous systems tissues, it poses an impediment to oneʹs health; biofeedback, EMDR, and PTSD resolu‐tion and the role it can play in your practice; the ʺEat Well, Move Well, Think Wellʺ model of Dr. James Chestnut; the Brain Reward Cascade System and Brain Reward Deficiency Syndrome; even the rudiments of Dr. Ted Carrick’s Functional Neurol‐ogy; and, especially, somatic reeducation?
A note on the latter: if innate intelligence is real, and science knows that it is, do you really think it is so insubstantial or weak that it always requires an outside party to remove interference to it? In my opinion, adjusting a patient without so‐matically reeducating them is simply manipulating them. Interestingly, the non‐medical disciplines shown to be most helpful with Parkinson’s, MS, and Alzheimer’s have been Somatic: Feldenkrais and Alexander Technique to be specific.
I hope you “scored well“ regarding the above questions. If so, congratulations! If not, you have a lot of rewarding work to look forward to.
For too long, we have hung our hat, so to speak, on a particular version of vitalism, namely, that if we remove interference to the central nerv‐ous system through a vertebral adjustment the vital force that we call ʺinnate intelligenceʺ could be res‐tored to normal expression and function. In other words, if we took our foot off the hose, innate could flow again. In the process, though, we left out the principles of naturalism and holism. Big mistake. Several of my best professors in chiropractic college – true leading lights in our profession – refused to change their health habits, eating whatever they wanted to, smoking and drinking, but always faith‐fully getting their weekly adjustment. And they either dropped dead or died a slow, painful death in their mid‐50s.
How has your study of and practice of chiro‐practic changed you? For me, chiropractic has re‐quired me to keep growing. It has also required me to live my life in a congruent manner. One cannot practice at their best if their entire life is not con‐gruent. There are a lot of things in life one can do well enough by just going through the motions, but chiropractic is not one of them.
Can we – are we willing to – allow our beliefs to be stretched to new, more expansive horizons? Are we willing to practice in congruence with the new sciences, to transcend and include the Green Books, to serve as adults, and not children or ado‐lescents, of the chiropractic profession? Are we willing to allow chiropractic to be what it is – a magnificent, dynamic, living system?
The life that awaits us
by Jeff Rockwell, DC Maybe the ʺpatron saintʺ of chiropractic should
be Curious George. Iʹve always been curious about how things work, including and especially chiro‐practic. As a child my parents sometimes admo‐nished me for this trait. My mother would say, ʺCuriosity killed the cat.ʺ I guess I was supposed to file that ʺvaluableʺ information along with other lines of wisdom such as ʺmoney doesnʹt grow on trees.ʺ It wasnʹt until years later, when I was living in the South, that someone told me the rest of the old cliché: ʺCuriosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.ʺ
In recent years, we saw the explosive success of the book and film ʺThe Secret.ʺ For many of us it was especially gratifying as it featured a prominent chiropractor. Many peopleʹs lives were, and con‐tinue to be, impacted in a positive way by such books and movies. But often the results don’t last long. There’s a piece missing that short‐circuits the process unless it’s incorporated into the ʺchanging of oneʹs mind.ʺ I believe that missing piece is chiro‐practic care.
Most of us were raised in families, churches, and other social communities where we were taught what – and even how – to think. Rather than exposing us to their values, people imposed them on us. No oneʹs to blame here. This is how things are done in a subluxated world. In the first seven years of life, we’re all like ʺLittle Buddhas,ʺ effor‐tlessly slipping into altered states, seeing ʺenergy,ʺ talking with imaginary friends, and soaking up our world and sensory experiences like thirsty sponges. But not every belief we were exposed to was healthy for our nervous systems.
Some experts in child development consider the typical indoctrination process to be a form of child abuse, a violation of the human spirit. Dr.
Andrew Newburg, at the University of Pennsylva‐nia, has conducted studies showing that dogmatic, separatist thinking, especially when accentuated by anger, damages the brain. If this isn’t a form of sub‐luxation I donʹt know what is.
As we move further into the 21st century, we’re recognizing that subluxation isn’t a spinal phenomenon, but a neurological one. This really shouldn’t be news to anyone, as vitalistic chiro‐practors have always been attempting to engage the nervous system to facilitate the expression of health in their patients.
Many of the beliefs stirring up the most trouble in the world today date back to the Iron Age. While some claim ʺbelieving never hurt anyone,ʺ we see many beliefs played out that are not the least bit benign. And as we find ourselves in increasingly sophisticated technological territory, there are po‐tentially grave consequences to holding onto anti‐quated beliefs.
Consider, for example, that without the aid of todayʹs technology, humans killed more than 160 million other humans in warfare based on religious and nationalistic ideologies. In 2011, there are more than 20 religious conflicts going on, according to
Amnesty International. The destruction that used to require armies of thousands can now be created by a single ʺbelieverʺ with a suitcase bomb.
In chiropractic, we speak about changing the world ʺone spine at a time.ʺ Advocates of The Law of Attraction may talk about changing the world ʺone thought at a time.ʺ There’s truth in both posi‐tions, and we can leverage those truths for greater gain if we exercise our curiosity regarding this ʺthingʺ called the subluxation.
Subluxation is a disease. That wasn’t a typo. I didn’t mean to say subluxation is ʺdis‐ease.” You read it right the first time. Subluxation is a disease of perception, in which outdated beliefs become and remain somatized as part of our neurology – and reality – if left chiropractically unchallenged.
Dr. Bruce Lipton has demonstrated that when we repeat the same beliefs over and over, we be‐come a closed system functioning on autopilot. He’s noted that taking a living system as divinely profound as the human organism, and rendering it into a sophisticated sort of automaton, causes the brain to actually shrink in size and atrophy. The hindbrain, with its propensity for reactive emotions and dualistic perception of the world, enlarges,
while the prefrontal cortex, with its capacity for compassionate thinking and unitive awareness, shrinks in size.
I recall a time, back in the 1980s, when some of our kinder detractors said things like, ʺChiropractic may help those with back pain,ʺ or ʺChiropractic adjustments may, at least, help people to become more flexible.ʺ I find the latter statement intriguing, if not a little patronizing. To me, one of the healthiest and most loving things we could do for ourselves is to consistently court flexibility of body through chiropractic care, and flexibility of con‐sciousness as well.
Functional MRI studies are now revealing that strong, inflexible beliefs, especially negative ones, do not make ʺneurological senseʺ to the brain. In response, it builds up tension in its emotional cen‐ters – which most definitely include the spinal cord – and cause the production of nociceptive irritants, pain‐producing chemicals, and keep a person in a sustained ʺfight or flightʺ neurological state. These neurological and chemical changes create nerve tissue atrophy further down the central nervous system ʺchain.”
We may read one self‐help book after another, listen to one positive thinking guru after another, and we change for a few days, a few weeks, even a few months. This doesn’t make for long‐term hap‐piness, but can even become dangerous as evi‐denced by the statistics mentioned earlier.
When asked what makes people think what they believe is true, many respond that they “just feel it.” Of course they do. The beliefs have become embedded into the emotional neurological centers – which we now know includes the entire posterior portion of the spinal cord – causing adverse nerv‐ous system changes and increasing the likelihood that they’ll continue beating up on anyone who doesn’t agree with them, regardless of whether or not their beliefs are true. This includes beating up on ourselves, as we fight with the voices and condi‐tioning of our early past, information that’s be‐come, to the extent we’re subluxated, cemented in place. We’ve all seen this in our patients, and if we’re honest, in ourselves. We’re fighting a losing battle because, in a very real sense, we’re fighting rather than flowing with our lives. A flexible neu‐rology and a flexible consciousness, along with a
flexible spine, allow us to flow with the ever‐changing mystery that life is.
That all sounds sweet and poetic, but what do I really mean? Most of us are familiar with the neu‐robiologist Candace Pert, PhD. The author of ʺMo‐lecules of Emotion.” She nearly won the Nobel Prize in medicine in the early 1970s for her work in identifying the chemical cause of the ʺrunnerʹs highʺ – endorphins. Her later work demonstrated that these type of chemicals, called neuropeptides, were not only produced by the brain but in other parts of the body. It was these chemicals that she named ʺmolecules of emotion.ʺ
Suppose you were to win the lottery tonight. Great thought, right? If that were to happen, a group of chemicals would be produced that would enable you to experience the elation worthy of a person who’d just won a large sum of money. If, on the other hand, you fell madly in love with the man or woman of your dreams, your body would pro‐duce a different array of chemical molecules and you would experience some version of the intox‐icating, melting feeling we associate with romance. If, instead, you had a religious conversion expe‐
rience you might experience divine ecstasy, if the right chemicals got triggered.
Some people have resistance to thinking of love, joy, or ecstasy as chemistry. Obviously, they’re more than mere chemical phenomena. They, you might say, transcend and include chemi‐stry. But, we’ve all struggled at some point, trying to change a habit. Perhaps it was attempting to stop smoking or drinking coffee. Maybe it was trying to eliminate procrastination or improve self‐esteem. Probably it was difficult, our own personal version of ʺinsanity… doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.ʺ So, whatʹs the deal?
The molecules of emotion are like chemical ʺkeysʺ that need to find the right shaped ʺlocksʺ in order to produce a specific feeling. These “locks” are called receptor sites and, according to Dr. Pert, the ʺkeysʺ or emotional molecules, must locate, as they circulate through the body, receptor sites on cells that are structurally suited to receive them. If the receptor site has had its shape altered, through mechanical or emotional stress for example, the molecules can’t bind with them. You can win the lottery, fall in love, and find God all on the same
day, and what should be a profound experience will be minimized by the inability of these neuro‐peptides to find a ʺhome.ʺ How often have we seen patients come into our offices whose ʺceiling of happinessʺ or ʺceiling of health and wellnessʺ is so low that it’s sad.
Pert writes: ʺMemories and beliefs are stored not only in the brain, but in the psychosomatic network extending into the body, particularly in the ubiquitous receptors between nerves and bun‐dles of cell bodies called ganglia, which are distri‐buted not just in and near the spinal cord, but all the way out along nerve pathways to internal or‐gans and the very surface of our skin.
ʺAn element I think we are skipping in our discussion of practical applications for mind‐body health is bodywork: the touch therapies of chiro‐practic and other modalities that include the body as a means of healing the mind and emotions. It is true that we do store some memory in the brain, but by far, the deeper, older messages are stored in the body and must be accessed through the body. Your body is your subconscious mind, and you cannot heal it by talk alone!ʺ
At a research conference, I once heard Dr. Pert say, ʺHow we experience our world is in large part governed by the structure and function of our spine.ʺ Remember those receptor sites? The region of the body that has the largest population of them is the posterior portion of the spinal cord, specifi‐cally the dorsal horn. Dr. Pert feels that this is the anatomical location of the subconscious mind and refers to it as an extension of the brainʹs limbic sys‐tem. In fact, the emotional brain is not confined to the brain, but extends down the spine and is known today as the mesolimbic system.
Subluxation alters the function of the spine. Dysfunction of the spine causes ischemia or lack of blood flow to the associated spinal cord and spinal nerve root tissues, inhibiting their physiology. This includes, very specifically, the receptor sites we are talking about. Subluxation alters their physiology in an adverse manner, making it difficult, at best, for high quality molecules of emotion to bind there, thus limiting oneʹs experience, embodiment, and expression of health, happiness, and wholeness. This distorts our emotional experience of ourselves and of our world, making it, by necessity, a more stressful one. Molehills become mountains. We
shift our physiology from safety and trust to defen‐siveness and divisiveness, misperceiving signs of threat where there are none. Thatʹs why, to me, subluxation represents a disease of perception.
Pert continues: ʺThe body becomes the battle‐field for the war‐games of the mind. All the unre‐solved thoughts and emotions, the negativity we hold onto, shows up in the body and makes us sick.”
Joseph Campbell once said, ʺWe must be will‐ing to get into the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is awaiting us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one is to come.ʺ This is what happens every day in the greatest of chiro‐practic offices – hopefully yours. Growth and trans‐formation requires a sacrifice, a shedding of old skin. Practice members commit to chiropractic as part of their lifestyle. They dive further into the life they’ve planned. We adjust their nervous systems and allow their bodies to work together as a dy‐namic whole. And our practice members meet – perhaps for the first time – the life that awaits them.
Chiropractic is a holistic science. Today we know that the three classically separated areas of neuroscience, endocrinology, and immunology,
with their various organs – the brain; the glands; and the spleen, bone marrow, and lymph nodes – are actually joined to each other in a multidirec‐tional network of communication, linked by infor‐mation carriers known as neuropeptides. What we’ve been talking about throughout this article is information. I’d like to speculate that ʺmental forceʺ is the flow of information as it moves among the cells, organs, and systems of the body. The health and integrity of our core, the central nervous sys‐tem, permits this holistic information‐network to flourish. We can then see, right in front of our eyes, that there truly is an intelligence running things, what we as chiropractors are privileged to inti‐mately know as ʺinnate intelligence.ʺ
Instrumentation One of the major hurdles that had to be over‐
come by chiropractic (and any other wellness field influencing the body’s neurologic and energy fields) was the lack of instrumentation capable of detecting and measuring those fields. Although some sophistical devices are capable of detecting electromagnetic energy in the minute quantities generated by the human body, quantifying subtle
energy has been more difficult, particularly in chi‐ropractic field offices.
Instead of measuring the energy emanations themselves, we normally rely on measuring the clinical outcomes of chiropractic interventions. Us‐ing standard outcome measurement protocols such as Health‐Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) studies, it is possible to quantify the impact of chiropractic adjustments on the body’s neurological systems.
This has already, in fact, been done frequently – although primarily within the medical paradigm of disease treatment. Influencing the energy fields through interventions such as chiropractic, qigong, acupuncture and acupressure, magnetic and light therapy, and healing touch have been shown to have measurable impact on a number of specific health conditions, as well as general health‐related quality of life.
HRQOL as measurement of wellness The move toward measuring overall wellness
and quality of life, as opposed to simply diagnos‐ing diseases, is a fundamental shift in the health care culture and one that is essential to the under‐
standing of chiropractic as a means of energy heal‐ing.
On April 7, 1948, the World Health Organiza‐tion established its definition of health as: ʺ... a state of complete physical, mental and social well‐being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.ʺ
The definition, which was considered radical in its time because it took a more holistic view of the term, is still in use today.
A more recent and expanded definition, from the Quality of Life Research Unit at the University of Toronto states that quality of life encompasses ʺthe goodness and meaning in life, as well as peopleʹs happiness and well‐being. From our pers‐pective, the ultimate goal of quality of life study and its subsequent applications is to enable people to live quality lives – lives that are both meaningful and enjoyed.ʺ
In its ground‐breaking report, ʺMeasuring Healthy Days,ʺ the US Department of Health and Human Servicesʹ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that, despite the WHO definition ʺ…health in the U.S. has traditionally been meas‐ured narrowly and in the negative. What is meas‐ured is ill health in its severe manifestations, those
which are verifiable through physical examination and other objective procedures or tests… Such tra‐ditional measures of morbidity and mortality pro‐vide information about the lowest levels of health, but they reveal little about other important aspects of an individual’s or a community’s level of health.ʺ
Thatʹs why, in recent years, health and well‐ness professionals have sought new ways to get a more complete measurement of an individualʹs to‐tal state of well‐being, or quality of life.
The multi‐dimensional Self‐Reported Quality‐of‐Life survey (such as that provided by Integrative Outcome Measurements) is based in part on two independent surveys:
1) the SF‐36 Health Survey, a standard quality‐of‐ life test developed by the RAND Corporation and extensively administered and validated. Use of the SF‐36 in scientific and medical research has been documented in nearly 4,000 publications, and it has been used to measure health‐related quality of life for samples of the general population as well as groups with specific conditions, ranging from asthma to spinal cord injury; and
2) the Self‐Reported Quality of Life (SRQOL), a survey developed for use in specific healthy popu‐lations. The SRQOL contains 41 questions covering physical, mental/emotional, stress evaluation and life enjoyment domains of health. This instrument has been validated and applied to several other populations undergoing wellness interventions.
The National Center for Chronic Disease Pre‐vention and Health Promotion Health‐Related Quality of Life noted that: ʺPhysicians have often used health‐related quality of life (HRQOL) to measure the effects of chronic illness in their pa‐tients to better understand how an illness interferes with a personʹs day‐to‐day life. Similarly, public health professionals use health‐related quality of life to measure the effects of numerous disorders, short‐ and long‐term disabilities, and diseases in different populations. Tracking health‐related qual‐ity of life in different populations can identify sub‐groups with poor physical or mental health and can help guide policies or interventions to improve their health.ʺ
Like the founder and developer of chiropractic, today’s chiropractors do not look only at the spine or limit their expertise to moving bones to reduce
misalignments of vertebra. Instead, they see the human body as a fully integrated energy field that can be affected by structural adjustments. In short, we’ve come full circle and gathered important in‐formation and understandings along the way.