DAY 177 – America is Due for its Annual Chiropractic Check-Up

Dr. Eve Venturi treating Dr. Young

It’s a simple idea; maybe so simple as to be overlooked or misunderstood; but the annual chiropractic check-up is not only a concept whose time should have already come in America, but should have arrived at least 39 years ago.

Chiropractic was founded in America in 1895. In 1972 the US Congress voted to make chiropractic care available under Medicare. Chiropractic was clearly determined to be of value, for at least our elderly, 39 years ago. Recognizing that those under 65 years of age also have spines, and that degenerative diseases don't begin at 65, one might conclude that all American's would be benefited by chiropractic care.

We all know that it is wise to see our dentist each year, and we do so because of 4 factors: 1) we have teeth, 2) teeth  are known to become unhealthy and painful, 3) dentists specialize in treatment of the oral cavity, and 4) preventive care is less expensive and results in better oral health than that achieved by repairing damaged teeth.

The situation with chiropractors (doctors of chiropractic – DC) is a bit more complicated, because while we do specialize in treatment of the spine, we are also licensed as general practitioners, treating virtually all conditions, and being limited only in regard to the use of drugs and surgery. But, for the moment, let us focus on chiropractic expertise in spinal function and spinal health.

It would be reasonable for all Americans to have annual spinal check-ups provided by a spinal health expert; a chiropractor. The same 4 factors that drive the annual dental check-up, drive the need for the annual chiropractic check-up: 1) we have spines, 2) spines are known to become unhealthy and painful, 3) chiropractors specialize in the treatment of the spine, and 4) preventive care is less expensive and results in better spinal health than that achieved by repairing a damaged spine.

It is important to additionally consider that while dental problems can be very serious, their effect on our society, compared to the effect of spinal (back and neck) problems, is minor. Back pain is the second leading cause of lost work time, and was estimated to have cost America $100 billion in 1998.

Do you get at least one spinal check-up per year?

I am suggesting that our culture needs a chiropractic check-up, and a wake up to spinal health.

PS – I know that there are some doctors, other than chiropractors, that can provide excellent spinal evaluation. If you have one, then see her/him at least annually.

DAY 99 - Growth Does Not Cause Pain

Noona, Liel and Zion rest on a hike

“Growth does not cause pain.” ~ Kristofer Young, DC

The following comes (1/11/2011) from a page called “Growing Pains” on a website called Kids Health.

“Your 8-year-old son wakes up crying in the night complaining that his legs are throbbing. ........

Sound familiar? Your child is probably experiencing growing pains, a normal occurrence in about 25% to 40% of children. They generally strike during two periods: in early childhood among 3- to 5-year-olds and, later, in 8- to 12-year-olds.

What Causes Them?

No firm evidence shows that the growth of bones [or muscles, or any other tissues] causes pain. The most likely causes are the aches and discomforts resulting from the jumping, climbing, and running that active kids do during the day. The pains can occur after a child has had a particularly athletic day.” - end quote -

In 1983 when I opened my chiropractic practice, I felt a degree of apprehension about being, myself, judged unscientific due to some perception in our culture at large, and even more so in the medical profession, of chiropractors being unscientific.

As years passed, I felt more and more comfortable, and less threaten by the possibility of being accused of being an unscientific practitioner. My comfort did not arise from impeccable adherence to scientific principles on the part of all my chiropractic colleagues, but rather, from my growing awareness that medical doctors, too, live in glass houses, and ought to be careful with stone throwing.

An example of non-science, is a diagnosis of “growing pains”. A cursory review of the medical literature, including 5 medical dictionaries and a December 2010 abstract from Pediatric Endocrinology Review titled “Growing Pains: myth or reality”, leave no doubt that there is no such thing as “growing pains”. It’s not that there is very little evidence that growth causes pain; there is none.

Recall that on the Kids Health site, they list a condition called “growing pains”, and then tell us that there is “[n]o firm evidence that the growth ..... causes pain.” Then why are so many doctors and parents calling children’s leg pain, “growing pains”. Shouldn’t they be called leg pains? Isn’t it also interesting that Kids Health states that physical activity is the likely cause of the pain, while also telling us that children are more likely to have these pains between 3-5 and 8-12 years of age. What’s the magic here; do kids between 5 and 8 stop being physically active? This is not the science I am used to.

So here is the dangerous part, if one in three children experience leg pain, and are diagnosed with “growing pains”, a condition that doesn’t exist, that means that the real causes of their pain are unknown and untreated. I hope I would not have to tell a parent how unsafe this is for these misdiagnosed children.

Let me suggest to you some scientifically reasonable causes of leg pain in children. It is a rare child with leg pain that has these probable causes evaluated.

food allergies

disturbed gastrointestinal health

aberrant spinal joint function in the low back

nutritional deficiencies

poor diet

lack of exercise

What is a parent to do? Take your child to a functional medicine practitioner (chiropractor, MD, DO, DOM, etc.) Go to the website of the Institute for Functional Medicine to get a referral: click here.

DAY 96 - Chiropractic History: a Short Version

This is not just a short version; it is my version of Chiropractic history.
  
The healing art and science of Chiropractic was founded in Davenport, Iowa in 1895 by Daniel David Palmer. Palmer believed that virtually all disease was caused by displaced vertebrae that disrupted the function of spinal nerves innervating the organs and tissues of the body. His new practice caught on. By 1897 he had established the Palmer School of Chiropractic, and by 1906 he was charged with practicing medicine without a license.
  
Given that chiropractors used no drugs, and practiced no surgery - hardly practicing medicine - it was clear that the real complaint of the medical community in Iowa, was that doctors of chiropractic (DCs) were a competitive threat.
  
Dr. Palmer had hitched his wagon to something big. Turns out that cultures around the world had successfully used spinal manipulation for millennia. While it was far from correct to think that most all diseases were caused by spinal problems, it was spot on to recognize that aberrations of spinal mechanics can negatively influence the function of related organs and tissues, and can cause or contribute to a wide range of diseases and dysfunctions.
  
As the next century rolled by, the chiropractic profession grew; a lot. In the 1960’s the American Medical Association (AMA), in collusion with other medical groups, created and carried out plans to boycott and destroy the chiropractic profession. Surprisingly, justice was served in 1987 when in federal court the AMA was found guilty of antitrust violations in its attempt to eliminate the chiropractic profession.
  
It is important to know that from the early 1900’s there were medical doctors who valued chiropractic, referred patients for chiropractic care, and received chiropractic treatment themselves. In many instances, medical societies made it difficult for these MDs and scorned or threatened them for associating with chiropractors.
  
Things are better today in 2011. Why just today I treated a medical doctor and her daughter.

DAY 84 – Warren’s Chiropractic Three-fer

Today, as I worked on my brother-in-law, Warren, I was reminded to tell you that good chiropractic manipulation provides a two-fer, if not a three-fer.

Warren was lying face down on my portable table as I began a manual scanning of his back, testing the tone and texture of his muscles, and gauging the flexibility of the joints of his spine and ribs.

He commented that the gentle pressure of my hand on his left, upper back, had elicited a mild numbness in his left arm. The numbness, he shared, was something that he experienced at times from lying on that side at night. I let him know that there was an obvious stiffness in his upper back that was a cause of his symptoms.

Lying on his left side, with his right shoulder rolled back and his right hip rotated forward, I felt his mildly torqued spine. Just as in a chain necklace, held at one end, and twisted from the other, if a kink exists in the spine, it is exaggerated, and becomes apparent. Simultaneously, while my hand felt, and moved from flexible spine toward the apex of a kink, Warren experienced a transition from painless to tender. As my hand crossed the apex of the kink and moved back into a flexible area on the other side, Warren felt the tenderness disappear.

A thorough spinal manipulation followed; restoring mobility to stiff joints, from occiput to sacrum.

The first half of Warren’s two-fer consisted of his direct experiencing, and learning more about what was going on in his body, rather than just getting a report from the doctor. The second half was manipulative treatment to improve his spinal function.

Potentially, inspired by the real connection to the stiffness and pain in his back, the door swings open for the three-fer; the opportunity to both discuss the causes of physical restriction and discomfort, and to consider self-care methods for restoring health.

DAY 82 - Could You Be Stuck and Not Know It?

Even an avid yoga practitioner can have areas of his spine; vertebral joints, that are stuck; and not know it.

The human body is not well designed to assess its own localized, intersegmental spinal mobility/immobility.

The human body is actually poorly designed to monitor many of its functions and conditions. For example, it is not well designed to sense blood pressure, nor a slow loss of vision.

I can guess who’s monitoring your blood pressure, and I imagine you see an optometrist periodically. But, who lets you know if you are stuck?

(photo by Tony George at Flickr)

DAY 62 - A Bloody Nose is Better than a Punch in the Face

First, let me say that there is an extremely important moral to this story, so read ‘till the end even if nose bleeds are not currently a pressing issue for you.

(photo from Seesaw by TOYMONSTER LIMITED)

Allow me to clarify; a blow to the nose, with subsequent bleeding is no picnic. But what I would like to talk about is nose bleeding, technically called epistaxis, which occurs usually with little or no physical disturbance.

Nose bleeds occur in children and adults. Note/Clue: they usually occur exclusively on one side; one nostril.

Most current medical explanations of the cause of nose bleeds tend to be vague at best, and often not rational.

Many patients are told that their nose bleeds occur because the blood vessels in the nose are delicate and near the surface. This explanation doesn't hold water because it addresses neither the often erratic occurrence of the bleeding, nor the customary one-sided bleeding. Individuals can go long periods of time with the same delicate vessels, but no bleeding, and then can, without trauma, begin to have episodes of bleeding. And why would there be delicate vessels on just one side?

Patients are also told that the bleeding is due to dryness. If nasal passages are dry, then wouldn’t they be dry on both sides? Again, why the one-sided bleeding?

Chiropractors have reported, since 1895, that epistaxis often responds to manipulation of the vertebrae of the neck and upper back; in some cases, immediately. I have treated a number of individuals with nose bleeds in the past and have found the results impressive. Children respond particularly dramatically, compared to adults.

The reason that spinal adjustment can be a successful treatment is that nerves that come from the spine can effect blood vessels in the face and head. Given that the spine is the central axis of the body, and given that dysfunction in the spine consistently results in predominantly one-sided symptoms such as arm pain, leg pain, headache, numbness, and tingling, it is reasonable that the effects to blood vessels could also be affected by the spine and be predominantly one-sided.

I often explain to patients that our body is like a teeter-totter; the spine is the fulcrum, or tipping point; each side of the body, including arms and legs, represent the board. With a teeter-totter, if the fulcrum gets stuck, both sides of the teeter-totter will be affected; one may be higher, the other lower. Now, imagine your spinal joints, your fulcrum, gets stuck, from trauma, food allergy, stress, illness, or a lack of stretching; some aspect of your body’s function on one side may be left high in the air, and the other near the ground. If a joint in your neck became stuck, you could have bleeding on one side of your nose, and no bleeding on the other.

Moral: If you were not punched in the face, and your nose is bleeding, give thought to the powerfully influential teeter-totter of your body and spine, and see an excellent doctor of chiropractic.

DAY 21 – Every Child Needs a Chiropractor

Every child deserves, and needs evaluation and treatment from a knowledgeable doctor of chiropractic (DC).

For those of you who may react negatively, or with incredulity to the above statement, please read along and hear me out.

Proper function of the spine, and the muscles, nerves and connective tissues of which it is comprised, are critical to a child’s health and vitality. The most common spinal dysfunction that affects children is a gradual loss of motion and flexibility in the spinal joints. This loss can be a major factor in, or cause of back or neck pain. A knowledgeable DC is trained to diagnose this loss of mobility, often before pain occurs and before damage is detectable on an x-ray.

Back pain in children is very common. A 1994 Scandinavian study, by Trousler, showed that 51% of 1,174 school children had experienced back pain.

For most families in America, the two choices of practitioners to treat childhood spinal pain or spinal conditions are a DC and an MD (family practice or pediatrician). In my opinion, the best choice is a knowledgeable DC. DCs specialize in treatment of the spine, while neither family practice nor general pediatricians do. Additionally, MDs rarely address prevention of spinal problems, while prevention would always be a primary focus of a knowledgeable DC.