Health Without Drugs

Health Without Drugs

The Spine Tingling World of Chiropractic

The word Chiropractor conjures up many images, perhaps the most common being quack. But where do these images come from? The electronic media runs hordes of doctor shows, but why is it that you never see one about a chiropractor, or a naturopath, or an osteopath? Why should people think that there is only one "valid" healing art? Do the men who rule the medical empire fear the rise of a new way to health that serves the needs of people rather than the medical-industrial complex?

Chiropractic, the drugless approach to health, is only seventy-five years old. Yet it is gaining widespread acceptance among open-minded doctors and laymen alike, for it is making sick people well! Even so, the public is largely unaware of this advanced, natural approach to prevention and help -- mainly by design of the AMA and its nefarious Committee on Quackery.

Since 1968 Medicaid, Medicare, and State Compensation have honored fees for chiropractic care. Chiropractors are state licensed and undergo a four year course of study at accredited schools: The first two years of pre-clinical studies are the same as medical school except the study of drugs. Instead, special attention is paid to the structure and articulation of the spine, orthopedics, and nutritional therapy. The last two years students practice in the school clinic.

Chiropractors must pass basic science examinations and professional board examinations, just as M.D.s do. In addition, they attend a yearly state-required two day seminar at their institute of training to keep them up to date with the advances in the practice of chiropractic.

Doctor of Chiropractic Cornelius J. Farren has been practicing for four years. He and Dr. Glenn N. Miller run the Ann Arbor Chiropractic Clinic at 2311 Shelby, just south of Jackson Rd. off Stadium.

SUN: Dr. Farren, briefly what is chiropractic and how does it help people?

Dr. Farren: To begin with, chiropractic is a healing science, art, and philosophy that is natural and is patient-oriented rather than symptom-oriented. The philosophy of chiropractic is that the body knows how to heal itself, or as we say, has an "innate knowledge". But for the body to heal itself and keep itself in health, it must have free nervous communication so that the body's intricate complex of nervous feedback mechanisms can properly monitor the various body functions and maintain them in dynamic balance. In other words, the knowledge of the body is only as effective as its communication.

Now, all the nerves of the body, with the exception of the cranial nerves, originate in paired lateral nerve trunks that carry nervous information, much like a co-axial cable, in both directions between the brain and the body. These nerve trunks are called spinal nerves, and they leave the spinal cord through narrow lateral openings between the vertebrae.

When the vertebrae are properly aligned one atop another, the openings through which the spinal nerves pass are sufficiently large to allow free nervous communication. But when the vertebrae get out of line, or twist upon one another, the lateral openings become compromised. The spinal nerve is pinched, causing dysfunction, pain, and ultimately tissue damage. This is the scientific basis of the means by which chiropractic promotes health.

The art of chiropractic is the painless manual adjustment of the spinal column to achieve proper alignment, thereby freeing nervous communication. In the early days of chiropractic, it was thought that the only necessary adjustment was between the first two vertebrae, the atlas and the axis. This idea was quickly succeeded by the concept of total spinal adjustment as modems rediscovered the relationship between disease and spinal misalignment that the ancient physicians Galen and Hippocrates knew and wrote about.

Chiropractic analysis prior to treatment is thorough, including a medical history, static and dynamic orthopedic tests, and diagnostic low power X-rays, all of which the chiropractor considers in arriving at a program of treatment. He may take a blood sample to send out for lab tests to further refine the diagnosis, and will refer to an M.D. when appropriate.

As how to chiropractic can help people, well, I'd say that about 70% of the patients I get come because of musculoskeletal pain or dysfunction. It may be an incapacitating pain in the lower back, a crick in the neck, a burning pain radiating over the point of the shoulder and down the length of the arm, or just a feeling of weakness in a muscle group. These are very obvious consequences of spinal misalignment. Some others are not so obvious: a drooping shoulder, a rotated pelvis, tension between the shoulder blades, and headaches. These problems will also respond to chiropractic treatment with varying degrees of success.

The other 30% I see are those who have been through the medical gamut -- gone through three of four doctors with no success, only to be strung out on chronic medication. As a last resort they go to a chiropractor. Well, once we get these people off the medications that have been eating up their paycheck and leaving them depressed and ill because of side-effects, properly adjust them, and get them on a sound nutritional program instead of the junk food they've been eating, most of them get well and the rest feel much better. So, chiropractic isn't limited solely to muscle pain. It corrects visceral disorders too, such as asthma, allergies, stomach, bowel, liver and kidney disorders, and is useful in the management of emphysema.

SUN: Dr. Farren, how do people benefit from chiropractic in other ways

Dr. Farren: It costs much less for treatment than the M.D. route, and the remission of symptoms is faster, and the healing process is virtually free of complications, though in some acute back cases the pain may be a bit greater after the first treatment, but subsiding and remitting thereafter, upon further course of treatment.

But us for comparing costs, an M.D. will charge at least twenty dollars for an office call while a visit to the chiropractor costs eight. Take for another example an acute low back pain with shooting pain down the back of the legs, caused by physical strain. The only time that surgery is indicated is when the disc is ruptured or the problem is a bone chip or when there is metastatic cancer. The typical course of chiropractic treatment to full remission of pain would average ten to twelve office calls at a cost of approximately one hundred dollars for the entire course of treatment.

The local M.D., on the other hand, can only prescribe pain killers and muscle relaxants, treating the symptom but not the cause. And if you go to the hospital for surgery, traction, or whatever, the bed alone is going to cost you a hundred dollars a day, not to mention the doctor bill, lab tests, medications, X-rays, and so on.

Also, the M.D.s as a rule don't educate their patients as to the cause of their illness, or how it can be prevented, whereas chiropractors do let their patients know what's going on as well as how the problem can be prevented.

Chiropractic is patient oriented, not symptom oriented. We accept the patient for treatment, not the disease, so we teach our patients how to take care of themselves, like teaching them proper work habits, how to lift without straining their back, how to sleep properly, and how to deal with occupational hazards. In my office I leave out the Physicians Desk Reference, which is put out by the drug companies listing their wares and toxic side-effects, to educate patients to the effects of the medications they've been taking, which is something that very few M.D.s will do. We're interested in educating our patients. Unfortunately, we can only talk to them after they've come in the door. Professional ethics prohibits advertising, so most people know who we are and what we can do only by word of mouth.

SUN: Which serves to further the status-quo "lock" the AMA controlled medical world commands over the money, power and public "validity" available to the healing arts, though this is hardly a new situation.

Dr. Farren: True, the antagonism has been there since the first. The pioneers of chiropractic were vigorously attacked in their day, enduring lock-ups and legal battles. Today this attack takes on a different form.

As an example, a few years back Ralph L. Smith, claiming to be an independent writer investigating chiropractic wrote At Your Own Risk: The Case Against Chiropractic, in which he claimed among other lies and distortions, that a patient could be paralyzed by the (spinal) adjustment. Some years later all the beans got spilled when some Chicago AMA insiders got disgusted with what was happening within the organization and abruptly left, liberating a number of internal documents in the process. And what did they show but that the same Ralph L. Smith had for years been on the payroll of the Committee on Quackery, the AMA sub-unit dedicated to the eradication of chiropractic!

Not only that, the memos detailed an insidious plan to strangle chiropractic by delicensing it state by state. The test case was Maine, probably picked by the AMA because the state chiropractic association was only forty strong or so, mostly older people, and they figured they'd have their easiest battle plus the ability to set precedent. To make a long story short, the opposition to this crass attack was organized in time and the attempt to push the delicensing bill through the state assembly failed.

Anyway, all of these memos were gotten together by Trevor Howard and published by Schuster & Schuster in LA as a book, In the Public Interest, detailing all of the dirty tricks the AMA was up to. But the AMA doesn't just get its cover blown away like that, so they went to court and got an injunction stopping the printing because the memos were their property or some such thing. A few copies of the book got out, but everything else is still tied up in the courts, so as to date we really haven't been able to get our side of the story out to the public.

Tom Kuzma

pull quote: The word Chiropractor conjures up many images, perhaps the most common being quack. But where do these images come from? The electronic media runs hordes of doctor shows, but why is it that you never see one about a chiropractor, or a naturopath, or an osteopath?