I remember the first day my 9 year old patient “walked” into my office. Walked needs quotation Marks as he clutched his mother’s arm, literally using her as a human crutch as he had not been able to walk properly in months due to dizziness and nausea. His life support, a mother with an anguished expression looking at another Medical professional trying to answer questions about why her 9 year old son was so unhealthy.
And yet I just knew that everything was going to be ok.
Truth be told I always THINK it’s going to be OK with my patients, and I hope the share my optimism and patience.
My profession long ago sought to lustily bite of the low hanging fruit of the lucrative “pain” paradigm. We (I included in “We”, of course) still do, as “pain” is a much better motivator to seek medical intervention than the not as sexy deconditioning within the human neuraxis brought about by a dearth of stimulus, the frying of the neural pathways responsible for maintaining postural integrity (you know you only give a shit about posture when you catch your kid slouching), balance and spinal segmental control which directly leads to the mechanical changes inherent in functional deconditioning that creates the vulnerability for tissue injury, such as an acute disc herniation or facet joint strain.
I’ll sum up that medical jargon into the Queens (New Yorkian) English:
We sit on our asses all day, getting zero neural stimulus until our decaying spine and body rebels to the point that it sends screaming amounts of pain to alert us to the problem.
And leads to you giving enough of a shit to do something about the pain.
Powerful motivator, isn’t it. Finally you want to do something. In my case this motivation on the part of the populace to do something has financed Car payments and Bangkok trips.
Meanwhile, on the other side of boring old pain paradigm are the “Miracles” of Chiropractic: the stories like this boy.
I’ll let you in on a little secret, it’s ain’t miracles, it’s science and while our ever expanding knowledge base has a sizable guff we know enough of the science : Spinal function affects brain function and afferent input. We know through the concept of Neuroplasticity that the brain changes: physically, chemically, electrically, for the better (or worse) on a continuous basis and that adjusting the spine categorically improves nervous system function, muscle reflexes, reaction time, and the speed with which the brain process the billions of bits of information that it is tasked with processing per second.
And just like that, a 9 year old boy who had to be dragged around by his mom is running and jumping and playing and eating the junk food he shouldn’t be eating free of gastrointestinal Consequences.
A grateful mom, an awed staff, and a Pain in the Ass Chiropractor, who for all his faults, eternally asks “How the Hell does it work?” 😉.
Chiropractic Rōnin 