Happy 116th Birthday Chiropractic - September 18th 2011

 

The History of Chiropractic

On September 18, 1895, D.D. Palmer was working late in his office when a janitor, Harvey Lillard began working nearby. A noisy fire engine passed by outside the window and Palmer was surprised to see that Lillard didn’t react at all. Patiently Palmer managed to communicate with the man, and learned that he had normal hearing most of his life. However, he had been over in a stooped position and felt something ‘pop’ in his back. When he stood up he realised he couldn’t hear.

He approached the man and tried to strike up a conversation. He soon realised Lillard was deaf.

He ran his hand carefully down Lillard’s spine and felt one of the vertebrae was not in its normal position.

“I reasoned that if that vertebrae was replaced, the man’s hearing should be restored”, he wrote in his notes afterwards.

“With this object in view, a half hour’s talk persuaded Mr  Lillard to allow me to replace it. I racked it into position by using the spinous process as a lever, and soon the man could hear as before”.

Over the succeeding months, other patients came to Palmer with every conceivable problem, including flu, sciatica, migraine headaches, stomach complaints, epilepsy and heart trouble.

D.D. Palmer found each of these conditions responded well to the adjustments which he called ‘hand treatments’.

 

Later he coined the term chiropractic – from the Greek words, ‘cheiros’ meaning hand, and ‘praktikus’ meaning action.

Chiropractic Bio Physics

What Is It?

 

Chiropractic Bio Physics is a system of chiropractic spinal analysis and care developed by Donald D. Harrison and Glenn Harrison to improve patient well being. They are trained chiropractors from America, who have been researching this method of chiropractic analysis for over 25 years.

The goal of the CBP technique is to restore three dimensional human posture. They have developed many methods to achieve this, including the ‘mirror image’ posture adjustments, rehabilitative exercises and cervical, thoracic and lumbar extension traction and manual techniques.

The CBP corrective care program involves chiropractic adjustments, instrument assisted adjustment and a variety of corrective extension traction procedures and corrective postural exercises.

What is involved for me?

 

During your initial consultation Dr Francois took a full case history, conducted a thorough orthopaedic and neurological exam and assessed your posture for any irregularities. Your x-rays were analyzed to decide on an  appropriate schedule of care, involving the use of the bio-physics techniques.

The most common posture we see is ‘cervical hypolordosis’, where the patient’s head is pushed forward and the ligaments and muscles in the neck have shortened to adapt to the abnormal posture.

The purpose of the cervical traction is to provide a slow adjusting force to stretch them back out. This helps to restore the natural curve in the neck and assists in holding adjustments longer.

 

By using these methods our chiropractors have amazing success in  restoring the natural curves in our patients spines and assisting in achieving optimal spinal structure and function.

The Leaky Roof Patch or Fix?

Most people are so focused on their symptoms that they often neglect to address the cause of their discomfort.  When the cause is obvious, people often make the right decision.  For example, if you had a pebble in your shoe and it was bothering you, you wouldn’t take a pain killer or an anti-inflammatory to cover up the discomfort.  You would recognize it was the pebble and you would take a moment to remove it from your shoe.

But, are headaches or back pain the result of an inadequate supply of aspirin in the bloodstream?  Of course not.  Yet, we chiropractors are often called in to “clean up the mess” associated with many chronic health problems. 

Consider the leaky roof.  It only leaks after it rains…it doesn’t leak all the time.  If you called us in to clean the carpet after a bad rain, wouldn’t you want us to point out that the mess is not the real problem and direct your attention to the cause (the leaky roof)?  Sure.  But why?

Because you know that if we just “clean up the mess” we will have to do it again after the next rain.  But, why wouldn’t someone want to fix the roof?  Usually, the answer is that it is much cheaper to just clean up the mess than to fix the roof.  This is a misconception. 

Over a 10 year period of time, the same money will be spent whether we fix the roof now or just clean up the mess every time it rains.  The difference is that if we just clean up the mess, 10 years from now the roof will be in far worse condition than it is today and will require much more time, money, energy and effort to fix…if it is even fixable at that point.  If we invest the time, effort and money to fix the cause of the mess now, then 10 years from now we are likely to have not had to continuously fix problems but will also have a “healthy” roof.

The decision is always yours.  It is our obligation to point out the leaky roof so that the decisions you make are informed decisions.