CHIROS FACE TOUGH CHALLENGE OVER MYTHS
FOR nearly two years I have been suffering excruciating pain in my right thigh. At times it was so painful that I could hardly take a step forward.
When this occurred, I had to hold on to a chair with my left hand and squeeze the thigh several times with my right hand until the pain eased off. And this was happening increasingly and annoyingly, not to mention my utter frustration.
I had been to the doctors and the physiotherapists several times and had my leg x-rayed.
Finally, I was told nothing could be done about the pain and that I had to learn to live with it because of some degeneration in my thigh bone.
Degeneration of the bone, surprisingly, can occur to anyone, even as young as a 12-year-old boy or girl. But I was not prepared to surrender my fate to the pain, however excruciatingly it may be. It would certainly make my life miserable.
So I continued my search for a cure or some permanent relief.
While having my weekly massage one Monday morning, masseuse Eileen Reynolds suggested that I should see a chiropractor about my thigh.
“Chiropractor?” I queried with a voice in somewhat disbelief.
“Yes, chiropractor,” she replied softly.
“But doctors, generally, don’t recommend chiropractic care for their patients,” I said. “They believe chiropractors are quacks, who knock the bones in your body, pretending that they have the healing power. The doctors would rather refer their patients to a physio.”
“I know, Jeff, but you go and see Dr Malcolm Rudd and then decide for yourself,” she insisted.
And I did.
As I sat in the reception area of Dr Rudd’s Leeming Chiropractic Centre, waiting for my turn to see him, I watched a video on the history of chiropractic treatment, the researches that have been carried out to verify their work, the successes that they have achieved over the years and, more importantly, how they treat the spinal cord, which has much to do with the pain we suffer because the blood is not flowing properly from the brain to that painful part of the body.
Here, I thought, lay the solution to my wn problem, although I was still sceptical despite the great amount of information I had learnt from the video. Yet it did, indeed, arouse my interest to find out more about it.
It was not until I started asking questions as I talked with Dr Rudd that I realised there were many myths about chiropractors. Some of these myths include the ridiculous description of chiropractors being “cult healers”, apart from the common and unjustifiable label “quacks”, in spite of their graduation from a five-year chiropractic study at a university.
Obviously, for one reason or another, the medical profession has systematically undermined the chiropractic services for many years, let alone recognise and try to work together with them. Even today it is rare to see a doctor and a chiropractor in the same building.
In all fairness, some physicians do refer their patients to chiropractors for alternative treatment; many simply refuse to support or speak about the chiropractic profession.
What is clear, though, is that deep prejudice among the doctors is hard to change even with the overwhelming evidence that prove chiropractors deserve the recognition they are seeking.
For example, in his foreword to a book The Chiropractic Profession, Dr Wayne B Jonas of the Uniformed Services University of Health Science in Maryland, United States, admits he was prejudiced against chiropractors and that referral to chiropractic services was simply not in his “repertoire of care”.
Shockingly, he also discloses that the medical profession had often used highly dishonest methods to undermine the chiropractic profession.
However, when he became Director of the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health Science, his prejudice softened by his impression of the chiropractors’ sophistication, professionalism, expertise and their keen interest in science.
Perhaps, the greatest service Dr Jonas has done for chiropractors, who have been trying to convince the medical profession that they, too, have a role to play in the general health care, is his comment that chiropractors “have better training and experience than conventional physicians do” in the evaluation and treatment of musculoskeletal problems.
Unfortunately, even such remark, coming from an eminent doctor, has not made much difference in changing the attitudes of doctors, in general, who have refused to meet representatives of the chiropractic profession to clear any misgiving, misunderstanding or suspicion. That is currently happening in Western Australia.
Further example of this uncompromising stance of the medical profession is also found in the evidence presented to the world’s only inquiry into chiropractic services by the New Zealand government some years ago.
The commission of inquiry report categorically states that chiropractors cannot be regarded as “practising a separate and distinct healing art”. They are part of a specialised branch of general health care like dentists, psychiatrists, physiotherapists or any other specialists.
Central to the chiropractic treatment is the spinal abnormality, called “vertebral subluxation” or “chiropractic subluxation”, which contributes to pain and other bodily disturbances.
The chiropractor will identify it and use his manual therapy to correct it.
Such an abnormality can cause various types of interference within the nervous system. It not only causes muscular or nerve pain but also becomes a factor in producing other disorders.
This concept of “subluxation” had also been the subject of controversy in which the doctors argued that it “existed only in the chiropractors’ mind”.
But witnesses to the New Zealand commission hearing had testified that they found marked improvements to their conditions after being treated by chiropractors.
One of them, an auditor, who had suffered constant back pain, had several x-rays taken – only to be told that his problem was due to “wear and tear”. However, after being treated by a chiropractor, he said the pain had disappeared like a “miracle”.
A farmer, who for 30 years suffered a back pain diagnosed as bone fusion, was persuaded by a friend to see a chiropractor. He, too, found that the pain had gone forever and he had not been required to see a chiropractor again for 20 years since the last treatment.
He was healthy and had taken part in vigorous axeman’s events at local sports.
Then there was the matron of a private hospital, who had been suffering a neck problem that was medically diagnosed as a disc lesion.
After some unsuccessful medical treatments, she went to a chiropractor and she had “never looked back”.
NEXT WEEK: Even a baby needs chiropractic care.
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