If I ever hear anyone say, "I have had chiropractic
adjustments, and they didn't help" my first thoughts are: from whom did
they receive the adjustments; what methods
did the chiropractor employ, and what is his or her background?
Some folks are under the impression that a "chiropractic
adjustment" is a generic entity. Because
effective chiropractic adjusting requires artistry and a lot of training
(especially post-graduate training), nothing could be further from the truth.
Holding the belief that if one chiropractic experience
didn't work then none will work is kind of like saying, "Well, that
medical physician didn't help, so no more medical care for me!"
The latter statement probably would not occur because most people have
a fundamental grasp of the essentially useful parts of orthodox or so-called
allopathic medicine. Here I want to touch upon the rich therapeutic
possibilities of an array of available chiropractic therapies.
My appreciation of the fine points and complexities of
chiropractic medicine came from getting to know Dr. Brent Davis.
He practiced chiropractic medicine and integrated natural therapies in
S. California
for many years. Then he moved to
Tennessee to establish a forest center reserve and organic herb farm to supply
some of the flowers for his newly invented product line of UNCUT flower"!
essences. That having been
accomplished, he resumed his truly enjoyable clinical practice.
His new
Nashville
office offers a unique and powerful integrated approach to natural healing.
The following questions and answers are part of an interview I had with
him.
MS: What are some of the most exciting and valuable health insights you can
offer
Nashville
readers?
BD: Many of the common chronic health problems that aggravate people and
truly reduce quality of life are caused in varying degrees by structural
problems. Chronic headaches, tight shoulders and painful neck muscles, many
digestive disturbances, PMS, and numerous other complaints are closely linked
to structural and hence neurological balance or the lack thereof.
In recent decades, many new chiropractic techniques and specialties
have evolved to treat health complaints in different ways.
MS: You mean ways different from the standard chiropractic adjustment that
results in the "pop" from the release of abnormal joint tension?
BD: Yes.
MS: The sound that chiropractic advocates associate with relief of neck and
back pain, for example?
BD: Yes. The new methods of adjusting are referred to as non-force
techniques. I want to digress for a moment and then I'll return to that
subject.
It takes several years of training in chiropractic college and then
apprenticeship under a chiropractor skilled in manual manipulation to learn
the art of skeletal adjusting. Folks
fail to realize this, perhaps because they have seen a variation of the local
bruiser at a football game in the park grab one of his buddies and yank on him
until bones in his back pop. To
think of that as an adjustment would be somewhat akin to seeing a gang member
in a street fight draw blood with a knife, and then refer to him as a surgeon.
When untrained individuals "adjust" one another, most of the time
the bones that move and "pop" are what we call hypermobile - that is,
they move too freely already, and should NOT be adjusted.
The hypermobile bones are adjacent to fixated or locked bones.
The fixated bones are the ones that need to be forcefully adjusted
SOMETIMES, and it takes a lot of skill to do that and to know when to do it.
Another point is that I think
every profession has practitioners that do not master essential skills, and
unfortunately, I have seen chiropractors who are just too rough and imprecise
in their adjusting. With proper
skill, manual adjustments do NOT hurt!
MS: You were mentioning new chiropractic therapies and non-force adjusting.
BD: Yes. There are probably in the neighborhood of 40 different
chiropractic specialties or techniques in use today.
Four techniques that I use a great deal are applied kinesiology (A.K.),
bioenergetic synchronization technique (B.E.S.T.),sacro-occipital technique (S.O.T.),
and neurological organization technique (N.O.T.).Each of these four has
devised rather ingenious ways of bringing the body into structural and
neurological balance by means of bone repositioning that do not require a
forceful thrust. (In general, this
is accomplished by procedures that normalize muscle function so that the
muscles pull the bones back where they belong and hold them there.)
Interestingly, each of the chiropractors that developed these techniques
thoroughly mastered force adjusting and used that approach on the occasions it
was called for. I do the same.
When I see a patient for the first time I might manually adjust bones
in two or three areas of the spine (or skull) to reduce structural tension if
that person's body responds to tests I perform in a way that shows the
adjustment is needed. The areas
that can cause the most profound and rapid shift back toward health when they
are manually adjusted are: (1) the base of the skull (the occiput and atlas);
the bottom of the spine (the sacrum and fifth lumbar); and the lower mid-back
(the thoracic lumbar junction.) These areas are often knocked out of place in
accidents or sports injuries and stay displaced for years.
Once I adjust them and energetically "set" them in place, I
normally don't need to adjust them again unless the patient is reinjured.
Then as patients' health complaints diminish, I focus on fine tuning the
rest of the muscular and skeletal system with non-force methods of adjusting.
Nutritional, herbal and flower essence therapies are the other essential parts
in my approach to integrated therapies.
MS: Why do you feel nutrition, flower essences, and herbology are essential accompaniments to structural therapies?
BD: By normalizing bone position and muscular tension in the body, one
feels better and can make a dramatic shift to better health quickly. It
achieves a second enormously important therapeutic goal as well: it reduces
inflammation. Inflammation (associated with oxidative stress in medical
nutrition) is the primary cause of aging. Proper nutrition and herbs also
diminish inflammation. By
combining both approaches, one quite literally slows aging.
The use of my newly invented UNCUT flower"! essences can dramatically
reduce the stress of buried subconscious memories of emotional trauma which
are so common.
You may reach Dr. Davis by calling (615)780-5927 CST
and by visiting his website. All
instructions for phone consultation are there at DavisVitalHealthCenter.com
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