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#48 Progressive And Degenerative 

3/19/2014

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            Progressive - Tending to become more severe or wider in scope.

            Degenerative - Getting steadily worse. 

            These two words describe the character of subluxation.  Subluxation is damage to the function of the joints of the spine due to trauma of a physical, chemical, and even emotional nature.  Once there is damage to a joint it will be there forever because adult humans essentially cannot make the cartilage needed to repair the joint.  This is why with the advent of advanced imaging such as MRI and CT we are seeing spinal joint degeneration in teenagers.  As many of you know I am the team chiropractor for the athletes at UC Riverside.  I was working on one of their female athletes recently and reading her MRI report where it noted disc bulges, joint degeneration, and bone spurs, in a 20 year old!!  I have made the observation over and over that I am yet to find a 10 year old without some sign of subluxation.  By the time we are 30 advanced imaging can see the degeneration, and then by 40 we can see it on x-ray.  It truly is both progressive and degenerative.

            Heart disease is also progressive and degenerative.  Cancer is progressive and degenerative.  Diabetes is progressive and degenerative.  There are many diseases that are progressive and degenerative.  We can learn a lot about treatment of progressive and degenerative conditions by looking at these examples.  What is the goal of treatment of these types of disease?  Certainly we would like to have complete healing, but that is often not possible.  The next level of treatment is to stop the progression.  If we can’t do that we want to at least slow it down.  And the last treatment type is symptom control.  And sometimes in late stages of the disease the only available treatment is symptom control as there is no stopping or slowing the progression.

            Let’s apply this lesson to subluxation.  It too is progressive and degenerative, and by the way lethal.  Its lethality is due to its direct effect on nerve function.  The purpose of the nerve system is to read the environment and adapt the body to it.  Subluxation damages nerve function which damages adaptability which is ultimately the cause of all disease when you think about it.  All disease results from the inability of the body to properly adapt to environmental stresses.  So, if the first goal of treatment is complete healing, we know that that is not possible with joints for the reasons stated above.  Therefore, the next goal of treatment is to stop or slow the progression.  That is exactly what reconstructive care is trying to do through ongoing adjustments to the damaged joints. You should know I am terrified of the progressive and degenerative nature of subluxation in my own spine.  I have been disabled by it in the past.  This is at least partly why my office is dedicated to reconstructive care of the subluxation.

            However, the lay person does not usually understand the progressive and degenerative nature of the subluxation and that there is treatment beyond symptom control.  And unfortunately too often chiropractors do not tell their patients this information.  And how can we make good health decisions with incomplete information?  This is why we use the computer programs and why we de-emphasize symptoms and why I write these articles and why we push reconstructive care and why I adjust most children for free.  This is why this office is here.  Thanks for being part of it. 

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    Dr. Rick

    After writing an article per week for a year, I just kept going.  These are most of my collection.  They are written with my existing patients in mind, so some stuff may seem odd or unusual, but would make perfect sense to those who know chiropractic and who know me.  Enjoy and share!  For my personal blog visit: 

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     I used to suffer severe headaches and migraines on a daily basis, usually all day.  I managed to work in an office because I had to.  When I went home at the end of the day I would often close the shades and go to bed.  I could not plan weekend events because I simply never knew how I was going to feel tomorrow.  If there were a special event such as a birthday or wedding, I would begin to medicate myself two weeks in advance to give myself the best chance of making the event.
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     An opportunity came up for us to adopt a newborn baby girl not long after I began chiropractic care.  This baby was particularly important to me and my husband because her mother is a relative.  Tragically, her mother was also a drug user and did drugs during her pregnancy.  If we could not adopt the baby she would have been put into the foster system since the biological mother was incapable of raising her.
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     What does this have to do with chiropractic?  The reality is that without chiropractic, I would still be nearly an invalid with headaches.  I COULD NOT HAVE TAKEN CARE OF AN INFANT OR RAISED A YOUNG CHILD.  THEREFORE, SHE WOULD NOT HAVE ANY OF THE OPPORTUNITIES IN LIFE THAT MY HUSBAND AND I WILL BE ABLE TO PROVIDE FOR HER.  MY DAUGHTER’S LIFE IS POSSIBLE BECAUSE SOMEBODY MADE ME GO TO A CHIROPRACTOR. 
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Andrew's mother, Barbara, wrote:

     Hello, My name is Andrew and I am a happy, healthy one year old.  But I wasn’t so happy or healthy when I first met Dr. Rick a few months ago.  I had been having problems with my ears for four months, I couldn’t sleep at night and I was miserable.  We’d been to the doctor lots of times but nothing was helping.  In fact, all the medicines the doctor had tried seemed to make me worse instead of better!  Both the regular doctor and the Ear-Nose and Throat doctor said that if the antibiotics didn’t work, then they’d just have to put tubes in.  Now my Mom and dad weren’t about to let them do surgery on me, especially since they had been reading and learned that tubes can cause more problems than they solve.  My mom and dad did a lot of praying.  Then my mom heard that sometimes babies who have a traumatic birth like mine have ear trouble.  You see when I was born they used a vacuum extractor and forceps to pull me out.  I guess all that yanking on my head, hurt my neck.  She also heard that chiropractic care can be the answer.  Now she was skeptical because she couldn’t imagine a chiropractor helping ear infections!?!  But at that point she was willing to try anything!!  Happily, a few weeks of adjustments and my ears were all cleared up.  In addition, I no longer had a stiff neck or shoulders and my whole personality was happier.  I have to tell all babies who have ear troubles, don’t let them give you tubes until you at least try chiropractic care first.  After all, it can’t hurt and if you’re like me, you could be perfectly well with no drugs and no surgery.  In my family, we thank God for Dr. Rick, because I feel better, my mom and dad are happier and sometimes, I even sleep through the night.