Every American is required by law to have health insurance, although many still don’t.  The idea is to cover more Americans so that more Americans can have access to more affordable medical treatment.  Regardless of whether you think this is a good idea or not, this does mean that more Americans are going to be face to face with more medical doctors and receive more medical treatment, usually drug therapy.  With this in mind I suggest you give serious thought to my 2 rules of medical interaction:

1)     LIVE YOUR LIFE TO CREATE HEALTH TO AVOID MEDICINE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.  

2)     IF YOU MUST SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION, MAKE WELL INFORMED/EDUCATED DECISIONS.

Here are conservative numbers I obtained some years ago from the L.A. Times and S.B. Sun newspapers.  In the United States alone, 120,000 people die as a result of medical practice…errors.  We call this malpractice.  Medicine calls it iatrogenesis.  90,000 people die from diseases they did not have when they checked into the hospital.  This is called nosocomial infections.  100,000 people die from reactions to prescribed medication.  These are called side-effects.  If you are old enough you know people who sadly fall into one or more of these categories.  

            Add these three numbers and you have 310,000 people dying every year in America directly due to the practice of medicine.  Now, according to the CDC, in 2013 611,105 Americans died from heart disease and 584,881 from cancer.  From there we drop to 149,205 from chronic lower respiratory diseases such as emphysema/COPD.  This makes the practice of medicine the 3rd leading cause of death in the U.S!  

            This typically leads to one of two reactions.  The most common reaction is a shrug of the shoulders, perhaps a nervous laugh, and an “Oh, well, what can you do” attitude.  The less common reaction is real fear or perhaps even outrage.  The second reaction has the chance of prolonging and improving the quality of that person’s life.  It will drive you to change, to avoid the inevitable.  The first reaction, in contrast, will lead to the same statistical pile of death.

            The top three killers heart disease, cancer and the practice of medicine can, to a great extent, be prevented by lifestyle.  Weight management, regular aerobic exercise, plenty of water, well balanced diet, and supplementation are all very important.  Note that all of these reduce inflammation, which the literature is more and more telling us is the primary cause of many killer diseases.  This is where regular chiropractic adjustments, disc pump exercises, and deep tissue therapy come in.  They reduce the spinal component of your body’s inflammation, perhaps the largest harbor of inflammation in the body.  This is why adjustments are part of the process to avoid medicine, because no medicine at all is the only 100% safe medicine.

Besides the common cold, the #1 ailment among preschool children is the ear infection, technically called Otitis Media.  Quick anatomy lesson - Otitis media means an infection of the middle ear.  In the diagram above the middle ear is a mostly empty chamber on the other side of the ear drum whose purpose is to house the three tiny bones, called the hammer, anvil, and stirrup.  They are part of the hearing mechanism.  Very importantly, connecting this chamber to the back of the throat is a small drain line, called the Eustachian Tube.  Two more important points - First, the lining of the middle ear chamber is mucus membrane, and it continually makes a liquid called mucus.  Second, bacteria are everywhere in and on the human body, including the middle ear.  I know it’s gross that we are a walking bacteria factory, but that’s the way it is.

            So what exactly is an ear infection?  Here’s the sequence of events:

1)     The Eustachian tube gets blocked or shut off sealing up the middle ear chamber.  Now it’s closed up and nothing is getting in or out.    

2)     The mucus membranes continue to make the liquid mucus which builds up in the chamber.  This sounds painful.

3)     The bacteria love the warm wet environment and replicate like crazy.  This sounds very painful!

The logical question is what is the original cause of the ear infection?  Is it the bacteria?  Or is it the mucus?  Or is it the closed off Eustachian tube?  Quite obviously it’s the closed off Eustachian tube.

  

            And how does medicine treat the ear infection?  Do they treat the cause, the closed off Eustachian tube, or do they treat the effect, the bacterial growth?  We all know they treat the effect, the bacteria, with a poison called antibiotics.  And this leads to a couple of fun facts.

            The University of Pittsburgh published a study that showed that the use of antibiotics for the treatment of otitis media is no better than placebo.  And more to the point, the use of antibiotics can increase the chance of re-infection by 2.9 times.  What this means is that statistically, when you give a child an antibiotic for an ear infection, not only would he have gotten better at the same rate as if you had never given him the drug, he is now nearly 3 times more likely to develop a second ear infection.  Why, because we never let his body cure itself of the cause of the infection.  But, you say, my baby is crying and in pain right now.  What do I do if I don’t treat the symptom?  

            A retrospective study by Dr. Joan Fallon reviewing 116 otitis media case-files showed that chiropractic adjustments resolved 112 of them within 5 days, 2 took 7 days, and only 2 needed medical attention.  As it turns out the proper adjustment by a trained/experienced chiropractor can resolve the cause, the blocked Eustachian tube, 98% of the time.  No drugs.  No side effects.  No kidding.  And sometimes, literally overnight.  

Research done at the University of Helsinki, Finland was published by Dr. Tapio Videman in the 1980’s that would revolutionize modern orthopedic surgery.  Prior to this time orthopedic surgeons would routinely cast or otherwise immobilize the joints they did surgery on, allowing the joint to heal completely before initiating a program of physio-therapy/rehabilitation.  And then came Videman.

            His study was done largely using rabbits.  He would immobilize their hip joints to varying degrees.  No it doesn’t sound pleasant to be a rabbit in his lab!  Yes it does get worse for the nose-twitching rodents.  After a predetermined period of time he would sacrifice the rabbit, remove the hip joint, section it and look at it under electron microscope.  What he found was astounding!  Videman discovered that reducing the hip joint motion by just 50% for a period of a mere 2 weeks resulted in, using Videman’s words, “permanent and irreversible” damage to the cartilage surface of the joint.  Keep in mind that the cartilage is the hard and smooth as glass liner between nearly every joint in the body.

            When I first read this I wondered, “So what about when we cast a broken bone immobilizing for 6 weeks?”  Yep, this means that you will have permanent and irreversible damage to the cartilage of that joint too, but Videman’s study also concluded that if you restore the joint motion back to normal, the degeneration process will be stopped.  So if you wore a cast when you were a kid, not to worry, the amount of damage may technically be measureable, but is infinitesimal and inconsequential.    

            When the orthopedic surgeons looked at his study, a revolution occurred.  Today, if you have joint surgery on a Monday, with rare exception, you will be moving that joint by Tuesday.  As a result your chances of developing arthritis in that joint later in life is much much reduced. 

            A much quieter revolution happened at the same time in chiropractic circles.  Our main job is to restore motion to your spinal joints, right?  We use the adjustments to do this.  In my office we also use the disc-pump exercises to maintain that motion.  The question is how often should we do the adjustments?  How often should we do the exercises?  It’s actually much more complicated than a shoulder or hip surgery that involves a single joint.  Your spine has 76 joints in it, not including the 72 joints that hold your rib cage to your spine.  And I can only adjust maybe 3-6 vertebrae on any given office visit.  Videman says we have two weeks before permanent and irreversible degeneration kicks in.  If you were faced with this data, how often would you want to be checked and adjusted?  Yearly?  Monthly?  Every 2 weeks?  Weekly?  More often?

            So we reserve 4 times per week for acute fresh injuries.  3 times per week for intensive care.  2 times per week for reconstruction.  Once per week for ongoing wellness.  Based upon the above data getting adjusted less than weekly just does not make sense.  You, of course, can do whatever you want, but now you know “Why Weekly?”  

“My greatest legacy would NOT be from my children and grandchildren copying what I did right, but them learning from what I did wrong.” – Anonymous.    

Right now, think of someone you like and know well who is older than you, or perhaps a loved one who has already passed on to the next life.  What did they do wrong…with regard to their health?  What could they have done differently?  What might have improved either the quantity or quality of their life?  What can you learn from them?  How can you honor that life? 

Example from my life:  My sister passed last year.  She was 65.  I wish to honor her.  What did she do wrong?  She smoked.  She was overweight.  She was sedentary.  She took poor care of her spine.  She tended to negativity.  She only went out of the house when she had to.  I can honor her by learning from the things that prematurely ended her life.  It’s easy for me to not smoke.  But I tend to overweight (240# at my peak) so I commit to maintaining a healthy weight (185-190#).  I commit to regular exercise.  I commit to regular spinal adjustments and disc-pump exercises.  I commit to trying to look on the bright side of life.  And I commit to the outdoors.  Finally, I commit these things in the name of Sherrie.  This is one way I can honor her life.  Perhaps I did not learn any of these lessons directly from her, but I can still honor her by remembering them and applying them to my life in her memory. 

In contrast, let me offer an example of something I have learned from my father.  My father is my hero, my role model.  But he made one mistake, in my humble opinion, that has led to a premature decline in his cognition, his memory, his ability to grasp complex topics.  The mistake…he retired at about 55 years of age, with more than enough money and investments to last a couple of retirements.  Good for him.  The problem was that he just tinkered.  He puttered.  Did this and that.  Not to say there is anything wrong with tinkering and puttering, but in his mid 70’s his mental acuity, his short-term memory, even some of his long-term memory, is severely suffering.  The brain is a muscle and in my opinion he did not exercise it enough.  He is still alive and is still my hero, but I am watching my father fade all too quickly.

How do I honor him?  I think that when he retired he should have obtained another job, or volunteered, or taught…did something to expand his mind.  I’m very fortunate in that I love what I do.  I love working with you.  I love helping people to feel better and to gain health using nothing but my hands and the power that made the body.  So to honor my dad I will not retire until I can’t physically do this job.  That should keep my mind active and learning to prevent premature deterioration.  Have I told him this?  Of course not.  I don’t need to.  But I do tell him I love him and thank you. 

I could go on but we are at the end of the page.  Honor someone else’s life by improving yours.  Try to leave nothing for your kids to learn from your mistakes.  An impossible task maybe, but one I’ll keep shooting for.