You are in the year 1895.  Grover Cleveland is president.  The Spanish-American War is still three years in the future in which Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders will gain fame.  Wilhelm Roentgen is in the process of discovering the x-ray.  Tchaikovsky has just written Swan Lake.  And you are the proverbial fly on the wall in a small magnetic healer’s office in the mid-west town of Davenport, Iowa.  The healer, named Daniel David Palmer is known to his friends simply as D.D.  The furnishings are sparse, a desk and lamp, an examination table, a chair, and a copy of the local newspaper to read between patients.  There in the room you see D.D. and his patient Harvey Lillard.  Harvey is a partially deaf black man, a local janitor by trade.  You hear him tell his story of losing his hearing 17 years prior. “I heard a sound in my neck and then my hearing suddenly faded.  I could no longer hear the ticking of my watch or the sounds of the street cars outside.”  As you watch, D.D., a curious self-taught man, feels around Harvey’s neck to find the source of this sound that Harvey heard, just before he stopped hearing at all.  He finds a lump of some sort.  You hear him talk under his breath.  “If a bone displaced and caused this man’s hearing to fade, then perhaps I can replace that bone and restore it.”  You see the thrust of the first chiropractic adjustment.  You here the loud crack.  Harvey gets up and leaves only to return the next day, and the day after that.  On each of those days D.D. goes through the same procedure, makes the same adjustment, and then magic seems to happen.  Harvey’s hearing returns.  A miracle?  For Harvey yes, but for D.D. it is the beginning of an idea that will grow into the second largest primary health care profession in the world.  .

            A friend of D.D.’s, Reverend Samuel Weed, will go on to coin the name “chiropractic” from the Greek meaning “to do or to make by hand.”  But it was D.D. himself who introduced the world to the spinal lesion he called subluxation.  And let the confusion begin.

             In Dorland’s Medical Dictionary a subluxation is a joint that is out of position, but less than a luxation (or less than a dislocation).  So a subluxation is an incomplete dislocation.  That fit with the early ideas of D.D. and his students and colleagues, but not with later scientific discoveries.  In the 70’s we began to understand that in the vast majority of cases, the chiropractic subluxation was not a bone out of place pressing on a nerve.  It was something much more complex.  In fact, only in a very few cases is the alignment of the bone important. 

            In the vast majority of cases the spinal and extraspinal lesions that we chiropractors adjust is a joint or joints that have lost their mobility.  They have been damaged by injury, by repetitive trauma, by posture, and by gravity.  They are in perfectly good alignment but the damage has resulted in inflammation which has resulted in scar tissue, which has glued and tied up the joints so they can’t do their job any longer.  And this leads to three consequences.

1)      Pain – When the dysfunction is high enough it hurts, sometimes unbearably.  More health care dollars are spent chasing this down than any other medical condition, by far.

2)      Degeneration – A joint that has lost its mobility will begin to wear out in just 2 weeks, at the microscopic level.  Left unfixed, the cartilage will eventually wear out.  This is the single largest cause of disability in the world. 

3)      Disease – Your entire health is determined by how well your nervous system communicates with all your parts.  If you damage this system, parts will begin to break down because they cannot keep up with metabolic demands.  Any and every disease can have a spinal cause or partial component.   

So perhaps D.D. got the name wrong, but when it comes to the cause of pain, disability, and disease, he was exactly correct.  Subluxation is absolutely the single largest cause of pain and disability, and a large component of disease.  My profession discusses changing the name all the time, but as incorrect as subluxation is, we just can’t think of a better one.  Got any ideas? 

            When I’m checking the spine of a newborn baby it will look very different from my examination of an adult, which will look different from my examination of a pregnant mom-to-be, which will again look different from my examination of a 6 year old child.  I have had patients ranging in age from day 1 to year 90+.  For a person to be a patient the only requirement is that their spine has vertebral subluxation.  If their spine is perfect they don’t need me.  The first step away from perfect is a small restriction of motion of any joint in the spine for any number of reasons.  The next step from perfect would be multiple levels of restriction.  From there we might see curvature loss, then early degeneration, then disc space loss, disc herniation, bone spurs, scoliosis, increasing loss of mobility, eventually total disability.  The time-line from the first subluxation, most likely early in childhood or during the birth process, is long, taking years to decades.  According to well established data, your spine is the most likely organ in your entire body to cause your total disability.  The same data shows we will spend more money on the care of the spine than any other health problem we will ever have.  And finally, your chance of significant back problems developing in your life is 90%.  Only 1 in 10 people will NOT have back problems.  To put this in another light, if you were Angelina Jolie you would have your spine removed to prevent the inevitable problems you are going to have.  But that’s not really an option is it?

When it comes down to it you have only three options.  Your first option is to do what everyone else does, deal with the problems as they come.  But isn’t this the exact option that has resulted in the above statistical nightmare?  That doesn’t seem such a good option, even if everyone else is doing it!  The second option it to live in a gravity-free environment like space, and never do anything that could remotely cause spinal injury or strain.  True, but a silly non-option.  The last option is to take reasonable proactive steps to try to prevent a future disease that is nearly absolute. 

            Let’s look at this through a different lens, if you were told that you have a 90% chance of developing any other disease that you can imagine (cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc.) and that there were simple, cost effective, and reasonable steps you could take to drastically reduce your chances of developing that disease, would you or would you not take those steps?  Perhaps not…  But I know I would.  But if you would, what age should you start?  What is the perfect age to start these simple, cost effective, and reasonable steps? 

            I have my first grandson who is now 10 months old.  I checked him then and every couple of weeks since.  He has been adjusted a handful of times.  The perfect age for him was the day he was born.  I, on the other hand, did not get serious about my own chiropractic care until I was 39.  Yes indeed, I was a poor example of a chiropractor during the first 13 years of my practice, but I freely admit it as a prime example of someone who knows better and still messes up.  My lack of seriousness resulted in some serious spinal problems that I manage extremely well with the help of my chiropractors, but problems that I would not have had to deal with at all if I had taken these simple steps earlier.  That said, the perfect age for me was apparently 39 (but I wish now it had been earlier). 

            I am reminded of the old adage, what is the best camera in the world?  The one you have with you when you have a picture to take.  The best age to begin to take a serious attitude toward the largest disabler on the planet, the disease that more money is spent on than any other, the disease that you have a 90% chance of contracting, is the age you are this minute.

Have you ever done something in your life that, looking back, was just a really dumb thing to do?  No?  Perhaps you would like to hear about a couple of mine.  One day when I was about 8 my father was working in the garage.  I snuck a Philips-head screwdriver out to the front lawn to perfect my professional knife throwing skills.  On TV, when you see a knife thrower, he has a collection of sharp knives, a beautiful assistant holding a cigarette in her mouth who is standing in profile in front of a wooden background.  On this day I had my dad’s screwdriver, the lawn, and instead of a beautiful model, I had my foot.  On my final throw, I got the timing perfect and embedded the screwdriver into my flesh.  It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t have a model, eh?   

            Oh, what about the time I was making a balsa gliding plane by hand.  I was carving balsa wood with an X-acto knife kit and learned the very valuable lesson to not point the sharp end toward one’s own body.  The entire inch-long knife found its way deep into my left hand before I even knew what had happened.

             Oh oh, what about the time I cut off the pad of my left index finger during a chili cook-off, or about the time I severed a tendon in my right hand shoveling ice.  Yup. 

            And what do these stupid events all have in common other than being proof of my carelessness?  If you look carefully at my foot or my hands, you may see that commonality.  It is that the human body makes scar tissue…and sometimes in abundance.

            Think of scar tissue as organic duct tape.  I like this analogy because scar tissue is essentially a very sticky protein that does not stretch.  Sticky and unstretchable…duct tape; right?  This organic duct tape is made by the body whenever there is an inflammatory process, any inflammatory process, anywhere.  Inflammation can be brought about by things such as a cut, a scratch, a contusion, an ulcer, gum disease, arthritis, spinal subluxation, and even smoking.  Therefore, whenever you have inflammation, you have scar tissue.  Conversely, wherever you have scar tissue there is or was inflammation.  Inflammation and scar tissue go together just like Forrest Gump’s peas and carrots.

            It is this marriage of inflammation and scar tissue that makes ridding the body of inflammation so important for your health.   Studies now show that chronic inflammation/scar tissue is either the cause of or at least part of the cause of a great many “diseases of aging,” diseases such as cancer, heart disease, emphysema, asthma, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, in fact, all the arthridities, strokes, many of the complications of diabetes, most of the complications of smoking-related diseases, tendinitis, bursitis, nearly all the –itisis, dementia, and probably Alzheimer’s.  And this is just a partial list.

            Sometimes it’s the inflammation that is the demon, and sometimes it’s the duct tape.  But since the duct tape comes from inflammation, it is the inflammation that is the main target to reduce.  The less inflammation your body has the longer, healthier life you will have.  You can actually measure inflammation in your blood.  You can naturally reduce inflammation through the regular use of diet, exercise, weight control, supplementation, and stretching.  Probably the largest collection of inflammation and duct tape in your body is in your spine, and the best tool to reduce that is, of course, regular adjustments.  Every step you take now to reduce your inflammation and duct tape will add quantity and quality of life to the other end.      

This is a true story.  The names have been changed.  Once upon a time there was a little girl named Sherry.  When Sherry was conceived her mother was addicted to drugs.  Sadly, she continued to use drugs during the pregnancy.  This mother did make one good decision, and that was to put Sherry up for adoption once she was born.  The aunt of this drug-addicted mother-to-be heard about her niece, her addiction, and her pregnancy.  The aunt, Maria, did not have children of her own.  She spoke with her husband and both agreed that they would bring Sherry home from the hospital, adopt her, and raise her as their own.  They did this without care for the emotional, physical, or other problems that a drug addicted baby would surely have.  They did this without consideration of the potential dollar costs of raising such a child.  They will tell you that they did this because God put a calling in their hearts that drove them to love this child regardless of the consequences.  And they did.  They would tell you that Sherry was a gift from God.

            Sherry was born.  Maria took her home.  They adopted her.  They raised her with all the love, attention, and affection that any child could ever hope for.  When Sherry was about 6 she had a final high risk pediatric neurological examination with the team of doctors who had been looking after this child since day one.  The doctors told Maria and her husband that not only was Sherry doing fine, but she was excelling, and that there were NO residual effects of her drug addiction that they could detect.  But the doctors didn’t stop there.  They told Maria that the reason why Sherry was doing so well was not due to her medical care or her occupational therapy or any other intervention that she had along the way.  Sherry was doing so well simply because of the time, love and attention that Sherry’s mommy and daddy were able to give to her.  This adopted family, the only family that Sherry had ever known, without a doubt had completely and utterly changed Sherry’s entire future life.  They were God’s gift to Sherry.

            In the middle of all of this, when the doctor’s told Maria how good Sherry was doing, Maria sat down with me to share a part of her story that she had not shared with me up to then.  It would seem that several years before I met Maria a chain of events were set into motion that were intimately tied to this story.  Fellow church-goers for at least a couple of years had been trying to get Maria to come to my office for treatment of her headaches, which were daily and constant, severe, and quite debilitating.  She kept ignoring her friends, taking her medications, muddling through her work day, and staying in her darkened room all weekend.  If there was a weekend family event she would up her meds just to get through the event.  Thankfully, some loving soul kept nagging her and nagging her and finally Maria made an appointment, came in, told me her history, had her exam and x-rays, and we started care.  As is the case with at least 95% of my patients, she did very well and her headaches abated.  Eventually, she moved on to reconstructive and eventually wellness care.  End of story right?  Wrong.

            While we were sitting down that day she filled me in on the missing piece.  She told me that if it was not for her finally listening to her friends, getting her chiropractic exam, participating in chiropractic adjustments, and finally finding relief from her debilitating headaches, that she physically could not have even considered adopting Sherry.  Clearly without Maria and her husband Sherry would be a vastly different person with a much bleaker future.  This is not really a chiropractic story.  This is a love story.  But it does show the power of referral.

            Consider if you will the four characters Veruca Salt, Mike Teevee, Augustus Gloop, and Violet Beauregarde.  Just how do they differ from their counterpart Charlie Bucket?  Do you even have any idea what I am referring to?  If not, the movie Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory featured Gene Wilder as the eccentric candy maker Willie Wonka.  The 5 above named children earned golden tickets to take a tour of the fantastical wonder that was Wonka’s chocolate factory.  Spoiler alert!!  In the end Willie gives the entire factory including the Great Glass Elevator to Charlie Bucket.  Charlie had that special something that none of the other kids had.  While it is true that Veruca was a spoiled bad egg, Mike was a TV addict, Augustus was a glutton and Violet was an obnoxious gum chewer, what set Charlie apart from them was something that is really missing from the hyperspace world of today.  We live in the age of sound-bites, the world of Facebook, of instant messaging, 24 hour a day news, satellite transmission, a world in which when we pause for a moment in line at the grocery store or sit down with a cup of coffee, we log into our email, check our text messages, read the latest post or blog.  Our world today is summed up when Veruca declares to her daddy “I WANT IT NOW!!”  The thing that Charlie had that those other 4 kids did not and that is largely lacking in the 21st century is something called patience. 

(And if you skipped any part of the last paragraph you are just reinforcing my argument.  I thank you.)

            If I have learned one thing in my decades treating people is that health and healing do not fit into the 21st century model of quick and speedy everything, the era of impatience.  When the 21st century American gets sick, what he wants is to go to the medical doctor, get a pill, take the pill, get well, and move on.  Sometimes that model even seems to work, particularly when we are young and when the health problem is not serious.  But what about the four conditions that effect more Americans than any other conditions; back pain, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes?  What about a thousand other chronic conditions, any two of which you are likely to have to deal with in your life?  (Fun fact - I’ll bet you didn’t know that the average human dies with a minimum of 2 diseases inside his/her body, according to autopsy studies.) 

            What those four conditions and nearly every other chronic condition have in common is that once you have them they will always be in your life, they require a long-term plan to overcome, manage, and prevent recurrences.  They require life-style changes to be adopted by you, and sometimes right now.  They require what the 21st century has ill prepared us to have, patience. 

            And with regard to the spine, this is the reason why I spend so much time educating you about subluxation, about spinal damage, about the effects of time, life, and gravity.  This is why I encourage you to do my disc pump exercises every day for the rest of your life.  This is why I have three types of care and three different fee schedules.  This is why I am a chiropractic patient myself getting adjusted every week, doing my disc pumps every day, and doing all the other stuff I do to help prevent and manage my current and future health.  I have learned patience.  I look to the future for my health.  Health is indeed a marathon.