​In May of 2016 the esteemed British Medical Journal published the results of a study titled, “Medical Error – The Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.”  The doctor who wrote the study is a professor and research fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.  He points out that the most commonly cited estimate of deaths from medical error is from a 1999 report, 98,000.  I have been using this very same number for nearly 20 years.  It’s grossly outdated and underestimates the larger problem.  Analysis of four studies has since set the rate estimate at 251,454 dead Americans each and every year due to the mistakes made by medical doctors or the medical system in general.  That’s a bunch of people and their families!!
The study goes on to point out how difficult it really is to collect this data and that it probably represents an underestimate of the real problem.  It even offers a relevant case study; “A young woman recovered well after a successful transplant operation.  However, she was readmitted for non-specific complaints that were evaluated with extensive tests, some of which were unnecessary, including a pericardiocentesis.  She was discharged but came back to the hospital days later with intra-abdominal hemorrhage and cardiopulmonary arrest.  An autopsy revealed that the needle inserted during the pericardiocentesis grazed the liver causing a pseudoaneurysm that resulted in subsequent rupture and death.  The death certificate listed the cause of death as cardiovascular.”  There is no box on the death certificate for medical error, hence the underreporting.  So where do we go from here?
The study talks about transparency, better statistics, independent investigations, and the like.  But from where I sit the problem is the medical ego, or what Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, M.D. called in his book “Confessions of a Medical Heretic”, the modern religion of medicine.  This religion believes that drugs and surgery is the only way, and that if it can’t be cured that way, then there is no way.  How many times in your life has your medical doctor suggested to you that you consult a chiropractor, an acupuncturist, a naturopath, or some other form of “alternative” health care, or what I prefer to call “natural” health care?  It’s rare.  I contend medicine would be a lot safer if medical doctors used it less.  Profound. 
            Since gate-keeper physicians rarely refer to natural practitioners, perhaps a natural practitioner should be gate-keepers.  Hmm.  Is there a natural practitioner that is trained and licensed to do that, to be a portal of entry physician, a gate-keeper to the larger health care system, someone who can know better when a natural approach can be taken, when to abandon that natural approach, and when to refer for drugs and surgery?  Let’s take a look at that question.  There are only three licensed doctors who are “whole body” health care providers, who are qualified and licensed to be portal of entry physicians; Doctors of Medicine, Doctors of Osteopathy, and Doctors of Chiropractic (M.D., D.O., and D.C.). 
Personally, I’m forced by my insurance to use a M.D. as my primary care provider, but my portal of entry or gate-keeper is always my chiropractor.    
            Regardless of who you use as your gate-keeper, to limit your future need of the dangerous world of medicine you must live your life in a manner to minimize your exposure.  That means regular adjustments, regular exercise, a regulated diet, regulated weight, regular supplementation, regular sleep, etc.     

For some, perhaps you, the first experience of chiropractic is unique, stressful, perhaps frightening.  This is one of the reasons why I spend so much of my time teaching and explaining, to remove the mystery, to attempt to remove the fear, and of course to educate you about your body.  And so you are sitting there, being told what is wrong, how it got that way, what we can do about it, and how what we do is safe.  But perhaps all you can hear is the swish of your pulse in your ears and all you can feel is the thumping of your heart in your chest and perhaps that trickle of sweat down your forehead, because you are about to have something done that seems wrong.  You are about to get your spine “cracked.”  Yeah, the chiropractor uses the word “adjustment of subluxation”, clearly propaganda to try to legitimize some sort of modern era barbarism, but it sure seems like a crack to you, right? 
By the time you get your first adjustment I’ve done a bunch of examination, I’ve said a lot of words, some of which you got and some of which you forgot.  Yet the question gets asked over and over, “What is happening when this “crack” thingy, this adjustment happens to my spine?  How is this really helping me?”  As simple as chiropractic really is, the adjustment is incredibly complex, powerful, and unique.  Nothing else in health care compares.  Read below and you will see what I mean:    
1)Scar tissue – The adjustment is breaking down old scar tissue in the joint structures.  This scar tissue has built up over a lifetime of TLG: Time, Life, and Gravity.
2)Movement – The adjustment is restoring motion and mobility to these same joints, a little bit at a time.

1. Pressure – The adjustment is instantly reducing pressure within the joint.  If we could put a pressure gauge on the joint (like a tire gauge) the pressure would instantly go down.
2. Inflammation – The adjustment is reducing the degree of inflammation in and around the spine at a fairly rapid rate.  50% of the inflammation can be reduced in one or two dozen treatments after decades and decades of build-up.  Way more effective than any drug. 
3. Muscle Reset – The adjustment is resetting mechano-receptors.  There are sensors in the joints that keep the local muscles tight or in spasm, and those sensors are reset after each adjustment, leading to immediate muscle relaxation.
4. Habit Pattern Retrain – The adjustment is retraining Negative Neurological Habit Patterns, bad motion patterns that are memorized in your brain.  In other words, decades of bad movement of the spine has become the new normal, even though it is grossly abnormal.  Repeated adjustments help to retrain the brain to know real normal again.
5. Cartilage Hydration – The adjustment is helping to rehydrate the intervertebral discs by activating the disc-pump, which is essential to slow or stop disc degeneration.
6. Nerve Stress – The adjustment is reducing stress to the nerve system, helping every cell, tissue, and organ in the body that those nerves travel to and control.
7. Anti-oxidation – The adjustment has been shown to increase blood levels of thiole, one of our primary anti-oxidant chemicals, essential to prevent and repair genetic mutation.   
8. Alignment – Sometimes, the adjustment is restoring better alignment in some rare cases.  Most spinal subluxation is more about how things are working, and less than how they line up.  But in rare cases restoring alignment is a main goal.

And The Time Factor – Like any retraining process, it requires time and repetition.  You can’t learn to throw a curve ball well by going on the mound every couple of weeks.  Your subluxated spine cannot be retrained by random or too infrequent visits.  Each adjustment has a lasting time-period.  If you are not adjusted within that time-period you will be starting over each time.  And if you quit early you will never achieve maximum correction. 
So “crack” might be the sound you hear, and it might be what you tell your friends that I do, but using that word may be the very thing that scares them from seeking out the very treatment that may change their life.