THE most important thing people need to understand about health is this:

Health is not about how you feel, it is about how well your body is functioning.

By the time you feel physical diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, or arthritis, they have been manifesting for 10-25 years, or longer. In 60 per cent of cases of cardiovascular disease, the first symptom is either a heart attack or death. Alarming? It should be.

People with heart disease or breast cancer may “feel” fine, but their bodies are not functioning properly. The same is true with your spine and nervous system. This is where chiropractic care comes in. We can assess the function of your body as a whole, primarily your nervous system. The nervous system heals, controls, regulates, and coordinates the function of your entire body. Therefore, it is crucial that it is working properly. Even though you may feel ‘fine’, a chiropractic assessment can identify areas of subluxation, or decreased brain/body connection, so these areas can be assisted to ultimately function more properly – preventing a major problem before it occurs. Chiropractors do not cut you up into segments.

Remember that you were born to be healthy. When you keep your body’s life energy flowing by removing any interference in your brain/body connection, you will express the health potential you were meant to express.

“As long as that power [life energy] within you has control of your body, a state of health exists. Should something interfere with normal control of that internal power, then you cease to enjoy your birthright –health — instead a state of disease becomes prominent,” said Dr BJ Palmer.

CAN CHIROPRACTIC ADJUSTMENTS CAUSE A STROKE?

Since chiropractors deal in part with the neck, this would appear to be a valid concern and I have addressed this issue before. However, science is showing us that there is absolutely no need for unnecessary worry. Consider these facts:

*A shoulder check while driving stretches the vertebral artery up to 80 per cent more than during a common chiropractic adjustment (study from the University of Calgary by Dr Herzog). That means you are just as likely (or even more likely) to experience a stroke by simply being a safe, courteous driver than you are from getting a chiropractic neck alignment.

*There have been many studies analysing the risk of stroke following a chiropractic adjustment. The best estimates are showing that the likelihood of stroke following an adjustment range somewhere between one in 15 million people and one in two million people. Actually, the most complete and unbiased studies done by the ones whose business it is to literally know these things (malpractice insurance carriers) have shown the risk to be closer to two in 10 million. There is more of a chance of being struck by lightning than from being injured seriously by a trained chiropractor. So, there is a minute amount of correlation to strokes, but not from chiropractic causation. According to the July 2000 issue of the Chiropractic Journal, the risk of having a stroke in a medical doctor’s office is at least equal to that of a chiropractor’s office. The journal has also documented cases of strokes occurring in the waiting room of a chiropractor’s office prior to being adjusted. If that person had been adjusted five minutes before the stroke, who would have been blamed? If someone leaves a specific department store and has a stroke, would they blame that store for their own poor lifestyle habits that precipitated their stroke? It is just as likely that that person would have experienced a “beauty parlour” stroke had they gone to get their hair washed. Does that mean washing your hair is a stroke risk? Absolutely not. The risk is there whether you wash your hair or not. The risk is there if you look up into the sky to observe a bird or a plane. The surrounding circumstances will rarely have any effect on that. If you have a heart attack at the library, is the book to blame? The librarian? Your cardiologist?

To put these huge numbers in perspective, please consider the following actual risk assessment:

*The risk of hospitalisation and death from taking NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like Advil, Motrin and Nuprin) is about 1 in 1000.

*The risk of death from cervical spine surgery (neck surgery) is about 1 in 200.

*The risk of irreversible neurological damage, from the same surgery is 1 in 65.

A quick review of malpractice insurance rates gives us good insight into the amount of claims against health care practitioners in general. Consider the following:

*OB-GYN in Canada – US$12,000 per year

*OB-GYN in Florida – US$237,000 per year

*Dentist – $1500 – US$2000 per year

*Chiropractor – US$681 per year

Insurance companies have done their research, I have absolutely no doubt about that. As a company, they fully understand how much they will have to pay out for people being (and that will be) injured. Chiropractic is and always has been very safe. In fact, it is hundreds of times safer than visiting your dentist or your gynaecologist. Imagine the correlating malpractice premiums for more invasive, much more dangerous and risky visits such as those to an orthopaedic surgeon. In fact, chiropractic has proven to be so safe, relatively speaking, that most states, provinces and countries do not mandate chiropractic malpractice insurance. Most chiropractors that carry insurance do so voluntarily in areas of high litigation and frivolous lawsuits by those purely financially motivated to bring claims against these wonderful and helping doctors of chiropractic. We will never allow that kind of regulation, control, imprisonment, and feeding trough for the lawyers here in Jamaica. If we did, then the public health would suffer the consequences and we simply are not willing for that to happen to the people. Jamaican chiropractors are registered with the Ministry of Labour (at least those not from Jamaica) and are investigated prior to being permitted into the country to practise their service and art. No one has ever been seriously injured or killed by a qualified chiropractic adjustment in Jamaica and odds are infinitely high that they never will, but will only continue to benefit from chiropractic procedures as levels of public awareness increase regarding chiropractic. The traditional practitioners would and could never make the same claim, because, unfortunately, adverse effects, iatrogenic injuries and deaths are an accepted statistical fact within those models.

Don’t forget to “Ask Your Chiropractor” every week where your questions may be published and answered in subsequent articles. Address questions to: Dr Chris Davis, the Spinal Mechanic at movethebone@gmail.com; or, Dr Michael Harvey, director, at dr.michael_harvey@yahoo.com or visit www.drharveychiropractic.com