Is Chiropractic A Belief Or Science?

In my experience as a chiropractor chiropractic has evolved, granted not as much evolution from the inception of chiropractic to present day, which is more than a hundred years. However, things are changing and they can only be for the better. When chiropractic was in it's infancy there was not a lot scientific methodology explaining why protocols work, there was a limited scientific method in medicine as well, all the evidence collected was almost strictly anecdotal. In the past it use to be common to say I believe in medicine or chiropractor, because quite frankly, you had to. You had to trust in the word of the doctor that a procedure was effective based on the success of the treatment in his eyes. Today, I still hear a lot of people say "I believe in chiropractic" or "I was not a believer until I met you". Why is it that people will take medicine as truth, despite no evidence for the efficacy of a drug, yet still say they need to believe in chiropractic in face of a mound of effective evidence. Chiropractic or medicine is not a belief system today if there is research published, it's either evidence suggest, doesn't suggest, or not sure we need more studies.

It is safe to say, if you do or do not believe a certain therapy or medication is ineffective only if there is no research available, but you can not quantify that to the whole field of medicine or chiropractic. There is research that certain protocols in medicine and chiropractic are effective and other protocols are ineffective. The ineffective protocols should be passed by the way side and new effective protocol should be developed to make patient satisfaction and efficacy paramount. Part of the problem is that for a long time chiropractors while having great patient satisfaction and showed great anecdotal evidence lack the superior research methodology. Chiropractor were painfully behind the medical profession in researching their methods due to a lack of funds and research construct, for example it is hard give real treatments versus sham treatments.

With the recent published data it puts chiropractors in the forefront in not needing to believe chiropractor is effective, but knowing chiropractic is effective through research. Chiropractic has now been proven to been more effective than medication for lower back pain and a host of other condition. Patients report a greater satisfaction of care, felted better, and had more long term benefits. Consumer report recently published a survey done where chiropractors have the greatest patient satisfaction score of any other healthcare provider. I hope with the pile of data many patients and the public will turn where they now not believe in chiropractic but simply know chiropractic is of a great benefit in combating against musculoskeletal symptoms.                     

Do You Really Understand Your Medication?

Do you know the effects of your medication and why you are taking it? Many people don't and they are not explained the risks or benefits of the medication from their doctor. Better yet does the doctor understand the medication he/she is prescribing to you. Has your doctor done extensive research on the medication or is he/she only going by what the pharmaceutical companies are telling him/her? Are the pharmaceutical companies being truthful in what they are telling a doctor? Do the pharmaceutical companies care about you getting better or keeping you sick? They are in a business and that business is making money. Americans are a very small portion of the world population but we take fifty percent of the drugs, why?

In this day and age it is very important to understand how big pharm has ushered their evil head into main street. Big pharm has been caught red handed, bribing doctor, withholding evidence, withhold risk, and misleading the public in what their drugs do and don't do. The pharmaceutical companies have been fined billions of dollars for misrepresenting drugs and hiding risk and outcome. They have literally been fined billions of dollars in just one lawsuit and they chalk this up to the cost of doing business. Thousands of people of have died because of pharmaceutical companies are not telling the truth. People dying and countless lawsuits is just the cost of doing business to them. They are a business they do not care if you live, die, get better or stay sick, as long as you are buying their drug and they are making money off you.

This example caught my eye and I felt like I needed to share it, while of course drugs are very important I am against the way drugs are used in this county, all to the benefit of a company and at the expense of the general public. Merck recently paid a law suit in the amount of $688 million dollars for withholding evidence about one of their cholesterol drugs named Vytorin. They did a study called the Enhanced study which was a double blind randomized control trail in which they were testing if Vytorin decreased the risk of atherosclerosis by decreasing thickness of the carotid artery. It was found in 2006, that indeed Vytorin did not reduce the risk of atherosclerosis but actually worsen the carotid artery thus increase the risk of atherosclerosis and heart disease. So in essence the drug was actually making patients more likely to have a heart attack. The drug did lower cholesterol but did not stop atherosclerosis which is why you want your cholesterol to be low in the first place.

So with Merck knowing that their drug was an epic failure and did harm to a certain extend, do you know who they told? Nobody! This was keep quiet while Merck made over 5 billion dollars from 2006-2008 off this drug. Once the release of this information in 2008 that their drug was a failure and did not work doctors continued to prescribe it, either not caring or not knowing (which is worst), making Merck in 2012 4.4 billion dollars from Vytorin. It needs to be noted that statin drugs (cholesterol lowering drugs) which include Vytorin and other drugs have never been shown to decrease atherosclerosis, or decrease the risk of stoke and heart attacks. Cholesterol-lowering medications have never been shown to prevent a heart attack.  The only benefit these drugs have shown to do is to lower the risk of mortality by about 1% in patients who have already had a cardiovascular event. So why are we taking these drugs. Lowering your cholesterol does not equal lower risk of cardiovascular events.

Please be leery of what you are prescribed and question who has your best interest in mind. Remember the best medicine on earth is eating right, exercising and talking care of your body. Your Plano Chiropractors at Twisted Spine and Joint Center want to help you achieve your health and wellness goals whatever they may be. Yours in great health!         

Why Get Chiropractic When I Can Take Drugs?

This is a question I'm sure many patient have on a day to day basis. The sad truth is many people are brainwashed or convinced that health comes in a pill or drug. They are led to believe this by the pharmaceutical companies and then by their doctor who usually only prescribes a drug. The fact is health does not come in a pill it never has and never will. True health only comes from one place and that's from within. No pill or doctor can heal you, the only one to heal you is yourself. The body has this form of innate intelligence, which is responsible for the vitality of one's self. The only thing we can you as doctors is listen to the innate intelligence and facilitate the body to heal and function properly.

It may be easier to take a pill to get rid of symptoms, but the truth is health is not easy or hard it just is. Giving yourself a foreign compound to quell the symptoms, or the voice your body tells your brain is the exact opposite of healthy. The body is trying to tell the brain something, but why and what? The body tell the brain things all the time, I'm hungry, I'm tried, I'm thirsty, I've got to go to the bathroom. Why would we try to stop the body from communicating with the brain? Can you image if we cut off the communication from our body trying to tell our brain our daily necessary functions? We would die!

Pain seems to be the only acceptable body-brain communication which can be circumvented, but then again why? Pain is your body telling the brain there is a problem it's important to feel pain, it's a normal function on how you judge health. We need to be in touch with our body all the time, severing the communication is not only unhealthy but very dangerous as well. Over 125,000 people die from drug overdoes and drug interactions a every single year by a doctor they think has their best interest. I am not against drugs at all, what I am against is the overutilization of drugs. The United States is only five percent of the world population, yet we consume fifty percent of all the drugs in the world and are one of the unhealthiest populations on earth.

Choosing chiropractic and/or alternative healthcare provides may not be the fancy or easy way, but it's right way. Start with the least invasive treatment first and progress up from there. Chiropractors use a safe, healthy, and effective approached to treating very common problems with our population, such as musculoskeletal pain. Chiropractic will take time it's not an overnight process, the body did not get damaged overnight so it won't be fixed overnight. The best thing about chiropractic is the feeling that you get when your body healed itself with the help of a chiropractor and you did not have to take any side-effect laden or habit forming schedule 2 narcotics. If you have a lower back problem imaging taking a pill and dying from it, something as simple as lower back pain can get you addicted to a drug and kill you. Choose chiropractic and choose health, your body will thank you for it.      

Can My Chiropractor Help Me With My Sprained Ankle?

Ankle injuries can be quite bothersome and can have a reoccurring theme to them. Injuries to the ankle are most common during a traumatic event, for example an auto accident or stepping off a curb. The most common traumatic injury associated with the ankle is an ankle sprain. The tissues that are effected the most during a sprain are the lateral ligaments of the ankle joint. The ankle is prone to undergoing inversion during trauma thus stretching the lateral ligaments, more specifically the anterior talofibular (ATF) ligament. When the injury to ATF happens the tissues are stretched to a point of damage where some fibers are torn and some fibers are painfully stretched. This torn and stretched pathology in a certain combination grades the sprain in a class between one and three, with three being the worst.

Once you have an ankle injury, visiting a chiropractor is very important not only to diagnosis a sprain ankle but also to treat it. Chiropractors are very skilled at not only diagnosing musculoskeletal conditions but also rehabbing said conditions as well. The reason why rehabbing an ankle is very important is because the tissues need to lay ligamentous tissue and not scare tissue. If scare tissue is laid down in place of normal tissue the patient will be troubled with future sprains of that same ligaments as well as being prone to an unstable ankle. Scare tissue is not nearly as strong or pliable as regular ligamentous tissue therefore injury reoccurrence is almost a certainty.

Once the chiropractor diagnosis the injury as a ligamentous sprain the first method of treatment should be to decrease inflammation and trying to halt the inflammatory process. The inflammation process can be stopped by ice baths and cryotherapy. Cryotherapy and electric muscle stimulation can also concurrently help with decreasing the pain level. If a grade three sprain is ruled out and tissues have decreased in inflammatory exudate and pain has decrease to a workable level, the facilitation of the rehab phase can take place. The rehab phase first should include the promotion of health ligamentous tissue being laid down where the injury occurred, this could be done in the form of cross friction massage or light Graston therapy. The first day after the rehab phase there will be pain, word of warning but that should subdue with time. Once the chiropractor is successful with the rehab phase then the strengthen phase can start to be ushered in. The strengthen phase is perhaps the most important one, using strengthen and proprioception exercise to restore the ankle to proper function.

The rehabilitation of the ankle can take some time but it is totally worth it, you don't want to always worry about your ankle at the most inopportune times. It only takes one injury with the improper rehab to cause life long weakness or problems. If you or someone you know needs help with ankle injuries be sure to visit our Plano Chiropractic office website.