Talking with a fellow student at the CIC today, I realized there is a lot of gimmicks (a trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity, or business) in chiropractic. It's as if these practitioners cannot make it as honest health providers and must adhere to questionable tactics to obtain business. You'd think the Hippocratic Oath would deter them away from such practices, but there is a huge market for "snake oil" out there.
I think what is going on is that when new graduates get out into the "real world" and they realize there is a lot of negativity out there against our lovely profession, they get smacked down too many times and turn to the dark side of theoretical dogma. Adhering to such a concept is one of ethical charisma. Meaning, if we decide to follow the model of adjusting a person to free pinned up energy and sell this concept, we are deceiving the public. As doctors, we cannot take advantage of patients through selling ideas like this because they are trusting us with their health. Health is the only thing we really own in life. We can't take advantage of people this way.
Some would say I am not being fair to the subluxation-based doctors when I say they practice mainly to take advantage of patients. Maybe they are right. I know a few straight doctors that really like helping patients and they follow the theoretical ideologies of the Palmer's. They are good people too. I question their legitimacy and wonder how they get paid by insurance when insurance is largely based on empirical research. Being that insurance is modeled on an injury/pathology model, how does a theorist get paid time and time again from them? I know how. It's called deceiving the insurance companies on a particular condition to drain their piggy banks. This is called fraud. Being that chiropractic is largely preventative, our diagnoses have to be tweaked many times to get reimbursed. So, does this mean we evidence-based practitioners are similar to theorists? No. Well, maybe a little.
The weird thing is that no matter what side of the fence you sit on, we are all chiropractors. Seeing some of the weird crap that does exist in our chiropractic world, I will say this, buyer beware. Not all DC's are alike. For instance, I watched a video of this veteran DC who "specializes" in cranial-sacral therapy. He literally, lays a person prone, takes a contact on the sacral base and toggles the base with a feather-light touch to adjust the upper cervicals. What?? Seriously? Apparently, it has to do with the mechanical pump of our cerebral spinal fluid. Theoretically, this means our sacrum and our upper cervicals move in-sync with respiration and if a toggle move resets this pump when we are "out", then health will be restored. I'd like to see a study designed that tests this theory. That is a dream that will likely never happen.
I will end with this, gimmicks exist everywhere. Drug companies want to sell drugs and they sell A LOT of them. Our doctors tell us that we NEED a particular drug to fix whatever ails us. It is big business. Looking at how healthy our society is, I think their approach is not working well at all. Is there a need for pharmaceuticals? Sure. I strongly believe health care needs to be service based versus prescription based. If you are overweight, you get X amount of dollars for personal training each year. If you have type-2 diabetes, you get X amount of dollars for a trainer and Y amount for a nutritionist each year. Versus two bottles of pills to take each month.
When you look at the harm that theorist-type practitioners cause in relation to MD's and DO's historical over-prescribing practices, you can see these theorists are harmless. I hate to say it but they are.
I am reading the book, The DO's by Norman Gevitz, which is a historical book on the development of the Osteopathic profession. It's a great read! According to the book, DO's fought hard to establish themselves as legitimate doctors in the early 1900's. Public perception was horrid toward their work but the government, at that time, saw the benefit and demanded standards for education. The profession became more musculoskeletal and less alternative as it grew and from their adherence to standardization, they became the second most powerful health profession in America. In the early years, Andrew Still, the founder, was quite upset at the standard medical practices of the time and instead, pursued magnetic healing and eventually manual medicine. Manual medicine paid off and they made a name for themselves.
I am going to read a historical book on Chiropractic too, but this book, The DO's, is helpful to understand where our profession is at currently. When comparing DC's and DO's, the interesting thing is that osteopaths adhered to standardized methods early on. They conformed the profession to satisfy the publics need for competency and the governments need for social hierarchy and public safety. When looking at DC's, I see an adherence to principles versus conformation. Yes, we now follow more evidence-based approaches to care, but we have not conformed as the DO's did. This all comes with a price. The DC profession puts it's value for drugless treatments higher than public perception, which is why I chose chiropractic over osteopathic. However, this allows questionable treatments to arise because standardization is not uniform in America for DC schools. If DC's had formed more standardized practices early on versus in the late 1900's, we'd be way further ahead than where we are. The reality is that we have had 100+ years to unite and become standardized, but we shy against such behavior so that our ideals for health remain the most important aspect of our profession.
I just hope we can practice ethically by finding services that will honestly improve a persons health and well being. If all we do is adjust people and tell patients our adjustments do things that we really don't know if they do, we are crossing the ethical boundary. Instead, hire a personal trainer, offer massage and push forward physical rehabilitation. Get people to take control of their health and empower them with the tools of prevention. Adjusting a person is only one small aspect of their health.
All for now
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