If you have been involved in a car accident, whiplash injuries need to be taken very seriously. Because symptoms of a whiplash injury can take weeks or months to manifest, it is easy to be fooled into thinking that you are not as injured as you really are.
Too often people don’t seek treatment following a car accident because they don’t feel hurt. By far, the most common injury to the neck is a whiplash injury. Whiplash is caused by a sudden movement of the head, either backward, forward, or sideways, that results in the damage to the supporting muscles, ligaments and other connective tissues in the neck and upper back.
Unfortunately, by the time more serious complications develop, some of the damage from the injury may have become permanent. Numerous studies have shown that years after whiplash victims settle their insurance claims, roughly half of them state that they still suffer with symptoms from their injuries. If you have been in a motor vehicle or any other kind of accident, don’t assume that you escaped injury if you are not currently in pain. Contact us today!
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In 1894 an astronomer named Percival Lowell built the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. The stated intention of his efforts was to closely investigate the surface of Mars. Yet shortly after the completion of the observatory his secret ambition turned to discovering what he called Planet X. Based on the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, Lowell calculated that there had to be a ninth planet in our solar system. Though Lowell did not live to see it, Planet X – otherwise known as Pluto – was finally discovered by the Lowell Observatory in 1930 following a series of advances in technology and updates to the telescopes and their corresponding photographic equipment.
In the early days, Lowell pursued his dream in secrecy. Ultimately, however, he made his intentions known to the world. He shared his theories. He explained his math. He demonstrated how something affected the orbits of the other planets. Yet the world still couldn’t “see” it. Even though Lowell died before he “saw” Pluto, he knew that the ninth planet existed. He knew it because he could see the effects of the planet. The criticism of others did not make Pluto any less real for Lowell. He knew it was there, because he could see its effects. In the end, Lowell’s predicted location of Planet X was only off by 6 degrees.
In 1930, when the Lowell Observatory released a sequence of pictures of the night sky taken a week apart, Planet X became “real” for the rest of the world… overnight. Forget all of Lowell’s calculations. Forget all of Lowell’s math. Forget all of Lowell’s proof that Project X existed. It took two simple photographs taken a week apart for the rest of the world to embrace the ninth planet. And embrace it they did. They argued over the name. They argued over the size. They argued over whether or not it “qualified” as a planet. The one thing that was no longer argued was whether or not it existed.
How strange it is that Lowell could demonstrate through math and science that a planet had to be out there… yet it took a picture for the world to accept it?
A year after the Lowell Observatory was built a man named D.D. Palmer began a quest for something that was as equally illusive as Planet X: subluxation. His experience – and that of his son B.J. Palmer – was probably not much different than that of Percival Lowell. He, like Lowell, could see the effects of subluxation. Yet no matter how it was presented, the world did not rush forward to embrace the concept. Chiropractic for all intents and purposes remained – and remains – real for a small percentage of the people in the world.
Yet what might it do for Chiropractic – and the world – if everyone could clearly see what it is that Chiropractors deal with day in and day out; the nervous system and stress. How might the world embrace Chiropractic if it were possible to see how the nervous system responds to stress – and possibly more importantly how the nervous system recovers from it. Subluxations are caused by physical, chemical, and emotional stresses. And in this day and age, we can accumulate a whole lot of those stresses if we are not careful.
Yet as it was with the Lowell Observatory, it is with Chiropractic. The advances that have been made in technology and how it is applied has brought us to the point that Planet X is no longer a mystery and the effects of stress on a nervous system can be watched in real-time.
Lowell didn’t need to see Planet X to know it existed. The Palmers knew that subluxations existed without using any equipment, but I can assure you they would have love to.
So educate your patients on the causes of subluxation and the effects that stress can have on our health and well-being. But don’t be surprised if it takes a picture for them to embrace it.
see things clearly… even more clear than could only see the two pictures of the nervous system. introduced the world to the concept of subluxation. Yet the world did not come forward to embrace Chiropractic maybe as it should. Maybe all these years we have simply been waiting for a picture.
Chiropractic is filled with similar challenges; we see the effects of subluxation but we can’t really take a picture of one. We can see the effects of stress, but we can’t really take a picture of stress.
Or can we?
Chiropractic is the effort to remove the effects of stress; physical, chemical, and emotional. How is it that we can
It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Two pictures taken in 1930 moved the planets. What might the future hold for Chiropractic once the world can see the effects of stress. What might the future hold for your patients as you better teach them about stress; how best to avoid it, how best to cope with, how best to recover from it. Stress can be a good thing – in moderation. Yet it all begins with seeing the effects for yourself. And believing. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
]]>All too often our society subscribes to the notion that “it’ll never happen to me” or “what I don’t know can’t hurt me.” After years of influence from the medical model and concepts such as “medical necessity,” more and more chiropractors subscribe to the notion of only adjusting those in pain. Feel pain? Adjustment. Feel fine? No adjustment.
Three years ago my husband David’s best friend was diagnosed with stage-four colon cancer — at the age of 38. For what must have been years, Matt had the same symptoms that most colon cancer patients have: none. He “felt” fine. He “felt” healthy. On Matt’s behalf, David and a chiropractor named Brian Lieberman ran the Chicago Marathon to raise money for the Colon Club, a group dedicated to awareness and early detection of colon cancer.
At the beginning of the marathon, David — who runs with a heart monitor — noticed that his heart rate was extremely high. But he felt fine. A mile or two into the run, his heart rate had still not settled down. Yet, he felt fine. Finally he decided to slow down enough to allow his heart to recover to a more reasonable level: a pace that was ultimately not much faster than a walk.
Not far into the race, he began to see people dropping out. The first aid tents were overflowing with runners lying on cots and out on the grass. It soon became apparent that what was affecting David was affecting everyone. Finally, when he was about 17 miles into the race, policemen and race officials starting telling everyone to walk… that there was a “medical emergency”… that the race was being cancelled. As it turned out, abnormally high temperatures and humidity combined to wreak havoc on the runners — and ultimately on the emergency medical resources.
There is a common theme to these situations, Matt and David’s. They each were in a situation where they felt fine, yet neither of them was. In David’ case, however, he was receiving feedback on his condition. Had he not had the heart rate monitor — or had he ignored what it was telling him — there is a good chance that he could have hurt himself. There is tendency to approach things with a business-as-usual mentality. In David’s case that might have meant trying to maintain a pace similar to previous marathons. Yet under the new conditions, with the additional stress, that approach might have been disastrous.
What do these situations have to do with chiropractic? The importance of awareness. More specifically, being aware of a problem before it progresses to the point of pain. In each case described here, be it Matt’s, David’s, or the pain-free chiropractic patient, the technology exists to find problems where a lack of symptoms might indicate otherwise. And awareness is often half the battle.
People are a fairly poor judge of how much stress they are really under.
A study lead by Diane Becker of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore monitored peoples’ response to “mental stress.” They found that those people who responded poorly to a controlled mental challenge were six times more likely to have a heart attack or other severe heart event within six years than people who handled the stress more calmly. The interesting — and frightening — element to this is that the volunteers for the study usually had no idea if they responded well or poorly to the stress.
In Diane Becker’s words, “People’s capacity to tell you that they are stressed is worth about nothing. We would see people with hideous responses who say they are fine.” In this study, the mental stress reaction was a better indicator of heart risk than factors such as smoking, having high cholesterol or diabetes. Summing up the challenges, she said, “How do you learn to manage something when you don’t know you have it?”
Chiropractic is far more than a profession to treat back pain or neck pain. But, without the tools capable of showing the state of a patient’s nervous system and how it responds to stress — and how it responds to chiropractic — doctors are left to use the absence or presence of pain as the great determiner of care. Today, however, the tools are available to monitor the nervous system providing insights and creating opportunities like never before.
The bottom line is that what you don’t know can hurt you. And your patients. There are many problems lurking below the pain threshold. And lack of awareness can have tragic consequences. David’s best friend of 38 years passed away in January. One of the runner’s in the Chicago Marathon passed away in the middle of the race. And millions of chiropractic patients are treated based on pain without regard to the problems that are caused by stress, even though the technology exists to see them.
The good news for today’s chiropractor — and today’s chiropractic patient — is this: what you do know can help them.
Maybe awareness is more than half the battle.
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