Dr. Alexander Chiropractor

[Stock Trader]

Forest, do you get chiropractic adjustments? If so, how often?

 

[JanAtheCPA]

Hey, Stock Trader - why just Forest?

Here's my story: I was seeing a cranio-sacral doc (an actual MD) who told me to stop going to the chiro - he said I just needed to "talk to my neck" and that my atlas would stay in by itself. This was 10 months before I discovered Dr. Sarno and TMS, but he was right - as a result of his very convincing suggestion, I stopped going, and I never missed it, not even during the following tax season (when I used to get an adjustment once a week).

After discovering TMS, I also stopped going to the cranio-sacral guy, too Never mind all the $$ I now save not going to four different physical therapists. I spend it on a personal trainer instead!

Jan

 

[Stock Trader]

Hey, Stock Trader - why just Forest?

Here's my story: I was seeing a cranio-sacral doc (an actual MD) who told me to stop going to the chiro - he said I just needed to "talk to my neck" and that my atlas would stay in by itself. This was 10 months before I discovered Dr. Sarno and TMS, but he was right - as a result of his very convincing suggestion, I stopped going, and I never missed it, not even during the following tax season (when I used to get an adjustment once a week).

After discovering TMS, I also stopped going to the cranio-sacral guy, too Never mind all the $$ I now save not going to four different physical therapists. I spend it on a personal trainer instead!

Jan

Thanks Jan. The reason I am asking is because my chiro has told me that one should be adjusted once a month.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

LOL - of course he/she did! Heck, I wouldn't be able to make a living if my clients didn't have to file a tax return once a year - fortunately, I don't have to convince them of that fact, because the government makes it true!

It's not true of chiro, however. My old chiro, a lovely person, bless her, told me to only come in when I felt I needed it. I could sometimes go months without it. She gave me neck and shoulder stretching exercises, referred me to alternative PTs, told me to swim, and recommended massage, and she was actually quite frustrated that she often couldn't make an adjustment "stick".

But that's all in the past.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

PS - I'm reasonably sure that Forest doesn't see a chiropractor. It's one of the many physically-focused therapies that Dr. Sarno firmly believes are unnecessary.

Exercise, exercise, exercise.

At 61 (almost 62) I'm lifting and bench-pressing :^)

 

[BruceMC]

If chiropractic is a form of placebo cure, all you're doing by returning for further "adjustments" is keeping your TMS pain pathways programmed. Why do you think, most (but not all chiros) want to set up you up for a regular sequence of visits? You're just reinforcing your programmed pain responses each time you come back. Not to say this doesn't work the same way with deep tissue massage, rolfing, acupuncture/acupressure and physical therapy, each of which are physical modalities that make you focus on a structural cause for your pain and likewise distract you from unpleasant emotional content repressed into your unconscious mind to protect you from facing feelings you'd rather not deal with. If, after a series of 10 visits, you keep going back to get "adjusted", what the heck good is it doing anyway except paying for your chiro's mortgage, kids in a private school, alimony payments etc etc etc? In 2002-04, following a herniated disk, I went to PT religiously and improved. However, I think I would have improved anyway as my psychological condition ameliorated following the death of my mother. My mistake was thinking that my improvement was due to physical therapy and not psychological improvement as I moved away from a traumatic event and period in my life. My less than flattering take on the whole matter is that chiropractic is an addictive process based on the placebo response.

 

[Dr James Alexander]

before i became TMS savvy, I experienced several weeks of extreme back pain, which saw me seeking the services of a chiro. Having only consulted with a couple of chiro's in my life, i dont know if this bloke was typical or not, but my experience with him says a lot. Despite having a bachelor's degree in chiropractic, he insisted on calling himself 'doctor'. He insisted that i have a back Xray at his clinic ($$). Despite conceding that my back actually looked pretty good in the Xray, he insisted that i needed 3 adjustments per week ($$). His clinic had a reward system for people who were regular attendees- there was a 'patient of the week' poster on the reception wall with the photo of a poor suffering woman who had been successfully convinced to part with her hard earned 3 times a week for several months- in fact, i think she had busted through the 12 month barrier (and still needed treatment!). He taught me that i would also need months of treatment (perhaps years) to become pain free ($$). It was only my natural stingeiness that saw me balking at this treatment suggestions and containing him to one session per week. He ignored the fact that I was going through a rough patch in my relationship at the time, and had no interest at all in what was going on in my life (other than my ability to keep paying him $$). After a few weeks, it occurred to me that each time i went to see him, he did the same re-adjustments, ie. the same vertebrae were 'out of place' and continually needed to be put back in place. Ultimately, it occurred to me that my vertebrae are attached to muscles, and muscular tension is highly related to emotional tension; and as long as the emotional tension remains, bones will continue to be pulled out of their ideal location by muscular tension. And emotional tension (at some level, in varying degrees) will remain for as long as we are alive. So, what he was treating was a natural function of being alive, and not a disorder at all. But his profession had conceived vertebrae (when out of their proper location, according to some esoteric ideal) as being the source of the problem (requiring therapy- $$), rather than being an outcome of what was actually going on in people's lives. The same chiro advertised his services in the local paper as a viable treatment for pretty well every ailment known to man/woman, e.g learning difficulties, sleep problems, sexual disorders, depression, anxiety, digestive problems, etc, etc.. After a few weeks i considered that he had missed his true calling as a used car salesman (apologies to any of these- i have befriended some pretty honest used car salesmen in the past). I recently had a burst of similar back pain when moving a heavy pot plant (not a weight that i would usually have any problems with). Was it merely a random fluke that this followed the day of me scattering my recently deceased father's ashes? Rather than experience confusion and panic because of the pain (as i would have prior to being TMS savvy), i could simply see it for what it was. The pain was gone within a couple of days. No doubt, i still need chiropractic adjustment!

 

[Lori]

I saw a chiro when I had back pain. He cracked me on my side somehow and the pain got less for about 20 minutes. I knew it was not an answer for me.

I don't see why we need to be adjusted monthly. Millions and millions of people (like me) do not get adjusted at all and are just fine.

 

[Forest]

I couldn't possibly put it better than the people who have already answered you, but Jan is right, I don't see a chiropractor. In one of his books, Dr. Sarno describes how he realized that he had to stop using even the physical therapists that he himself had trained at The Rusk Institute because their physical modalities led people to think physically rather than psychologically. The key to TMS healing, of course, is to think psychologically, so even specially trained PTs will only slow down the true healing. I'm sure that the exact same thing is true with chiros.

BTW, MorComm, I know that you like history. I thought you might be interested to know that Dr. Howard Rusk, the physician who founded the Rusk Institute where Dr. Sarno used to work, is known as the father of rehabilitation medicine. Dr. JE Sarno's wife, Dr. Martha Sarno, is a very accomplished expert in Speech and Language pathology and was hired in 1949 as the Director of the Speech-Language Pathology Department at Rusk, one year after its founding. Later, Dr. Sarno and Dr. Sarno actually coauthored an article about Dr. Rusk after he passed away (Sarno, John E. and Sarno, Martha Taylor, 1990. Dr. Rusk dies: Father of Rehabilitation. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 71). Source: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~duchan/new_history/hist20c/sarno.html

Dr. Rusk is known for having pioneered a team approach to rehabilitation medicine. In my opinion, Dr. John Sarno continued Dr. Rusk's work broadening the team to include psychologists who were charged not just with lessening the psychological impact but with curing the actual underlying malady. Through a deeper understanding of the mind-body connection, he was able to further broaden the rehabilitative team and get to the true cause of the illness. As he writes in the introduction to Healing Back Pain,

I first appreciated the magnitude of [the chronic pain] problem in 1965 when I joined the staff of what is now known as the Howard A. Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University Medical Center as director of outpatient services. ...

The rationale for the treatment prescribed was ... perplexing. ...

Along with doubt about the accuracy of conventional diagnoses there came the realization that the primary tissue involved was muscle, specifically the muscles of the neck, shoulders, back and buttocks. But even more important was the observation that 88 percent of the people seen had histories of such things as tension or migraine headache, heartburn, hiatus hernia, stomach ulcer, colitis, spastic colon, irritable bowel syndrome, hay fever, asthma, eczema and a variety of other disorders, all of which were strongly suspected of being related to tension. It seemed logical to conclude that their painful muscle condition might also be induced by tension. Hence, the Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS). (Myo means “muscle”; Tension Myositis Syndrome is defined here as a change of state in the muscle that is painful.) When that theory was put to the test and patients were treated accordingly, there was an improvement in treatment results.

 

[BruceMC]

The article about Mrs. Sarno makes me wonder, Forest, whether aphasia is associated with PTSD (i.e. what they called 'combat fatigue' back in WWII) since she initially set up her clinic to deal with returning servicemen? If so, it sounds as if she may have contributed to her husband's body-mind theory. Nice to marry someone like that!

As far as chiropractic medicine is concerned, read Dr Barrett's Quackwatch articles.

 

[Forest]

I think that aphasia can sometimes be associated with genuine brain injury, but I suspect that "aphasia" can sometimes be TMS as well. A diagnosis to consider would be Spasmodic Dysphonia, which Dr. Sarno describes as follows on p. 124 of MBP:

Spasmodic dysphonia, formerly called spastic dysphonia, is a voice disorder that is caused by spasm of the vocal cords (laryngospasm). For many years it was thought to be psychological in origin but, as with so many other maladies, contemporary students of the problem think that most cases are neurogenic, that is, the result of a brain disorder...Based on the few patients I have seen who have suffered from SD, all of whom had back pain syndromes, my suspicion is that most cases of spasmodic dysphonia are psychogenic but are not identified as such because the person is not suffering any obvious psychological problem. The significant emotions are repressed in the unconscious.

If I remember correctly Scott Adams had/has SD, and it basically means for him that he can't speak. That certainly sounds like aphasia, even if the presumed mechanism is different. Have you read Dr. Schubiner's "The King's Speech as Mind Body Syndrome?"

 

[BruceMC]

Forest, it does sound like the triggering event for spastic dysphonia could be a traumatic experience in combat, which would in turn cause a WWII vet to stutter. Of course, the combat event would stir up old emotions from some prior difficult experience in childhood. And, no, I hadn't read Howard Schubiner before now. Seems like that two-trauma pattern is behind a lot of MB disorders, including "aphasia", which could also be caused by brain damage too. But stuttering sounds quite TMS. I think I knew a guy like that years ago in Colorado who stuttered until he cleaned up his life, got married and settled down. Interestingly enough, he used to sleep walk too, sometimes at awkward times. Wonder if his nocturnal wandering ceased at the same time as his stutter? Dunno.