True Correction vs. Temporary Relief

The difference between Principled Chiropractic Corrective care and temporary relief care is the difference between optimal health and just feeling good. 

Thanks to technological advances and a new understanding of the spine and nervous system, we are now able to correct the spine and use pre and post-x-rays to document this change. These changes are achieved through a series of specialized gentle adjustments. If we can accept your case, a care plan will be recommended based on the pre-existing levels of degeneration in your spine, your age, levels of activity, and your response to an adjustment. Not every spine is correctable for us so we always start with a checkup to evaluate your potential for success in our office.

When a person seeks chiropractic care and when their chiropractor accepts them for chiropractic care, it is essential that they are both working toward the same goal. Traditionally, the focus of health care is centered around a persons symptoms and the treatment or relief of their symptoms. This is the entire basis for relief care. Today Chiropractic care is very well known for it’s ability to provide relief care and is often referred to as miraculous in it’s ability to provide relief where all other forms of health care have failed. However, although many chiropractors specialize in and are extremely successful with providing relief care, this was never the intended purpose for Chiropractic. Chiropractic from it’s inception over 110 years ago was designed to be a Principled form of health care. The goal or objective of Chiropractic is to identify the underlying cause of a person health challenge and to correct it. A condition of the spine known as Vertebral Subluxation interferes with the bodies natural ability to heal itself. Principled and Wellness Chiropractors locate Vertebral Subluxations, thoroughly analyze all of its components, design a specific program of adjustments and exercises to correct Vertebral Subluxations, and most importantly to help you and your family learn how to achieve a state of optimal health and how to maintain a healthy spine into the future.

To fully appreciate and understand this difference and the importance of Principled care let’s start by looking at the difference between “symptoms” and “warning signs”. The difference is best understood through a simple comparison. If a person sprains their ankle and they experience pain in their ankle – this is a direct relationship. The location of pain and the location of the injury are the same. This is a classic example of a symptom. However, if a person is suffering from heart disease and is experiencing pain into their left arm – there is likely nothing wrong with the left arm! This is a classic warning sign of a problem with the heart. It would seem quite silly – even foolish – to spend a tremendous amount of energy and resources treating a persons arm pain when the cause of this pain is coming from the heart.

Very similarly with the spine – if vertebral subluxation is affecting the spine and causes pressure on the nerve going to your leg, over time you may begin to experience leg pain (commonly called sciatica). However, we could examine and treat the leg and we would be doing so in vain as this was a warning sign telling us of the problem in the spine. Depending on which nerve(s) in the spine is being affected will depend on what type of warning sign we may experience. (Be sure to see the Vertebral Subluxation Nerve Chart). Fortunately or unfortunately there is often a significant time delay between the onset of subluxation and the first warning signs. This is because of our bodies amazing ability to adapt to both it’s internal and external environment. For example, if you have a pebble in your shoe – you don’t lean on it – you lean off of it and your body behaves very similarly in relation to Vertebral Subluxation.

Very commonly one of the first Vertebral Subluxations to occur in the spine is in the neck. This is for a variety of reasons including the fact that the vertebra, ligaments, and muscles in the neck are the smallest and the head (in particular in children) is disproportionately heavy in comparison to our body. Small slips and falls as a child or even the birth process itself can result in the small vertebra of the neck becoming displaced or subluxated. The body behaving very intelligently will change our posture, often shifting the head well in front of the shoulders and leaning the head to one side or the other to reduce the pressure this subluxation places on the spinal cord. As a result of the change in head posture our rib cage may bend or shift to reduce pressure on the spinal nerves and similarly the big muscles of the lumbar spine and pelvis will compensate to further reduce the unwanted pressure on the spinal nerves. This for the body is a much better state than suffering the immediate and devastating affects of spinal cord and spinal nerve pressure. However, this leaves the pressure on the vertebral discs imbalanced and causes them to begin wearing out at a progressive rate.

It is most often not until the discs of the spine begin to significantly wear and the body begins losing it’s ability to naturally compensate to the Vertebral Subluxations that we start seeing the intermittent warning signs related to subluxation. (Be sure to see the Subluxation Degeneration page). Quite often the first place in the spine to begin to fail and lose its ability to compensate is the lumbar spine. This is because all of the forces of gravity within the body affect the lumbar spine and we often use our lumbar spine to lift amounts that are no problem for a healthy spine but with Vertebral Subluxation Degeneration the spine continues to become weaker over time. Things which we used to do with ease we may start avoiding because when we do them now it causes pain. However, this avoidance is often the result of continued degeneration as we ignore the warning signs which our body is giving us. Very similarly in this situation if we begin treating this person’s lower back pain without thoroughly analyzing their Vertebral Subluxations and the cause was actually coming from a Vertebral Subluxation in their neck – we may be able to temporarily relieve their lower back pain but it will only be a matter of time before it returns because the back pain was simply a warning sign.

Principled and Wellness care chiropractors specialize in detecting, analyzing, correcting or in some cases minimizing Vertebral Subluxation. Our education programs are designed to help you heal as fast as possible and to achieve a state of Optimal Health. Most importantly we will help you learn how to keep your spine and the spines of your family healthy into the future.

We specialize in Principled and Wellness Chiropractic Care. We provide Specific, Scientific, Chiropractic Adjustments over time and with repetition to correct the cause…the Vertebral Subluxation. We get amazing results. We look forward to serving you!

Chiropractic History

The actual profession of chiropractic - as a distinct form of healthcare - dates back to 1895. However, some of the earliest healers in the history of the world understood the relationship between health and the condition of the spine.

Herodotus, a contemporary of Hippocrates, gained fame curing diseases by correcting spinal abnormalities using therapeutic exercises. If the patient was too weak to exercise, Herodotus would manipulate the patient's spine. The philosopher Aristotle was critical of Herodotus' tonic-free approach because, "he made old men young and thus prolonged their lives too greatly."

However, treatment of the spine was still crude and misunderstood until Daniel David (D.D.) Palmer (right) discovered the specific spinal adjustment. D.D. defined Chiropractic as, “The Philosophy, Art and Science of things natural. A system for adjusting the segments of the spinal column, by hand only, for the correction of the cause of Dis-ease.” He was also responsible for the earliest development of the philosophy of Chiropractic and provided the first definition for vertebral subluxation.

“I am not the first person to replace subluxated vertebrae, but I do claim to be the first person to replace displaced vertebrae by using the spinous and transverse processes as levers…and to develop the philosophy and science of chiropractic adjustments.” D.D. Palmer, Discoverer of Chiropractic 

D.D. Palmer was born in Ontario, Canada, in 1845, He moved to the United States when he was 20 years old. He spent the years after the Civil War teaching school, raising bees and selling sweet raspberries in the Iowa and Illinois river towns along the bluffs on either side of the Mississippi River.

In 1885, D.D. studied with Paul Caster and learned the techniques of magnetic healing, a common therapy of the time. Two years later, he moved to Davenport and opened the Palmer Cure and Infirmary.

On September 18, 1895, D.D. Palmer was working late in his office when a janitor, Harvey Lillard, began working nearby. A noisy fire engine passed by outside the window and Palmer was surprised to see that Lillard didn’t react at all. He approached the man and tried to strike up a conversation. He soon realized Lillard was deaf.

Patiently, Palmer managed to communicate with the man, and learned that he had normal hearing for most of his life. However, he had been over in a cramped, stooping position, and felt something “pop” in his back. When he stood up, he realized he couldn’t hear.

Palmer deduced that the two events — the popping in his back and the deafness — had to be connected.

Palmer ran his hand carefully down Lillard’s spine and soon felt that indeed, one of the vertebra, was not in its proper position. “I reasoned that if that vertebra was replaced, the man’s hearing should be restored,” he wrote in his notes afterward. “With this object in view, a half hour’s talk persuaded Mr. Lillard to allow me to replace it. I racked it into position by using the spinous process as a lever, and soon the man could hear as before.”

Harvey Lillard reported in the January 1897 issue of The Chiropractic that:

”I was deaf 17 years and I expected to always remain so, for I had doctored a great deal without any benefit. I had long ago made up my mind to not take any more ear treatments, for it did me no good. Last January Dr. Palmer told me that my deafness came from an injury in my spine. This was new to me; but it is a fact that my back was injured at the time I went deaf. Dr. Palmer treated me on the spine; in two treatments I could hear quite well. That was eight months ago. My hearing remains good.” Harvey Lillard, 320 W. Eleventh St., Davenport, Iowa, (Palmer 1897).

Word of Palmer’s success in “curing” deafness traveled fast. Soon, deaf people from across the country were eagerly awaiting his miraculous treatment. Although he had some success in helping those with deafness, he soon realized that many other conditions were benefiting from the same treatment he gave Lillard for deafness. Over the succeeding months, patients came to Palmer with every conceivable problem: including flu, sciatica, migraine headaches, stomach complaints, epilepsy and heart trouble.

D.D. Palmer found each of these conditions responded well to the adjustments which he was calling “hand treatments.” Later, with the help of Reverend Samuel Weed, they coined the term chiropractic — from the Greek words, Chiro, meaning (hand) and practic, meaning (practice or operation).

He renamed his clinic the Palmer School and Infirmary of Chiropractic. In 1898, he accepted his first students. Although he never used drugs, under Palmer’s care, fevers broke, pain ended, infections healed, vision improved, stomach disorders disappeared, and of course, hearing returned.

Often surprised at the effectiveness of his adjustments, D.D. Palmer returned to his studies of anatomy and physiology to learn more about the vital connection between the spine and one’s health.

He realized that performing spinal adjustments to correct vertebral misalignments, or subluxations, was eliminating the nerve interference that caused the patients’ original complaints.

Although Chiropractic was proving to be a successful way of healing the body, it was not readily accepted. At the turn of the 20th century, the medical community was afraid of Palmer’s success, and began a crusade against Chiropractic.

They wrote letters to the editors of local papers, openly criticizing his methods and accusing him of practicing medicine without a license.

D.D. Palmer defended himself against the doctors’ attacks by presenting arguments that he provided a unique service, one they did not offer and pointed out the well-known risks of the many medical procedures of that era. He also cautioned against introducing medicine into the body, saying it was often unnecessary and even harmful.

In 1905, D.D. Palmer was indicted for practicing medicine without a license. He was sentenced to 105 days in jail and was required to pay a $350 fine. D.D. served his time and paid his fine but this didn’t keep him from adjusting. His patients (including his jailor) came to his jail cell to get their adjustments.

D.D. continued his fight to promote Chiropractic publishing two books from 1906 to 1913, “The Science of Chiropractic” and “The Chiropractors Adjuster.” He adjusted patients until his death in Los Angeles at the age of 68.

D.D.’s son, Bartlett Joshua, was equally as enthusiastic about chiropractic as his father and continued his father’s work. Bartlett — or B.J. as he is now known — is credited with developing chiropractic into a clearly defined and unique health care system.

In 1902, B.J. graduated from the Palmer school started by D.D., and before long — with his wife and fellow graduate Mabel — was helping patients and taking on more and more responsibility for the school and the clinic. He also was instrumental in getting chiropractic recognized as a licensed profession.

What made this different from the gross manipulation used in the past was the understanding of the global implications of this method as a distinct healing art. D.D. Palmer was a genius, but he had an abrasive personality, which was ill suited to the promotion of chiropractic. His son B.J. Palmer (right) was the marketeer, educator, and inventor that carried the chiropractic torch for the next sixty years. B.J. built Palmer School of Chiropractic in Davenport, which became the premier chiropractic college in the world at that time.

In 1924, B.J. had the first radio station west of the Mississippi, WOC (or, World Of Chiropractic). In 1928 he purchased WHO (With Hands Only) in Des Moines. He was a world traveler and writer, and drew an audience from all over the country, on his 50,000 watt clear channel stations. B.J. Palmer was also a prolific author and dynamic speaker, who spoke to audiences all over the world concerning chiropractic. He was described as having zeal and being a brilliant salesman and missionary when it came to chiropractic. The practice of chiropractic continued to be met with significant hostility from the medical community, as it was an unfamiliar approach to health care. Many chiropractors were jailed for “practicing medicine without a license.” B.J. did much to increase the acceptance of chiropractic. He fought for the establishment of a separate licensing and 

regulatory boards for chiropractic allowing for it to be recognized not as a form of medical practice, but as a separate entity. He continued to develop the science, art, and philosophy of the profession from what was little more than a loosely knit structure. B.J. advocated the scientific advancement of chiropractic as the primary route to it’s acceptance. Through his leadership chiropractic became the first health care profession to regularly use Wilhelm Roentgen’s invention, the x-ray machine, which improved the science and accuracy of chiropractic.

Chiropractic and its leaders have changed and evolved through the years but the principles of this distinct healing method are still the same as they were 100 years ago. Essentially, the body is a self-healing organism. The nervous system controls and coordinates every organ and tissue of the body. The relationship between the spine and the nerve system is a predictor for the state of health. Find the interference – correct it and the body will always move back toward health.

Today Chiropractic is licensed as a distinct healthcare profession in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and dozens of other countries throughout the world. There are over 35 Chiropractic colleges throughout the world including the United Kingdom, France, Denmark, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Today’s recognition and acceptance of chiropractic is primarily based on the strength of the growing body of scientific research, which all started from B.J. Palmer’s commitment to make Chiropractic Scientific. The positive results chiropractic care has given to millions of satisfied people continues to add credence to what one man started over 100 years ago. Chiropractic is now the world’s third largest healthcare profession and the fastest growing.