The subject of preventing subluxations undoubtedly causes frustration among straight chiropractors. I once heard a good, straight chiropractor say, “If I know something is causing a patient to resubluxate, I’ll tell them to avoid that activity.” He knew it was not consistent with his straight chiropractic objective but he felt obligated to the patient. Other chiropractors are in the same situation. They know it is not in line with the objective but cannot see anything philosophically wrong with it. Unfortunately, it does conflict with our philosophy. There are a number of philosophical issues to be addressed, a number which have been explained in Chiropractic Philosophy. One issue in particular, however, I believe has not been previously covered.
By trying to prevent subluxations, by changing outside or external factors, we may be interfering with this part of life. We berate the medical community for fooling around with outside factors such as bacteria. We are quick to show how they have upset the balance of nature and created super germs by trying to alter the environment with antibiotics (defined as “against life”). Yet most of the activities that cause subluxation are also a natural part of life. Suppose the physical, chemical or emotional stress that causes a vertebral subluxation, also builds up positive survival values (PSV). Should we deny the individual the opportunity to gain that positive survival value? By analogy, I am sure that a case of the measles can cause subluxation in a child. Yet we consider it absurd to vaccinate to avoid that disease. That is exactly what medicine does. It tries to alter the environment so even the weakest of individuals are not affected by it. In so doing it only serves to make us all weaker. If we prevent stresses, because they may be subluxation producing, we deny ourselves the opportunity to adapt and to build positive survival values? How can a person adapt to a particular stress, or stress in general, if we do not allow them the opportunity to experience it? I believe it is wholly possible, consequently, to reduce a person’s ability to adapt to life in general. That is inconsistent with our philosophy. In fact, that is exactly what medicine does. Medicine says the cause of disease is external, it is not the body working incorrectly but an outside factor that must be changed. Although it may not be considered the practice of medicine to give advice or to do things for the patient to prevent subluxations, it is surely buying into the outside-in philosophy of medicine.
Let’s look at a specific example. If a person came to the office and you believed that exercising was causing them to subluxate, would you tell them to stop exercising? Of course not! You can adjust the subluxations. The benefit of the exercise outweighs the correctable subluxations and will eventually enable the person to be healthier and perhaps subluxate less from the exercise. Maybe you are thinking that you would not tell them to stop exercising but you might suggest different exercises. Well, if we are trying to get them to listen to their body, they should be the ones to determine what exercises are best for them. We do not know what is best for them. We often quote B.J. by saying, “You never know how far reaching something you may think, say or do today will affect the lives of millions tomorrow.” But do we ever think about the negative side of that saying. We still affect millions of people’s lives when we say and do the wrong thing.
Medicine interferes with only the catabolic side of life and we know what a mess they make of it. They do not consciously try to upset what they consider to be normal aspects of life. Of course, when you interfere with one side of the cycle, you automatically interfere with the other side. The uniqueness of chiropractic is that we do not interfere at all. We do not interfere, not just because it is not chiropractic but because it is dangerous. It always has side-effects. Our deductive philosophy teaches us that any time we interfere with nature we are reducing the perfect expression of the wisdom of the universe. Even if our intentions are good, that is a negative side-effect. v14n4