Recently one of the publications that extols the virtues of “subluxation-based chiropractic” began to promote the idea of subluxation-based chiropractors selling nutritional supplements to their practice members. Besides the rather questionable practices of multi-level marketing programs, there is the issue of whether this is consistent with the philosophy of chiropractic. Perhaps the problem relates to the concept of “subluxation based.” It is a meaningless term in that it allows for the addition of anything and everything to the correction of vertebral subluxations. You can do full body diagnosis and be “subluxation-based”. You can prescribe drugs and be “subluxation-based”. The real issue is whether these other procedures support the true reason for correcting vertebral subluxations, to enable the innate intelligence of the body to be more fully expressed, which is the unique chiropractic objective. Or do they support the medical objective, which is the treatment of disease? Specifically, is supplying nutritional supplements to people as part of a “subluxation-based” practice as innocuous as its proponents suggest?
The human body was designed to get its nutritional needs from the food that we eat. Ideally, the innate intelligence of the body extracts from food what is necessary to build tissue and to adapt the organism. Some reason, however, that today’s soil is vastly depleted, and as a result the foods that we eat are not capable of naturally supplying the nutrients our body needs. This, of course, puts the blame on the environment, an outside factor, and necessitates outside-in remedies such as taking supplements. Since we cannot control the inadequacy of the food source, the remedy appears to be more acceptable, especially because these supplements are touted as “all natural” and made from food stuffs.
However, if it is true that our soil is depleted, that processing and cooking further affects our food, and that we cannot possibly get the proper nutrients from the food that we eat, then we are suffering from nutritional deficiency. But that is a medical problem. Nutritional deficiencies, regardless of their cause, are medical problems. Scurvy is a disease. It is a medical problem. The treatment of it, even with citrus fruits, is a treatment. It really does not matter whether the disease has manifestations as in scurvy or if it has no manifestations as in the overall nutritional deficiency that the supplement salesperson claims. It is a medical condition and requires a medical solution. A person would not take supplements for the fun of it (especially at their cost). They may take supplements because of a medical condition (a nutritional deficiency) and want to treat it before it manifests serious symptoms. There is no difference between prescribing nutritional supplements to treat an unspecified nutritional deficiency and prescribing vitamin C to treat scurvy or the common cold. It is the practice of medicine whether done by a medical doctor or a chiropractor. Medicine is the treatment of any and every disease, before or after symptoms appear. The means of treating disease does not define medicine. It is defined by its objective. That is why medicine has been antagonistic to chiropractic over the years. They believe that we are trying to treat disease by hand only and it is an infringement on their practice.
There is another issue to be considered. Whenever we as chiropractors endorse an outside-in approach (especially to the point of using it), we simultaneously endorse the medical paradigm. It does not matter whether or not the medical procedure is needed and it might very well be needed in this situation. Who knows whether our soil is capable of producing nutritionally sufficient food? If the problem is poor preparation or poor eating habits, then to endorse or prescribe supplements undermines people’s attempt to seek true health. Whenever we endorse a medical procedure we say that the outside-in approach is the answer. Heart transplants may be necessary for some people but they are surely not the answer to an unhealthy body. If we endorse supplements we essentially admit that they are the answer and in the long run that undermines people’s understanding of what an ADIO lifestyle and ADIO thinking is all about. Selling nutritional supplements in the office does just that. It undermines the ADIO philosophy as much as recommending any other medical procedure.
If you want to practice medicine, to tell people when they need or do not need heart medical procedures, drugs, chemicals, or nutritional substances to treat medical conditions, you are free to do that. But do not call it chiropractic, “subluxation-based” or otherwise, because that is not what it is.