Yesterday there was a post on the Minnesota Chiropractic Association's newsgroup announcing that the association was looking for doctors to volunteer their services at a local walk-a-thon. At the walk-a-thon, doctors would be working with medical professionals to help care for the participants, and the purpose of the walk-a-thon is to help raise money for breast cancer research. Another chiropractor wrote in, chastising the association for wanting to promote a "medical" paradigm of chiropractic which would cause the general public to not recognize chiropractic for its true holistic value. I couldn't resist writing back to this guy. Here was my reply:
"I hear you. After being in practice for 9 years, 7 of those years in Minnesota, I've come to realize a few things. First of all, people do not understand chiropractic the way we PRINCIPLED chiropractors do, but to "get to them" we have to approach them from an angle that they do understand -- the medical paradigm. I've also come to learn that when you approach people from the (chiropractically) realistic viewpoint, they see this as an idealistic philosophy that they most likely would not buy into anyway. The second issue is the fact that we are here in Minnesota means that people will AUTOMATICALLY be misconstruing chiropractic for a branch of medicine, which you and I both know it is not. We also know that there isn't enough chiropractic philosophy being taught in our own state's chiropractic college, which means that many chiropractors in this state also have this misconception, unfortunately. On that note, I regret to say that I had a MUCH better practice when I still lived on the East Coast. People here just don't have the same mentality."
Yes, it depends on which chiropractic college one goes to whether or not they are going to be subject to the medical, or "realistic", paradigm of chiropractic or the chiropractIC, principled, or "idealistic" paradigm. (Insert here a side note for chiropractors that whichever one you are exposed to, the schools lack the ability to teach you how to market yourself and become successful. That you have to figure out on your own.) Are you a doctor who does physical rehab in your pain relief and personal injury clinic? Or are you a chiropractOR who tells their patients that EVERYONE needs chiropractic care in order to function at their very best potential in life? This is the difference between realism and idealism. The general public identifies MORE with the realism because to them the idealism is just that -- an idea. And why is that?
Here in the United States, people constantly have the medical paradigm of "health and wellness" in general jammed down their throat. You have to take this pill for that, you have to get this vaccine for this flu, you have to take medicine to prevent this disease, and anything "alternative" has no merit unless the American Medical Association (aka "God") says so. Plus, God, in this case the AMA and the pharmaceutical industry, has the greatest means of getting their words of advice, or dare I say "scare tactics", out there: the media in all forms. Thus, the pain relief chiropractor has it made, especially when he partners with a medical doctor or physical therapist. Enter chiropractIC where we proclaim the truth that the body is a self-healing, self-regulating organism that needs to external influences and only to be free of the interferences that caused the dis-ease to begin with. That cause is the subluxation (misaligned bone) that impinges on and interferes with the proper function of the master regulator of the body: the nerve system. Such a lesson in reality is just too hard for people to grasp after they've been told that their bodies are incapable of such greatness and will constantly be dependent on medicine to survive in this world.
It is probably evident to you by now that I side more with the "idealistic" view of chiropractic. Yet, here's another point I absolutely need to make. The realistic and the idealistic paradigms need to merge. Just after I graduated from chiropractic school in March of 2000, a doctor who graduated from National College of Chiropractic in Chicago said to me, "You need to throw out all the garbage you learned about subluxations and get real." Likewise, chiropractors from my own alma mater, Life University in Atlanta, say, "You need to throw out all the garbage you learned about medicine and get real." Okay, here's what's real. Because of medicine, I am still alive after almost dying at the age of 5 months from salmonella. Also, because of medicine my heart still beats after having open heart surgery to correct an aortic valve defect at the age of 19 years. Because of a chiropractOR who corrected my subluxations in the summer of 1986, I overcame a ten-year bout with chronic sinusitis. Because of a chiropractOR who corrects my subluxations, I am able to function quite well despite having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Because I am a chiropractOR who corrects subluxations, a pediatric patient I once took care of no longer suffers from chronic ear infections. BOTH medicine and chiropractic have their place, and they need to stop throwing stones at each other. Here's the tricky part, though -- the general public needs to know this, and they need to be able to think for themselves without all the brainwashing.
This is possible if we get rid of false gods, our own egos, and simply join hands to serve the people we are supposed to be serving. This is NOT impossible because it happens in many countries around the world -- outside the U.S., that is. The "realistic" and the "idealistic" chiropractors get together to go to countries such as Guatemala, Peru, India, and many other undeserved areas to do one thing -- get people well and help them stay well. One relieves their pain while the other helps their bodies function optimally. Choose your paradigm. It still does the job. And in these countries, people flock in droves, filling up entire sports arenas, waiting their turn to be adjusted by a chiropractor. There is no AMA to tell them this is quackery. Their own governments support and promote this because they know how this helps the people of their country!
Let's put the stones and rocks away and get to work. We BOTH have places in this world, and we BOTH are here to make a difference!
