“Knowledge is knowing a fact. Wisdom is knowing what to do with that fact.”

B.J. Palmer

Through the first 15 years chiropractic developed in a very open playing field. Medicine had not yet politically and legislatively asserted itself as the sole guardian of health care in this country and chiropractic quickly exploded in popularity, with schools springing up and people benefiting from chiropractic in rapidly increasing numbers. The scope of practice was not restricted to symptomatic treatment of musculo-skeletal pain since the chiropractic premise was that all function in the body is controlled by the nervous system and therefore there is no specific health issue which could not be improved through appropriate spinal care. The divergent philosophies and applications of chiropractic and medicine, combined with chiropractic’s surging popularity set the stage for a showdown over health care control which would rage into the second half of the 20th century. This period will be discussed in my next post.

 Allopathic medicine is on the offensive regarding its ability to influence public opinion and utilization of alternative care. Anyone who questions this should read the medically generated reports and studies regarding the efficacy of alternative options. There is a decidedly critical stance relative to “scientific validity”. The chief of general medicine at a local hospital recently predicted that 95% of alternative therapies would not withstand scientific scrutiny. Allow me to stick my neck out and agree that most alternative systems will never be scientifically proven or dis-proven, at least not in any classical sense. Most of them are better explained by a quantum model and the sooner the alternative care community embraces this instead of trying to make excuses for it, the sooner the debate can really be clarified. In any case, medicine creates a serious dilemma for itself by focusing on this point. Only 30-40% of medical practice is actually proven scientifically; the rest is based on clinical trial studies and the vast majority of this “science” occurs in the treatment of chronic illness. Granted, clinical trials can be an investigative step along the way to scientific fact but they are most certainly not science in of themselves. When you look at the incidence of iatrogenic (caused by treatment) illness and mortality (now the third leading cause of death in this country), especially in light of estimates that early next century one out of two middle-aged adults will have at least one chronic degenerative illness, serious questions could be raised about medicine’s effectiveness as primary gatekeepers of non-critical health care.

There has also been a noticeable escalation in the already saturated advertising campaign by medicine designed to keep people in the “sickness/reactive” health care mindset. Most troubling to me is the explosion of ads for prescription drugs. Especially for children, these ads plus the constant barrage of messages for over-the-counter medication encourage a belief system that health care is about getting sick and then trying to figure out how to make it better. It ensures almost obligatory compliance with the allopathic system and inherently shifts the focus away from a preventative, wellness approach to health.

These trends will continue and the debate over them will shape the future of our health care system. It will get more heated and the stakes will get higher. I believe there will be many casualties as a direct result of this escalation and I encourage all of my patients to consider carefully the implications for themselves individually as well as for their friends and family. I think there will be increasing pressure from the medical and scientific community to regulate, restrict and even prohibit access to alternative care and it may well be insufficient to sit on the sidelines, hoping it will “all come out in the wash”. I encourage you to stay informed.

Sixty years ago many chiropractors were in jail, charged with practicing medicine without a license. Only through extraordinary commitment and perseverance were we as a profession able to establish that we are practicing something entirely different from medicine; something called chiropractic. In fact we are not in the business of treating disease, but rather locating and correcting vertebral subluxations which interfere with normal neurological function and the ability for the innate intelligence in the body to express balance and homeostasis. And in keeping with the wellness approach, chiropractic has historically promoted healthy life-style issues regarding diet, exercise and soundness of mind, even before it was fashionable to do so. The same challenges faced by my profession for 103 years are now being brought to bear on other alternative methods as well and again it will require persistence and fortitude to overcome them. I encourage patients to present questions and concerns to me regarding these matters and to do so without reservation.

CATCH THE WAVE

“Do you want the last smoked oyster?”

“No, you have it, Studge.”

We are ten days into the trip and the repetition of tripping lunches, not to mention too much sun and a long morning in the boat are all starting to take their toll on my appetite. We pack up the wannigan and slip back onto the water, heading south to Great Slave Lake. We are on the Beaulieu River in the Northwest Territories and the afternoon is warm and nearly windless. Its one of those days up here where you look at the sky again after an hour and see exactly the same cloud formation in the same place. The next three hours will see us across the ten miles of Watta Lake so we settle into our rhythm as the canoe slides over the glassy surface. I am paddling in the bow, my eyes closed to the reflection of the sun on the water and the post-lunch stupor beginning to take up residence in my brain. After 25 years and hundreds of thousands of strokes, no conscious thought of the process is required. Reach forward, but not too far. Slide the paddle through the surface tension, matching the pace of the boat. Pull, then follow through on the glide and then start it all over again. And again and again and again……

My eyes pop open and my first thought is the realization that I’ve been sleeping; and not just for a few seconds, either. Next is surprise at the fact that I’m still paddling and in perfect rhythm no less. I steal a peek back at Studge and see that he has no idea I’d checked out for awhile.

We travel on and as I reflect on the experience I begin to understand something. A chiropractor by trade, I work with the stuff of nerves and patterns, searching for the frequency of adaptation in the body. When I paddled and dozed, I was playing out a basic truth; that life is expressed as an infinite number of wave patterns. In mammals, some examples of this are the contraction and dilation of the heart, the rise and fall of respiration, the pulsing of cerebro-spinal fluid and the peristalsis of the intestine. Even the time-line from conception to death follows a single wave pattern. In nature, the repeating cycle of high pressure systems alternating with low pressure, the movement of water from the sky to the surface and back and the cycle of the seasons are some of the seemingly endless variations of this universal motion.

For me, paddling has become one of these life frequencies. There are days deep in a trip when the cycle of the paddle stroke makes me feel so whole and perfectly right that I imagine it to be akin to what a buddhist monk experiences after years of being “present” from meditation and fasting. The rhythm begins to sustain and enable me not unlike the rhythms elemental in nature. It is so deeply rooted in my core that, under the right circumstances consciousness would appear to be optional. The inner beat begins to act as a bridge to my awareness of the subtleties and infinite variations of the rhythms all around me in this remarkable place.

The undulation of a grayling as it glides upstream in a shallow section of the river, the powerful winging of the bald eagle as it takes off from the bank ahead, intent on leading us down the next section of water, the rows of waves stretching to the horizon on one of the big lakes and the rhythmic sound of their breaking on the rocky shore, the vibration of the wings of a dragonfly as it perches on the gunwhale of the canoe, poised for flight. And over everything, this dream-like hum which seems the very frequency of the land itself, binding it all together.

I come back here time and again to simultaneously find and lose myself in the embrace of this place. Deepak Chopra says that all addictions are really just our attempt to re-discover pure joy. If so, I must be a canoe-tripping junkie, catching the waves again and again.

“Pasta or rice pilaf tonight, Studge?”

Stuart M. Grey

10/03/2006

wonderful: Dr. Grey has perhaps the best bedside manner of any doctor I’ve had the pleasure of visiting in my life! He is extremely knowledgable about traditional medicine in addition to his knowledge about his own field. He is interested in all aspects of a patient’s life in order to pronounce the most thorough diagnosis possible, and works diligently to correct the problems he diagnoses. I had suffered from acid reflux for YEARS, and after 4 months with him, it was almost completely unnoticeable. His rates are affordable, and he works to make you better, not to make you dependent on him for further visits. I would recommend him to anyone, even if you’ve had previous unpleasant or unsuccessful experiences with a chiropractic doctor.     K. Vroomin