What Is Chiropractic Anyway?
This blog is no longer in use. Please refer to www.spinewave.co.nz
October 21, 2006
WICA (16) Informed Choice
In a world where one demands facts, figures and statistics, decisions are still made based on how one feels. Briefly, let's discuss this dichotomy of fact and feeling, which surely must be two sides of the same coin. That is until inflation decreases the value of the coin to 10% of what it was worth in the 60s, and the government changes its colour and size, making it no longer available for tender unless one hauls one's chock full jar 654km to the nearest Reserve Bank, only to be able to walk out with enough cash to buy a pack of breath mints - maybe.
How informed is your choice? It's assumed today that anything scientific is true. We want evidence to support the decisions we make, because all the mice, rabbits and select impoverished university students have done their stint for humanity and now it's time to reap the benefits: To live longer, run faster, jump higher, swallow silver bullets, and be disease free forever by doing nothing. Of course your health care decision should be supported. But barring how information is usually delivered to you - by hearsay, Google, or broken telephone between sales representative, general practitioner, and vendor behind the counter at your local pharmacy - consider the average randomized controlled trial (RCT) through which most interventions are assessed first before they become available to you.
An RCT is an experiment in which investigators randomly allocate eligible people into treatment and control groups to receive or not to receive one or more interventions that are being compared. Sometimes they are double blinded, meaning neither the individuals nor the researchers know who belongs to the control group and the treatment group, but this is not always done. The experiment is randomised, meaning actual treatment - not placebo, say - is determined by a chance process and cannot be predicted. Only 32% of reports published in specialty journals [1] and 48% of reports published in general medical journals [2] specified an adequate method for generating random numbers. A review of one dermatology journal over 22 years found that adequate generation was reported in only 1 of 68 trials [3]. The experiment should be controlled. Standard methods of analysis assume that the data is 'independent'. For controlled trials, this usually means that there is one observation per participant. Treating multiple observations from one participant as independent data is a serious error. Trials involving non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs (such as aspirin or ibuprofen) showed incorrect analysis of multiple observations in 123 (63%) of 196 trials in rheumatoid arthritis [4]. Lastly, the 'trial' bit of RCT means nothing more than, well, let's give it a whirl. Another intriguing definition I found in a medical dictionary described trial as exposure to suffering that tests strength, patience and faith. And I sincerely hope that faith does not imply a bevy of white cloaked individuals huddled around a recumbent patient with fingers crossed repeatedly chanting, "Please don't die... please don't die... please don't die..."
The inability to perform a well randomised, controlled trial leads to biased results, and your capacity to make an appropriate decision is compounded exponentially when considering not only the bias of the results of some study, but the bias of the individual offering the advice, and your own bias when interpreting the information. Bias is influence. So how reliable is it to make a decision, influencing a mind that is unreliable itself? A mind that forgets where it put the keys or forgets names and places? When considering that all the mind reveals is an endless stream of options disguised as memories, fantasies, fears, and concepts, which one simply chooses to pay attention to from moment to moment, how reliable is your health care choice? How reliable is one's gut feel when using a mind that is contaminated with emotions, feelings, prejudices, anxiety, guilt, worry, regret, and fears of sickness, death, loss and rejection? In addition, using a mind that has been surreptitiously and erroneously programmed by endless propaganda, religious, educational and social dogmas, and a continual distortion of facts and misinformation.
Where does truth lie in all this chaos? When neither fact nor feeling offer a dependable course of action, how is one supposed decide? Primum non nocere might be a good place to start. The Latin phrase some attribute to Galen, the Roman physician, meaning first do no harm, widely misperceived to be part of the Greek Hippocratic Oath. Start there. Do what is natural. Explore the healer within in as many ways as possible. No one way is the Truth and Light. I didn't even know what chiropractic was when I inadvertently decided to dedicate my life to it, a very atypical procedure for an engineering student. Yet I came to that crossroad because I had already begun to experience a shift in consciousness. Raising the level of consciousness didn't end there either, because chiropractic, as powerful as it is, is not merely about the adjustment, it symbolises the progression of an entirely new paradigm of thought about life, function and the models we choose to accept and live by every single day.
An RCT is an experiment in which investigators randomly allocate eligible people into treatment and control groups to receive or not to receive one or more interventions that are being compared. Sometimes they are double blinded, meaning neither the individuals nor the researchers know who belongs to the control group and the treatment group, but this is not always done. The experiment is randomised, meaning actual treatment - not placebo, say - is determined by a chance process and cannot be predicted. Only 32% of reports published in specialty journals [1] and 48% of reports published in general medical journals [2] specified an adequate method for generating random numbers. A review of one dermatology journal over 22 years found that adequate generation was reported in only 1 of 68 trials [3]. The experiment should be controlled. Standard methods of analysis assume that the data is 'independent'. For controlled trials, this usually means that there is one observation per participant. Treating multiple observations from one participant as independent data is a serious error. Trials involving non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs (such as aspirin or ibuprofen) showed incorrect analysis of multiple observations in 123 (63%) of 196 trials in rheumatoid arthritis [4]. Lastly, the 'trial' bit of RCT means nothing more than, well, let's give it a whirl. Another intriguing definition I found in a medical dictionary described trial as exposure to suffering that tests strength, patience and faith. And I sincerely hope that faith does not imply a bevy of white cloaked individuals huddled around a recumbent patient with fingers crossed repeatedly chanting, "Please don't die... please don't die... please don't die..."
The inability to perform a well randomised, controlled trial leads to biased results, and your capacity to make an appropriate decision is compounded exponentially when considering not only the bias of the results of some study, but the bias of the individual offering the advice, and your own bias when interpreting the information. Bias is influence. So how reliable is it to make a decision, influencing a mind that is unreliable itself? A mind that forgets where it put the keys or forgets names and places? When considering that all the mind reveals is an endless stream of options disguised as memories, fantasies, fears, and concepts, which one simply chooses to pay attention to from moment to moment, how reliable is your health care choice? How reliable is one's gut feel when using a mind that is contaminated with emotions, feelings, prejudices, anxiety, guilt, worry, regret, and fears of sickness, death, loss and rejection? In addition, using a mind that has been surreptitiously and erroneously programmed by endless propaganda, religious, educational and social dogmas, and a continual distortion of facts and misinformation.
Where does truth lie in all this chaos? When neither fact nor feeling offer a dependable course of action, how is one supposed decide? Primum non nocere might be a good place to start. The Latin phrase some attribute to Galen, the Roman physician, meaning first do no harm, widely misperceived to be part of the Greek Hippocratic Oath. Start there. Do what is natural. Explore the healer within in as many ways as possible. No one way is the Truth and Light. I didn't even know what chiropractic was when I inadvertently decided to dedicate my life to it, a very atypical procedure for an engineering student. Yet I came to that crossroad because I had already begun to experience a shift in consciousness. Raising the level of consciousness didn't end there either, because chiropractic, as powerful as it is, is not merely about the adjustment, it symbolises the progression of an entirely new paradigm of thought about life, function and the models we choose to accept and live by every single day.
© Neil Bossenger 2006
New Zealand
Notes and references
- Schulz KF, Chalmers I, Grimes DA, Altman DG. Assessing the quality of randomization from reports of controlled trials published in obstetrics and gynecology journals. JAMA. 1994;272:125-8.
- Altman DG, Doré CJ. Randomisation and baseline comparisons in clinical trials. Lancet. 1990;335:149-53.
- Adetugbo K, Williams H. How well are randomized controlled trials reported in the dermatology literature? Arch Dermatol. 2000;136:381-5.
- Gøtzsche PC. Methodology and overt and hidden bias in reports of 196 double-blind trials of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs in rheumatoid arthritis. Control Clin Trials. 1989;10:31-56.
October 07, 2006
Issue #15: TV Fear Love
Matters inherent with not owning a television: Being broke enough to feel no need to necessitate the avenue of financing one; being obliged to read books as a weak substitute for mild entertainment; being compelled to infiltrate the guarded inner sanctums of others' minds with nonsensical electronic letters; not being exposed to the continual bombardment of mass media manipulation interjecting a two-hour program which is really only thirty minutes in actual length due to relentless intellect-altering advertising.
"Where do you point your furniture then?!" Joey retorts in an episode from Friends, as he stands in a TV-less room.
I used to watch the one-eyed babysitter at a different time in my life - when I wasn't working an unpaid sixty-hour week as a chiropractic student - and now I find when I do sit down in front of the tube on the rare occasion, the stimulation is so overwhelming it often leaves me buzzing with a subliminal sense of anxiety. It's a strange sensation if one is unaccustomed to watching television at length. In a study done by the Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Centre in Seattle, it was shown that early exposure of television to children aged one to three was associated with attention problems at age seven [1] . Sometimes I'd experiment on myself in a subtle form of self abuse, particularly with foreign networks like Fox News. That one was my personal favourite. All the intense colours, noxious sound bytes, rapid scene cuts, tenacious advertising, and incessant fear-mongering for viewers everywhere:
"Where do you point your furniture then?!" Joey retorts in an episode from Friends, as he stands in a TV-less room.
I used to watch the one-eyed babysitter at a different time in my life - when I wasn't working an unpaid sixty-hour week as a chiropractic student - and now I find when I do sit down in front of the tube on the rare occasion, the stimulation is so overwhelming it often leaves me buzzing with a subliminal sense of anxiety. It's a strange sensation if one is unaccustomed to watching television at length. In a study done by the Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Centre in Seattle, it was shown that early exposure of television to children aged one to three was associated with attention problems at age seven [1] . Sometimes I'd experiment on myself in a subtle form of self abuse, particularly with foreign networks like Fox News. That one was my personal favourite. All the intense colours, noxious sound bytes, rapid scene cuts, tenacious advertising, and incessant fear-mongering for viewers everywhere:
They're out there. We don't know who they are, or where they are, but they're out there.
And they've got guns. Big ones.
FEAR. FEAR. FEAR. FEAR. FEAR. FEAR.
And they've got guns. Big ones.
FEAR. FEAR. FEAR. FEAR. FEAR. FEAR.
Whatever happened to the simple life? Take me to a time in history when doctors of chiropractic didn't have to explain to every television-owning Westerner that an adjustment is the best thing for you. And one of the safest by virtue not only of statistics, but because of the fastidious care the doctor has for you. No, I'm not going to stroke you out. Let's maintain perspective here: The probability of a neck adjustment affecting a blood vessel adversely is 1 in 5.85 million adjustments [2], and the individual was more than likely predisposed to the rupture or thrombus with the life-history he or she brought to the table prior to the event anyway. Meaning something was bound to go wrong whether the person was painting the ceiling, receiving a shampoo, blowing their nose or having sex. Comparatively, there's five times more risk of being killed by driving 1.77km to the chiropractor's office, or 500 times more risk of dying during spinal surgery, or 1,000 times more risk of dying from the contraceptive pill. Those most at risk of stroke? Female smokers on the contraceptive pill in their thirties. So girls... stoppit. One of them. Both of them. Stoppit.
Mission of Light, Brazil 2006 [3]. Courtesy Louise Christophersen.
Take me to a place where people queue for the divinity of human contact. Where scores stand outside and clap and sing praise of the chiropractors for the service they offer, without apprehension, regardless of cost. People whose decisions for chiropractic care are made without fear, nor created by a process of elimination. A place where present time consciousness is most intense because there are no egos, no misconceptions, no negativity, no distorted views on what is supposed to be. Only an appreciation for the expression of life through human hands: People wanting to reconnect to their Source. Not merely maintaining homeostasis, which is simply not dying, but enhancing autopoeisis: An on-going process of self creation that defines identity.
Mission of Light, Brazil 2006 [3]. Courtesy Louise Christophersen.
Take me there. Where people don't live in a world of instant gratification - of instant messaging, instant e-mail, instant coffee, instant food, instant drugs - and expect... demand human healing to play by the same rules purely because they pay dollars for it. It's this world of instant gratification we live in that causes people to forget the body works in its own time, in the right environments, with the right energies. It causes people to forget that the apparent simplicity of no longer being in pain is actually a miracle - of mechanisms unknown. But beyond pain are more miracles, due only to those with open hearts and open minds that actively seek higher tiers of enlightenment.
The late doctor of chiropractic and author of Life Without Fear, Fred Barge, said this: "No false societal belief, no matter how well financed, can withstand the onslaught of a collective change in public consciousness." Turn your television off. Go do something. Be a part of the solution today.
The late doctor of chiropractic and author of Life Without Fear, Fred Barge, said this: "No false societal belief, no matter how well financed, can withstand the onslaught of a collective change in public consciousness." Turn your television off. Go do something. Be a part of the solution today.
© Neil Bossenger 2006
New Zealand
Notes
- Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children: http://www.seattlechildrens
.org/home/pdf/early_television _and_attentional_problems.pdf - Haldeman, et al. Spine. 1999. Vol 24-8.
- For more on the Mission of Light and other world missions, go to: http://www.adjustworld.com
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