Irrational Chiropractic Beliefs

They say one part of a person’s evolution is being able to change one’s stance on something when presented with new evidence. While I agree quite a bit with Robert Mendelsohn, MD on many a medical mayhem including vaccinations, I have to point the fingers the other way for a moment – at my own profession. One reason why many medical professionals had a sour reaction to the chiropractic school I went to in years gone by is because of the rather dark-aged paradigm of medicine, particularly medication, itself. There may still be some people who have such a knee jerk at the mention of Life University in Atlanta, Georgia, but I think times may be changing with the passing of time. Don’t get me wrong, though. Life University is one of the only schools left where a chiropractor will learn and experience the classical model of chiropractic. When I lived in Minnesota more than a decade ago, more than one fellow chiropractor said to me, “I wish I had gone to your school. That way I would have learned the right way.” Yet, the chiropractor who took care of me all the years I lived in Minnesota who did not go to the school I went to was one of the best chiropractors who ever took care of me. But this article isn’t about who went to which school. It’s about who believes what kind of nonsense.

My sour reaction toward my own alma mater began while I was a student there. Things start to click the wrong way when teachers give you a hard time because you went to the hospital suffering from internal bleeding instead of going to your chiropractor. Another once gave me a song and dance when he saw me taking an amino acid therapy therapy compound which was helping, quite successfully, with my struggle with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. A hardline classmate, upon hearing that my father had passed away, angrily scoffed, “Maybe he’d still be alive if you had given him chiropractic care”. But not to fret, Dr. Daniel David Palmer, the discovered of chiropractic himself, repeatedly said, “The good chiropractor will know what he can correct and who he needs to refer to his medical counterpart.” I say the chiropractor who puts more trust in an obtuse, uncaring, and rigid ideology is the one who needs to be avoided.

After having been a professional in the medical field BEFORE going to chiropractic school, you’d think the hardline condition wouldn’t wear on me. But til my days as a student were over, I was starting to think just as conservatively. I had to spend time in the real world taking care of real patients to start feeling that empathy I once did again. Eventually the “chiropractic bible thumpers” who believed in a narrow anti-medicine paradigm lost their influence. It’s as if I had left a cult, although it was just time healing the wounds. I had spent more time within the walls of that school than I should have, thanks to lost time needing to be made up due to the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and other health issues that plagued me at the time. But alas, due to that extra time spent there, I got to experience some fantastic opening of doors which led me onto the spiritual and ethereal healing paths I enjoy to this day. There certainly was a light at the end of the tunnel during those darker days of being a student. Because of all that I experienced, both good and bad, all was a vital learning experience. In closing, I don’t think I was ever meant to have a busy practice. But I WAS meant to be a chiropractor. And because I saw a light and went down a different path from most of my colleagues, I can cater to a different audience than most – one who seeks something more than merely being out of pain. I can help those who are seeking meaning in their higher self.