Chiropractic Bias

Ask the Chiropractor- This week's question actually created a second question. The first question was about chiropractic and lower back pain, which leads to a bias towards bias about chiropractic care. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud

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Transcript

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- Hello, welcome to another edition of "Ask the" Chiropractor. My name's Dr. Brant Hulsebus and I'm a chiropractor. And I started this podcast,"ask The Chiropractor" because all too often people have a question about chiropractic care and they ask the wrong source. So who's the right source if you have a question about chiropractic care? Well, most people don't do this, but the real answer is a chiropractor. A lot of people will ask their family doctor or somebody else before they go see a chiropractor. And all too often a family doctor or a physical therapist has absolutely no education or ever went to chiropractic school, know what chiropractors do in order to answer the question and they answer it wrong, or they answer it inappropriately is probably the better word for me to say, just because of the ignorance. They're not a chiropractor. So this week I got an interesting question. It was a question that really shocked me. It was from an old friend of mine from back in when I was at University of Massachusetts. He sent me a message on the internet. He said, "Hey, I have a good friend here that wants to go see a chiropractor, but before he goes, he wanted to know if there's any research or information about seeing a chiropractor for lower back pain or sciatica." And I was really taken back by this, really taken aback by this because that's like saying I'm going to go see a dentist, but before I see the dentist I want to see some research that shows that dentists actually fill cavities. I want to go see an optometrist, but before I go see the optometrist I want to make sure that glasses are a real thing. It just totally caught me off guard because no one's ever said,"Hey, I want some information, some research on chiropractic for lower back pain and sciatica." I mean, if you asked almost every practicing chiropractor out there, one of the top three reasons why people come see a chiropractor, there's probably four top reasons people come see a chiropractor. Number one, lower back pain. Number two, sciatica. Number three is neck pain. And lastly, headaches. And if you were to do a lid search of all the information on chiropractic and the research on chiropractic, number one thing you're going to find over and over and over again is going to be about chiropractic for lower back pain. So this question really like stunned me. Like are you really questioning whether or not chiropractic can help with lower back pain? And I just got back from homecoming at Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa, the oldest biggest, chiropractic school and the most prestigious chiropractic school. Maybe I'm biased because I went there, but the VA, the good United States government issued studies to show how chiropractic care for lower back pain for veterans is beneficial for them. And not just giving veterans a whole bunch of medications for their lower back pain, but how can chiropractic actually do? And they got a hug study and they get all this research. If you go to palmer.edu, you can find the research department there. You can see all the research they're doing on this. And these are the exact same government agencies that commission research on everything, right? So who's behind the research for chiropractic care? Is it biased research? Absolutely not. We're using the exact same government agencies as every other type of healthcare provider. Everything else that gets done, the exact same entities do it. Now, who does the research? Well, the chiropractic schools do the research on chiropractic. Just like dental schools do research on dentistry. You wouldn't go to a dentist school and say,"We need you guys to do research on whether or not eyeglasses work." Right? You would go to a chiropractic school and that means some of the cool stuff we found out since, you know, when I was in school, everybody knew there was a a bone in the front of a disc in there. A lot of people hypothesized it was the disc moved inside the side that caused the majority of the discomfort and pain. The new research shows that it's actually a little joint in the backside. It's about three quarters of the way back. It's called the facet joint, if you want to look it up. F-A-C-E-T. And there's this crazy amount of nerve endings all around this joint. So as the vertebraes move left and right, you get a little inflammation in there. And that inflammation's what kicks off majority of the pain. And that's kind of to warn us before we actually blow a disc or have a major disc problem. And now the research has shown us more and more the best way to alleviate this discomfort is to restore the motion in there through getting in there with your hands and making it move again. And no one's done that better, longer, or more successful or has more research or more practice than a chiropractor. So chiropractors have been doing this since 1895. So as more and more of this research starts coming out, it becomes more and more obvious that what we've been doing since 1895 is the best thing. So when somebody asks me a question that simple as like,"Can chiropractic help with lower back pain?" I feel like there's more behind this question. There's more between the lines that I'm being asked here. And the real thing I'm being asked here is "I want to go see a chiropractor, but someone's told me I shouldn't." There's somebody with biases towards chiropractic and there's somebody that says,"Maybe chiropractic's not real, chiropractic can hurt me. Chiropractors just don't really know what they're doing." Chiropractic's this, chiropractic, whatever they say. And to me that's very frustrating as a provider because like I said, you know, we have the same agencies that regulate medicine, that regulate dentistry, optometry, podia- All of them regulate, chiropractic too. So you're only as real as the people who regulate you and authorize you to be real. And we're as real as everybody else because we have the exact same authority bodies regulating us as every other healthcare provider professional does. So if we're not real, they're not real. Right? And this got really bad and my grandpa's day, my grandpa really fought some horrific biases and the people about chiropractic. Matter of fact, my grandfather, Dr. Bob Hulsebus, worked with the International Chiropractic Association to help validate chiropractic through two ways. The first way was he did is he got federal loans that cover education. Because if federal loans cover education and the federal government investigator education because they're not going to give out loans to something that's not real or not accredited or not legit. So he got the federal loans that cover education to help legitimize chiropractic in the public's eye. The other thing he worked really hard on was getting Medicare coverage because if the United States government actually reimburses us for doing chiropractic care and Medicare says we find and correct vertebral subluxations. If you're doing that, then you're doing chiropractic. And that's what the federal laws say. And now the, you know, chiropractors say,"Yeah, I look for the vertebral subluxation, the misalignment in the spine that creates nerve stress." And then the chiropractor goes in there adjusts that, relieves the nerve stress and the body can heal and take care of itself. That's what the federal government tells us. It's like the federal government says"If you tear your rotator cuff this is the approved surgery for that." Same body, same governing body that regulate everything, regulate chiropractic, just as they regulate orthopedic surgeries, as they regulate heart cardiac issues. So they were able to prove all that. But yet, the biases and the chirping continued on and on and on. And there was a chiropractor, I'm in Rockford, Illinois. There's a chiropractor in Oakbrook, Illinois named Dr. Chester Wilk. And Dr. Chester Wilk actually sued the AMA. You can look it up, Chester Wilk versus the AMA. Major lawsuit, antitrust lawsuit for the AMA saying bad things about chiropractic. And a couple years ago, recently, printed last 18 months, two years, Chester Wilk passed away. Chester Wilk's daughter called me and had me come to the house and get some information from them. And right here in my hand I have all kinds of stuff straight from Dr. Wilk's, his own personal desk at his house. And so this was stuff that was at his house, Dr. Wilk with the Supreme Court victory against the AMA, all these newspaper clippings and all this information that he had, including some of the actual testimony right here in my hand that Dr. Wilk kept on his personal desk. This is going to be saved in an archive in chiropractic history. But the lawsuit basically said that the AMA was saying hurtful, malicious things about chiropractors. And the problem was Dr. Wilk started this lawsuit like I think in the sixties and he didn't win it until the late nineties. The middle nineties. So this is a big deal that he, you know, this took this long to win this lawsuit, this antitrust lawsuit. And like I said, the United States Supreme Court, everything. And so, but he was able to win, to show that for many, many, many, many years the AMA had bad things to say about us. And they continued to blast us. Recently, the American Heart Association, the American Stroke Stroke Association came dangerously close to getting the exact same lawsuit thrown on their face for trying to say other malicious things about chiropractors. So this ongoing thing with medical doctors, and I shouldn't say medical doctors, their associations, not the individuals. I co-care lots of patients with medical doctors, lots and lots of patients. It's not the individual physician, but the individual physicians associations like the AMA, the American Heart or Stroke Association, the American Stroke Association has been saying negative things about us for a long, long, long time. And all this stuff's been proven wrong. I mean, if you look up the work from Cassidy, he debunked everything the American Heart Association, the American Stroke Association had to say. And if you're looking for that, you just type in PubMed and Cassidy Chiropractic because you won't find the American Heart Association, the American Stroke Association on PubMed because Cassidy debunked everything they said and proven not to be true and actually questioned the intent of what they had to say just like Chester Wilk. You know, he came after the AMA big time and able to prove that they were being malicious against us. So when somebody says to me, "Dr. Hulsebus, can chiropractic help a lower back pain or sciatica?" I have to think in the back of my mind that some doctor ignorantly told him that, you know, not to go to a chiropractor when reality chiropractic can help. And the reason this really irks me or tries me upset is because we'll get a patient here that maybe asks a provider whether or not they should try a chiropractic and should they go with a chiropractor,"Is a chiropractor good for me?" And that provider basically told them "no," even though they're ignorant in it. And this patient suffered. And I've seen all types of suffering. I've had patients come in here addicted to opiates because they couldn't get any relief. They were prescribed pain meds. And those pain meds were opiates and that addiction turned from prescription strength to street stuff. We hear about these stories all the time. It's sickening how many people in this country are addicted to opiates. And I have people have lost family members to opiate overdoses and stuff like that. And just losing to what happens with the opiates. And the whole time you just, you wonder, boy, if I could've just got my hands on them and adjusted them. I've had other people that waited five years or plus to come see me. And by this time there's already starting to get some bony changes in their spine because it hasn't moved in so long. You see when the spine doesn't move and it gets fixated when it's under the stress I described earlier, the disc needs motion in order to do its thing. And if it doesn't have the motion in there, it dehydrates and that's when the arthritis kicks in. So now by the time the patient finally gets in to see me there's already major changes that have happened and now we're really working uphill. But the bottom line is somebody's suffered too long with discomfort, too long with pain, too long with lack of function. And now they're trying to catch up and they come to see me. A lot of times I'll give them three or four adjustments. And for the first time in many, many years, they're finally starting to feel relief and get hope again. And it just bothers me inside that too many people go too long. That's the whole reason of this podcast. So if you know somebody who's been thinking about trying chiropractic, make sure you have them talk to a chiropractor or send me a question, I'll be happy to answer it. But yes, chiropractic helps with lower back pain. You can look at the Northern American Spinal Society. The number one recommendation they have for acute lower back pain is getting spinal manipulative therapy. Nobody's better at spinal manipulative therapy than a chiropractor. Yes, chiropractic helps with lower back pain. There's just thousands and thousands of studies out there. When you research anything always make sure you type in the word PubMed, P-U-B-M-E-D. You can type that in. And that goes to a really, really good source to find out real, real research. You have to be careful on the internet. So that's a great way. If you're curious more about that, you can go back to my previous podcasts I've done, I've talked about how you could actually research, how to research on the internet, how to find the actual facts. There's a lot of stuff on the internet, not all of it's good, but take a look at it and then if you got some free time, Google search the word Chester Wilk chiropractor, true hero. Take a look to see what he had accomplished for our profession and and more importantly, our patients. So there you go. Does chiropractic help with lower back pain? Yes. Am I being asked this question presumably because there's biases still against what chiropractors do? Unfortunately that's how I feel I was asked this question this week. So if you have a question, ask the chiropractor. You can find meat rockforddc.com. That's R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D-D-C.com. Submit a question there, call our office. Wherever you're watching this, you can leave a comment below with a question. I'll be happy to get back to you. Thanks everybody.