Chiropractic Care and Stroke Risk: Debunking the Myth

Ask the Chiropractor-
Here we go again.  Dr Hulsebus was asked twice this week about chiropractic care and stroke risk.  Dr Hulsebus discusses the history of this, the false claims, the research that shows those claims are false, and current research supporting Chiropractic as a safe choice. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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- Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here, and welcome to another edition of "Ask the Chiropractor"."Ask the Chiropractor" is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford Ice Hogs. Let's dive into it. Hi there, Dr. Brant Hulsebus again. Thanks for joining us. I want to talk about a topic that we get asked way too often, way too much. And this topic should not exist anymore. It should already have been decisively determined and figured out, but I was asked about it twice this week, so I'm going to talk about it again. And if you go to my website, Rockford DC R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D-D-C.com, you'll see a title of, I think it says blogs. If you click on that, you'll see that I've talked about this topic several times. If you want to know more about what I've said in the past or hear this again, or you know, it's available to you. But we're going to talk a little bit about the history of this, why this is a thing. We're going to talk a little bit about why it keeps coming up. And we're also going to talk a little bit about the actual science and the research behind what's happening. So I was asked this week again twice. I was warned that if I see you and you would adjust my neck, that I could possibly have a stroke. So why does this keep coming up? How does this all start? Well, originally, this started way back in the 1950s, the AMA, the American Medical Association developed a panel or a group called the Division on Quackery. And their sole purpose was to contain and eliminate chiropractic. Now, this sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory that I'm saying here, right? But I'll challenge you to look up the name Chester Wilk, W-I-L-K, Chester Wilk versus the AMA. Take a look at that and read all about it. Now, I had a unique opportunity. I am the Illinois rep of the National Chiropractic Association here in Illinois. And Dr. Wilk lived in Illinois and practiced in Illinois. Well, unfortunately, a couple years ago, Dr. Wilk passed away and his daughters called me because they had a bunch of his chiropractic stuff. They didn't know what to do with it. And I wanted to get it back to where it needed to be. So I drove to the house and I got everything. And one of the things I got to see was the United States Supreme Court papers when Dr. Chester Wilk sued the AMA for the Sherman Act, the Antitrust Act for saying disparaging, untrue things about chiropractic. And it was super cool to get all that because I actually read the testimony, right, the actual testimony. So Dr. Wilk sued the AMA for all these things I just said he did that I accused the AMA of doing. so as chiropractors, as a general rule, when someone comes in and says, well, these are the AMA guidelines, a lot of us chiropractors raise an eyebrow. Oh yeah, we've dealt with them before. So we don't always care about the AMA guidelines, we care more about the International Chiropractor Association guidelines because we've been a victim of the AMA in the past. But that's kind of where these rumors started, so that we have decades and decades of telling false stories about chiropractic. And when you tell rumors and lies for decades and decades, it takes almost forever to make them go away. That's why they keep coming up. But let's talk a little bit about the anatomy and why people even talk about what this could be a thing. Inside your spinal cord, your cervical, in your neck, there's an artery that goes inside your cervicals, roughly about C5. travels up and it supplies the bottom part of your brain with blood. It's called the internal vertebral artery. It goes right up your neck, it goes to the base of your brain to a thing they call a circle of Willis, which is basically, it's two arteries come up, they make a circle and then they have branches that go up and down supplying the bottom half of your brain with the nutrients that it needs. Some people get involved in incidences where one of these arteries can actually hemorrhage, tear. And what happens is you have two, so if one's torn or ripped open and you look this way, you occlude the other side. So basically, right now, I'm healthy. I don't have these issues. If I look to the left, I occlude the right one. If I go this way, I occlude the other one. But you have two. So it's okay to look both ways as one occludes the other one. But if one of your arteries is compromised, what happens is when I look this way, now the other artery is compromised. Now no blood's getting up. Now I have a problem. So if this was the case and I backed my car out of the driveway, I could have a problem. If this is the case and I got my hair washed and they did the sink and they turned my head, I could have a problem. If I had this and I went to the medical doctor and they did a range of motion test on me, I could have a problem. Of I did this and I went to a chiropractor, did a range of motion test on me, I could have a problem. So you see, it's not a chiropractic thing that does this. It's not a chiropractic thing that causes this. Now why does chiropractor get brought into this? Well, when the artery is hemorrhaged or torn or suffering, the number one symptom is severe neck pain. And where do most people go when they have severe neck pain? The chiropractor. So if I had severe neck pain, I'd go to the chiropractor. This artery causes severe neck pain. People go to the chiropractor. So the American Heart Association, the American Stroke Association, a couple years back, they said that they were going to investigate this again, bring this whole thing back up again. And what they did is they went and asked people who had this artery hemorrhage whether or not they had gone to the chiropractor. And there was roughly about 20% of them that had, of the patient population they asked. So the American Heart Association, the American Stroke Association said, look at this. These people had this stroke and these 20% of them went to the chiropractor. The chiropractor must be the reason. So, you know, sounded a little fishy to us again. Just call us skeptical. We don't trust these giant associations as chiropractors. So Dr. Cassidy decided to do a followup study on this. And many of you have heard me talk about PubMed before. PubMed's like the gold standard of medical research, like it can definitely be trusted. So Dr. Cassidy published a PubMed research followup on this American Heart Association, American Stroke Association paper. And Dr. Cassidy found out that that was the only question that was asked. So he asked more questions. It turns out more than half of them went to the medical doctor. It turns out almost all of them wore socks. It was just crazy to think that because this happened and this happened, that these two must cause each other and not to ask any other questions. The American Heart Association, the Stroke Association went out with an agenda and appears that agenda in mind with an outcome they wanted to have desired to be a certain outcome. Now Cassidy's study was interesting because he actually found that if you're having this injury, it's safer to go to a chiropractor than the family doctor. Why? Remember, you're having severe neck pain. Why is it safer to go to the chiropractor than medical doctor? More chiropractors send people to the ER. More chiropractors reacted quicker than medical doctors did during this. For one simple reason, we are so tired of being accused of causing it that we are more quicker to refer you to the emergency room when this happens, because we don't want to get blamed and get a reputation that we cause these things. So we react faster than the family doctor. What am I saying? Well, the general public says if the chiropractor does a range of motion test, you have an issue. The general public blames the chiropractor. If your family doctor does this and you have an issue, then family doctor discovered your problem and saved your life. You see the difference? So as chiropractors we're, I guess you call it gun shy. So we're quick to get you out and tell people that you know, hey, they walked in with this, we did no care. We just found this and we sent them out right away. The other advantage you have going to your chiropractor is typically your chiropractor knows you better than your family doctor. I tend to see my patients more frequently than their family doctor does. So hence I have a better relationship with my patients than their family doctor does. For the simple fact, I just see them more, so I know them better. So if you were to come into my office and you had severe neck pain like you've never had before, and you're losing part of the blood going to your brain, I'm going to say, whoa, something's going on here. Let's get you to where you need to be. So they actually showed that if you're worried about your safety, you're better off at the chiropractor. I thought that was a cool And that's PubMed index. Again, so that's the real stuff. Other chiropractors I know have followed up with questionnaires that your doctor, if he's really concerned about this, should be talking to you about. Very genetic diseases have problems with this. Birth control, smoking could have issues with this. Alcohol intake, marijuana intake could have problems with this. F-L-U-O-R-O-Q-U-I-N-O-L-O-N-E. Antibiotics, these antibiotics actually make your arterial walls very weak and susceptible to tearing and injury. So if your doctors are ever worried about you having a stroke, these should never be a part of your regimen. Homocysteine. Homocysteine is a simple blood test you can do. People with elevated levels of this amino acid is huge risk of stroke. So if your family doctor tells you don't go to the chiropractor, they might cause a stroke. I'm assuming they've already in a homocysteine to check on you if they're really worried about you having a stroke. So there's all kinds of cool things that we have that we can talk about that we share. So you come to me, you tell me your doctor is afraid of this, I'm going to send over a records request, making sure all these proper things were done. because if you are truly a stroke risk, then we better get to the bottom of it. Another cool thing that just came out, you know me, I like to read, the Journal of Manual and Manipulative Therapies, August, 2023, number four, pages 261 to 269. New research came out. Vertebral arteries do not experience tensile forces during manual cervical spine manipulation applied to human cadavers. So we really can't tell if an adjustment's going to tear your artery because nobody wants to sign up for that. Just like nobody signed up for research about heart transplants to see whether or not you could do a double blind random control study on a heart transplant. They just did them, all right. So we took a whole bunch of cadavers. They did chiropractic moves on them and they actually put meters inside the vertebral artery. And with the cadaver, they were not able to ever demonstrate any type of tensile forces on this artery during the chiropractic care to cadavers. We do this to animals, they used to do this in animals, they were unable to prove animals also. We've done experiments to see whether or not we cause issues to this artery. We cannot find a way to duplicate that we ever caused issues to this artery. We know the reason that chiropractors get blamed is because of years and years and years of lies. And we also know that chiropractors see this in their office because it causes neck pain. But again, when you read Cassidy's PubMed index article, it shows that you're actually safer with us than you are your family doctor because of these negative lies that been told about us for so long. So that's the whole inside and out about the chiropractors and chiropractors cause stroke. Do chiropractors cause stroke when they give you a neck adjustment? The research says no. The data says no. The information says no. So if you have someone that tells you that, don't have them, tell me that, because I'll shove this stuff down their throat. But we also, like I said, we would follow up with the doctor if they're that generally concerned about the other antibiotics you might be on or the medications you're on and homocysteine levels and stuff like that. There's ways to do more research and follow up on it. Well, if you like more information, like I said, my website, there's more. I talked about this stuff before. Otherwise go ahead and leave me a question on my website. Www.rockforddc.com I said earlier, go ahead and leave us messages there or wherever you're hearing or seeing this or watching this. Go ahead and leave a comment there and maybe next week you'll be the question of the week on "Ask the Chiropractor". And I keep praying every day this question won't get asked anymore. Alright everybody. Oh, one last thing too on this topic. Malpractice insurance. Chiropractors have the lowest rate of any healthcare provider. We pay the least amount of malpractice for the same coverage as everybody else. So if we were causing strokes, our malpractice would be astronomical. Alright everyone, think about that too. Alright, thanks everybody. I beat this topic to death because I'm tired of it. All right, if you have any questions, go ahead and leave us a comment below. Stay happy, stay strong. And if you have a question about chiropractic, the only person qualified to answer that is a chiropractor. Thank you.