The Death of Various Theories of How to Improve or Effectively Change Spinal Configuration to Improve Health

About Chiropractic and Effectiveness

By Dr. Jesse Jutkowitz

Engineers have it a bit different in this world than do doctors. If a doctor works on ten patients and only four are better, the docs keep doing the same things saying it was some variation in living things that caused the other six not to respond and people are satisfied. If an engineer builds ten bridges, ten cars, or ten anything and only four of them work, he is quickly out of a job.

To be effective, in healthcare as in the rest of the physical sciences, one must look to actual physical results in the evaluation of theories and methods of treatment. This is because despite the fact that we run bodies, we are not our bodies. (We being spirit, soul, innate or whatever you believe YOU are, and not the body you run in the physical universe).  Our bodies are physical things that follow the same physical rules everything else follows. Especially the fact that one example of some theory not working is demonstration that it is not true as a basic fact.

Given that, to find the basics of how something works one must look at more and not less of the body. Since the 1970s, Chiro Boards of Examiners and others have been trying to lessen the ability to measure body structure by attempting to restrict x-ray pre and post treatment. Some of us have ignored the restrictions and continued the research. I have been using sitting and standing full spine AP and lateral films to measure changes in many techniques for about the last 20 years. (The reason for standing and sitting is that a body can do a great deal of compensating with the feet, legs and pelvis when standing. When sitting you remove the ability of the body to use the feet and legs for any but minimal compensation. Thus looking at standing upright films of the spine and comparing them to sitting upright films you are seeing the mechanics of the body compensated and much less compensated. This lets you analyze the mechanics much better than just standing or just sitting because you can see what changes rather than having to guess – you would not believe how incorrect the so-called “experts” are in their guesses of what changes sitting to standing. Try a few – even sectionals.)

With the observational data from those films and application of engineering analysis rather than chiropractic drivel, anatomic observations and methods that isolate what has been missing from chiropractic to make it work consistently and predictably have been discovered.

I offer here a few of the observations toward something better:

The first is that DD Palmer stated bones go out of place affecting the nerves. That means that structure is key not nerves (despite what followers-on have said). Through the years, there have been several deviations from this course due to inconsistency of results. The largest deviation from that basic truth came after mechanical research by x-ray in the 1960s and 70s. It did not confirm chiropractic’s bone out of place pinching a nerve theory due to faulty research methods and faulty mechanical analyses. (The main fault was not looking at the spinal column as a single synchronized working unit but taking things in sectionals.)

 To explain the failure, Dr. Homewood came along with his book/thesis, THE NEURODYNAMICS OF VERTEBRAL SUBLUXATION. Though this book is the direct source of the current band of “nerves are not working so the muscle is weak and letting the bone go out of place theories” there have been previous attempts at this theory in several disciplines of structural healing. None of the nerve-based or muscle-based theories, chiropractic, PT or other, has ever given a consistent set of results and so are suspect.

I am not knocking the generation of these theories for they are an attempt to search and find something better. However, there is something better, that works consistently and predictably, available right now.

Given that preamble I present the following anatomical observations:

Regarding displacement of a vertebra:  If a vertebra displaces to the left, there are muscles in the body to pull it to the right and reposition it. (At this point, we are just considering the anatomical observations. We are not now concerned with the fact that the muscles often seem not to do so or the reasons they do not do so.)

Likewise, if a vertebra displaces to the right, there are muscles in the body to pull it to the left to reposition it.

If a vertebra displaces posterior, you have muscles in your body to pull them anterior and reposition them. – In the lumbars, you have the psoas to pull it anterior and reposition it every time you stand from sitting. In the midlumbar to midthoracic region, you have the diaphragm to pull it anterior every time you breathe. (Test this by pinching your nose shut, closing your mouth, sucking in and noticing the effect of the diaphragm on your spine.) Above that, you have various muscles to pull the cervicals and upper thoracics anterior. (Test this by putting your head half in flexion, putting a palm on your forehead and then attempt to flex against the resistance of your palm. Notice the pull of the muscles.)

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