Tuesday, July 3, 2007

CHIROPRACTIC EVOLUTION

Through the mid-nineties pivotal chiropractic research was conducted and was published at the beginning of the 21st Century, and yet a large segment of the profession missed it! Why?
1) The findings weren’t published in a peer-reviewed chiropractic journal – they were actually published in two major psychiatric journals; the Journal of Molecular Psychiatry (published by Nature) and the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs: No chiropractor would have received these journals in their post-box.
2) The research involved a patient population commonly ignored by comfortable middle-class chiropractors, namely an addicted population. But this study population was chosen for very specific scientific reasons – they biogenetically possess an inability to achieve a state of wellbeing.
Why was this research potentially so paradigm shifting for the chiropractic profession?
1) The design of the study was overseen by a leading medical biostatistician from the University of Miami, School of Medicine: Nothing was included in the study unless it stood up to his rigorous statistical and evidence-based standards.
2) The study involved randomization, and all of the scientific design expected of longitudinal clinical research, and, three-arms – not just active treatment and control groups, but also a placebo-control group.
3) The acceptance and rejection of various chiropractic examination procedures which lead to a short-list of evidence-based indicators of Subluxation, ultimately synthesizing a technique for analyzing and differentially diagnosing a Primary Subluxation.
4) The need to design an adjusting instrument that provided true reproducibility of the adjustive thrust and the vectors of the classic chiropractic adjustment – the Toggle Recoil.
5) Acceptance of the research results by peer review panels far more rigorous and skeptical than normal chiropractic peer review.
6) A documentary featured on Discovery Health Channel highlighting the findings of the research and giving chiropractic a glowing review.
What was so impressive about the results? To understand this we need to tell you a little about the clients accepted into the trial: These were recovering addicts with many substance-abusing habits, who were undergoing normal 30-day withdrawal in an in-patient facility… Nasty stuff: Major withdrawals, cravings, severe physical and mental symptoms, abstinence-based challenges… all going on at the same time. What happened when they received specific chiropractic adjustments?
1) They finished the program: The gold-standard of recovery is how many clients make it to the end of the thirty days? Good rehab facilities achieve somewhere around 70% retention. When they were adjusted as well, the retention rate increased to 100%... That’s right no-one left! In recovery circles it is common knowledge that if someone drops out of care it isn’t because they’ve started a new job, or had a miraculous healing and didn’t need to hang around. No, they’ll usually be back in their old haunts doing the same old stuff. This finding is huge – if they stayed they must have been doing really well.
2) Their anxiety levels dropped dramatically: This research project didn’t just measure one outcome, it also utilized internationally accepted state of wellbeing questionnaires: When the clients were adjusted the Spielberger’s State of Anxiety Test scores dropped the same amount that it normally takes six months of standard care to achieve.
3) Their depression levels dropped markedly. When the clients were adjusted the Beck’s depression inventory scores dropped the same amount that it normally takes twelve months of standard care to achieve.
4) They didn’t need the usual nursing and first-aid measures demanded by this population. Nursing station visits are actually the biggest overheads in running a rehab facility: When the clients were adjusted only 9% needed to make any nursing station visits – the placebo and normal care groups made visits in 56% and 48% of cases respectively (that’s right the placebo group was more miserable than the normal care group – so much for the argument that chiropractic is a good placebo – this suggest it’s actually a “nocebo”!)
Now wait a minute I hear many of you saying – “I have no interest in treating drug addicts in my practice, so why would I want to learn a technique to treat them?”
Here is the point… the CHIROPRACTIC IN THIS STUDY DID NOT TREAT ADDICTION, IT ADJUSTED SUBLUXATIONS. The in-patient program treated the addiction with the normal abstinence strategies, group therapy, counseling etc. The chiropractic produced massive increases in state of wellbeing, helping the recovery to be more effective. You need to learn how to produce such massive increases in state of wellbeing to, in all of your practice members…
Isn’t this what great chiropractic is about? We don’t fix them, but when we adjust them their body’s healing and recuperative processes are exponentially released to fulfill their true potential – great chiropractic that is…
So why would you learn Torque Release Technique the chiropractic model that evolved through this scientific process?
1) Wouldn’t you love your client retention to reach record proportions? There’s only one thing that really increases retention – RESULTS. You might be a great salesperson and be able to coerce people into hanging around, but when they FEEL the benefits they don’t need any convincing.
2) No-one refers like an excited customer: Do you think that massive changes in emotional and mental status would excite your clients? When their back pain’s gone they quickly forget why they are coming to see you: But when the lights get turned on every adjustment, you’ll be impressed when they start to ask if it is alright for them to regularly come back for more, and and can they bring someone else with them?
3) If we are truly a wellness profession, then our clients’ dependence on symptomatic and crisis care should start to vanish. How thankful do you think your clients will be when they notice how they aren’t spending so much on panadol, panadeine and nurofen, and they no longer have to spend ages sitting in the MD’s waiting room with all those miserably infectious people? How much easier will your practice hours be when no-one is winging and whining about their latest ache?
4) Wouldn’t you like to get to the end of the day after having seen more clients than ever before, and not be emotionally and physically spent? With TRT you can speed up your decision making, reduce the number of adjustments per visit, and minimise all the extra stuff you do trying to hit the right spot.
5) So you can be sure you are using the most evidence-based technique ever available to the chiropractic profession. Make sure you have total proficiency in the procedures accepted by one of medicine’s top biostatisticians – discover if you’re wasting your time doing stuff that was rejected?
6) So you can access the Integrator Adjusting Instrument, the only instrument with pre-loading, recoil, torque, stunningly high speed (1/10,000 sec), low force, and neurologically-based impulse frequency.
7) To be trained in the technique that provides you with the vitalistic, tonal, non-linear, neurologically-based adjusting technique to go hand-in-hand with your vitalistic chiropractic philosophy – Leave behind the mechanistic methods that have held back chiropractic practice in the twentieth century.

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