Question
Dear Dr.Healey,                                         Myself and the wife have severe back pain. Both with herniated discs and Sciatica. Surgery has failed with the wife in reducing her back pain symptons and I am reluctant to have it since her experence failed. We both have seeked alternative medicine for relieve(acupuncture) and had a Chiropractor since 1998. Some times the Chiropractic seems to help and other times, believe it or not, the pain is even worse after we had Chiropractic manipulation. We would like to give an Osteopath Chiropractor a chance to work on us with our pain problems however we do not know of any in our area. Do you know of any in California in the San Francisco Bay Area? We live 60 miles east of S.F. We would appreciate it if you would take a few minutes of your time to see if there is an Osteopath Chiropractor Office within a reasonable distance of our home. Do you have any helpful information for myself and the wife?                                                                Sincerely,                       William/Mary      The moaning in pain couple   :)

Answer
Dear William Stura,

Thank you for your question about you and your wife.  I am sorry to hear of your predicaments.  I thought of greeting you as 揥illiam and Mary,?but then we wouldn't know for sure if this message was for the 搈oaning in pain couple?in California or the university in Virginia!

William, the short answer to your question about an 揙steopath Chiropractor?is that I know of no such designation.  Chiropractic and osteopathy are two separate and distinct fields in a variety of ways, which I'll explain later in this message.  That doesn't mean I cannot offer you some information, however, that I hope will be of use to you both.

In order to answer you properly, I'll first need to give you some background on anatomy and physiology and how they relate to the chiropractic profession.  I have no knowledge of the chiropractic experience you have had and, so, this may be new information for you as well, but even if it is merely a review for you it will still help to approach the matter armed with complete and accurate information.  I'll then offer my thoughts on how this may relate to the situation you describe.  

There are two branches or schools of thought in chiropractic.  Briefly, they are differentiated by whether they deal with the limited therapeutic approach for aches and pains (commonly termed "mixed" chiropractic because it represents a mixture of a chiropractor with a non-chiropractic matter) or a non-therapeutic approach to optimum body performance (termed "straight" chiropractic because there is no mixing of chiropractic with anything else).  My expertise is in non-therapeutic straight chiropractic.

Therapeutic "mixed" chiropractic is the older approach based on a split from the founding principles of chiropractic about a century ago.

Non-therapeutic "straight" chiropractic is the more modern of the two.  It deals with a particular, common situation called a vertebral subluxation.  The spine is made of many bone segments which house and protect the spinal cord and the smaller spinal nerve branches that come off the spinal cord and exit between the bones.  These nerve pathways carry information or messages between the brain and the cells of the body.  These messages are essential for the life of the cells.  Without brain messages, the cells immediately begin the process of dying; i.e., they can no longer function the way they should to maintain life.

Because the bones are moveable, they can misalign in such a way as to interfere with the messages and, ultimately, the ability of the person to function at their best or express their optimum potential, whatever that may be.  People with vertebral subluxations are not able to get all they can out of life.

Vertebral subluxations can be caused by a wide variety of factors, what we'll generally call stresses.  These stresses can be physical (such as exercise, sleeping posture and mattress condition, the birth process, sneezing, falling down, etc.), mental / emotional (in its many forms, probably the most familiar use of the word stress), or chemical (such as pollution, drugs, perhaps even alcohol, etc.), which are, unfortunately, uncontrollable and regular parts of daily living for all age groups.  In short, a vertebral subluxation can occur for a multitude of reasons.

Tragically, vertebral subluxations are rarely obvious to the individual they affect.  They usually have no symptoms.  The reason is that most of what goes on inside you happens without your awareness.  As an example, try to "feel" your liver.  What's it doing right now?  You can't know, so you can't know if it's functioning at its best or something less.  To complicate things, nerve pathways that carry messages of control (termed "motor" nerves) have no way of transmitting ache or pain messages, so your body function may be far from perfect and you'd not have any alerting signal whatsoever.  The branching of the nerve pathways is complex and extensive, making it exceedingly difficult to predict or determine exactly how the person will be affected.  For this reason alone, it is impossible for anyone to give you reliable answers as to a connection between spinal or nerve function and the various symptoms you each may now be experiencing.  Certainly, every part of the body must have connections to the nerve system so that vital information may be transmitted between the brain and the cells.  There are some who would attempt to review the possible nerve connections between a nerve root and specific organs or tissues, but this ignores the multitude of variables that determine the expression of function.  The question of how your individual body carries out the myriad of activities just to maintain life is enormous and would require your Creator's (or creator's, for the agnostic) knowledge, or at least far more than our educated knowledge of the complexities of life.

Now that you have more information about the body and vertebral subluxation, how do you make use of it?  Well, first understand that this is not an explanation of why you have back pain complaints or whether they are related to the spine or herniated disks.  Are there reasons for what you're experiencing?  Even though they may be beyond our ability to identify, yes, there are; but pinning them down is not relevant to the matter of whether you both would benefit from being free of vertebral subluxations.  Vertebral subluxation is, in and of itself, detrimental to life.  It is not valid or reliable to try to connect it to a disk condition, back pain or any other organ or tissue conditions.  In order to know if someone has a vertebral subluxation, it is necessary to have that person's spine checked by a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor using a method of "analysis."  When a vertebral subluxation is detected this way, it is obviously important to correct it as soon as possible.  The term for this procedure is 揳djustment.? 

Since vertebral subluxations are caused by so many different things, people choose to go to a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor on a regular basis to enjoy the most time free of the life-robbing effects of vertebral subluxation. There's a saying that straight chiropractic is not about your back, it's not about pain, it's about your life.  Each person has a unique potential in life.  With vertebral subluxation, it's impossible to realize that potential.

In summary, then, a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor has the professional objective of checking the spine on a regular basis for vertebral subluxations and safely correcting those that are found so that the individual may express their optimum potential on all levels.  

I don't know what your level of knowledge is regarding osteopathy.  Since my area of expertise is non-therapeutic straight chiropractic, I will limit my specific technical comments to my field only, keeping to the generalities of osteopathy for our discussion.  It is obvious, though, from the description of non-therapeutic straight chiropractic above, that the two are quite different.  The objective of the osteopathic profession is the therapeutic assessment and treatment of diseases and ailments of various kinds, essentially identical to that of medicine.  Often, they are both considered within the field of medicine.  Chiropractic is not, though therapeutic mixing chiropractic shares the objective of treating ailments.  Some in the field see this segment of the chiropractic profession logically becoming a segment of the medical profession.

The process of correcting a vertebral subluxation, as we saw above, is called an 揳djustment.? It is a method of allowing the spinal bone to return to its proper position, thereby removing the interference to the vital information transmitted over the nerves.  There is a procedure in osteopathy called 搈anipulation?in which various bones are moved.  This is probably why most people try to compare chiropractic and osteopathy.  Suffice it to say, though, that the difference in the core objective between non-therapeutic straight chiropractic and osteopathy makes any meaningful comparison almost impossible.  Though they may both deal with the human body and, in fact, some of the procedures used appear to be similar, the goals and, therefore, technical considerations are quite different.  The procedure of osteopathic manipulation is not directed toward the correction of vertebral subluxation and, so, it will not be applied with the same technical considerations or evaluated based upon the same analyses.  Chiropractic adjustment and osteopathic manipulation are not interchangeable terms or procedures at all.

A key question to ask for your purposes, then, would be, Is someone who has herniated disks and back pain, whatever may be their cause, better off with vertebral subluxation / nerve interference or free of subluxation / with the nerve channels open?  It is easy to see that having all the available nerve messages getting through is better than only some of them getting through, regardless of the person's situation otherwise.  It's not that you should see a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor FOR your symptoms ?you should visit one in an effort to be free of vertebral subluxations, even WITH such complaints.  Non-therapeutic straight chiropractic is not about diagnosing and/or treating this or any therapeutic-model or medical condition.  It is entirely separate in its goal.  

As I mentioned earlier, not all chiropractors adhere to this and it is important that you be able to distinguish which ones do if you're going to seek this type of service.  As I noted, I have no information on your current chiropractor, so it is not certain if his/her office is of the therapeutic mixed chiropractic viewpoint or the non-therapeutic straight chiropractic viewpoint, though if the focus was on your back pain or disk herniations, we can conclude that it was a therapeutic mixed chiropractic office.  You need to understand very clearly that the practice objectives of therapeutic mixed chiropractic and non-therapeutic straight chiropractic are quite different, as described above.  What I can tell you must not be interpreted from the mixed viewpoint.  

It would certainly be wise to have both your spines checked for subluxations by a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor even if you still elect to have therapeutic attention for your reported herniated disks and back pain symptoms.  Remember, the two objectives are not the same.  

If you are interested in finding out how to locate a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor in your area, please contact me at this site again or at [email protected].  You may also visit www.gschiro.com, a site that represents non-therapeutic straight chiropractic organizations on a state level.

William and Mary, I wish you the best in understanding what non-therapeutic straight chiropractic has to offer.  It has been my pleasure to provide you with some information.

Sincerely,
James W. Healey, D.C.