> It is nice to hear such kind words about my beloved profession. Thanks.
>
> The more I practice, the more I am convinced that a qualified
> chiropractor should be the doctor of first choice for almost all health
> problems. I know this sounds self-serving and provincial; but our system
Ok, I'm now going to put in my $.16 concerning chiropractic (inflation, you
know), in the form of a story about what happened to me.
During April of 1998, I had a severe car accident. A woman, distraught by the
fact that her ex-husband had kidnapped her (and his) kids, and fled to some
unknown location, just that morning, plunged into my stopped car at 25 MPH.
She was in a 1992 Mustang, I was in a 1997 Saturn. The Saturn did really well,
(just like all the ads say :) but my back and especially neck were stiff and
sore, so I decided to go to the chiropractor. This is the first time I had
ever considered chiropractic, but hey, it was free (from my perspective) and my
back did hurt. What could it hurt?
My first visit consisted of an X-ray. The X ray showed, rather
clearly, which vertabrae were out of sync. Several were, and it was no
suprise, but a very extreme case was my atlas, which was so far out of sync
that my chiropractor had a collegue look at the X-ray's before we was willing
to work on me.
The first adjustment included the atlas. After it "popped" (quite
loudly, in both directions, I might add), a strange feeling went up and down my
body. No numbness or pain -- I just felt some kind of change. In fact, to
some extent, I felt the effect of every single adjustment, immediately, to the
suprise of my chiropractic doctor. He used "muscle testing" -- a technique to
that I was very suspicious of, but he was able to correctly identify pain in my
back and neck before I told him about it, and the adjustments relieved it.
Well, over the next many months I went in for
adjustments, at first often, then occasionally, then rarely. My back and neck
were feeling better than they had since and even before the accident. I
finally was released.
I was having trouble with food at this time, and feeling
slightly ill when I ate. I went to a allopathic doctor who told me it might be
the ulcer-inducing bacteria. He did a test for it, which was borderline, and
sent me off with some powerful anti-biotics, which I took. This is when I went
for my trip to Australia. I remember thinking, "damn, can't have a drink when I
go!" because I couldn't drink on the medicine.
So I came back, and my food allergies (I suspect that's what the
problem was from the beginning) just exploded. I didn't know what they were,
and wouldn't know for sure for months. But I got sicker and sicker and sicker.
Little did I know that I had become allergic to almost all food. I remember
that the doctor had mentioned that he could, using muscle testing discover what
my food allergies were (at this time I began to suspect that it was food
allergies). I went, and he gave me a list. Basically, I didn't believe that
it would be correct. And, after I saw the list, I found that I was right.
Foods which I knew were big problems were marked "ok", even garlic, after
eating it, I had already gone into some kind of shock (one of the clearer
allergies!). When my blood tests came in, they corelated nicely with my
experience, and for the first time, I realzied that I was allergic to
everything. Since then, I've been on the paleo diet, and slowly recovering.
Erik
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