> 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