Chiropractic is unique in the health care field.  We offer the public an option for care that does not involve drugs or surgery and which addresses the body’s inherent capacity to heal and optimally regulate itself.  Many people are disillusioned with medical care when they have had more discomfort from the side effects of prescriptions or surgical interventions than they have had relief of the conditions the drugs or procedures targeted.  People’s lives have changed when they can stop taking drugs for depression, pain, asthma, anxiety, blood pressure or insomnia because chiropractic care has supported their bodies to be better self-regulated, as nature intended.  The public deserves to have access to a drug free, surgery free field of health care which specializes in addressing subluxation, optimizing the body’s physical, chemical and mental performance.

The future of chiropractic as we know it is at stake this week.  That which makes Chiropractic a separate and distinct field of health care outside of the field of medicine must be kept intact.  The Council on Chiropractic Education has the responsibility of ensuring that institutions of chiropractic instruction are providing quality education to the field of up and coming doctors of chiropractic.  The CCE determines what will be taught in curriculum, and thus effects how the field is defined.  Over the last several years, due to the interest of its insular membership, they have been chipping away at the foundation of what makes chiropractic distinct and unique, bringing drug therapies into the curriculum and phasing out the concept of subluxation-based care.  The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality & Integrity will be reviewing the CCE next week, and principled chiropractors are rallying to bring them back into alignment with the roots of the profession…  or shut them down.

If you have received benefit of 100% natural, nothing added, nothing taken away, down-home subluxation-based chiropractic care in your life and feel that it enhanced your expression of health, then please take a moment to sign this petition, which must be submitted on Sept 16th.  Call your chiropractor and say, “Thanks for keepin’ it real,” schedule your next wellness visit, then reach out and give your chiropractor’s number to someone who still needs to discover the wonders of chiropractic.  Adding years to life and life to years, from cradle to grave, chiropractic changes lives, one spine at a time.  Keep it real and available for the public and future generations.   Thanks!

When a person seeks chiropractic care, they typically present with specific concerns regarding their symptoms.  Their goal is to clear up those symptoms and feel better again.  It can be somewhat disconcerting for some people to hear that the focus of their care at Thrive will NOT be the treatment of their symptoms.  Rather, the objective to care delivered at Thrive is to release unintegrated stored tension, or subluxation interference, to facilitate a clearer expression of their life force, so the body can reorganize and heal itself.

Principled chiropractors uphold what keeps chiropractic a distinct profession from medicine or physical therapy.  We honor that which is beyond what in medicine is known as the body-mind, and actually acknowledge life force, “that something” that makes a living being unique and alive.  We practice from a “whole being,” vitalistic perspective, as the body is not separate from, but an expression of, the uniqueness of a person.  Structurally connected and intelligent, the body, clearly expressing it’s life force, has the capacity to self-regulate, self-generate and self-heal with optimum efficiency.

As most of us have experienced, life happens.  Circumstances arise where we are less efficient at self-regulating and self-healing, where we are functioning at less than optimum capacity.  This is where life’s forces, the myriad of experiences we live through, unintegrated, can accumulate to interfere with the clear expression of our unique personal Life Force.  Whether we live through a specific accident or injury (or several), or merely build-up an overload of life’s stresses, if we are unable to fully process and integrate these experiences, the body distorts with stored tension.  Subluxation results.  The body becomes less efficient, the expression of Life Force is diminished.

When someone comes for care to address issues resulting form a car accident, the mandate from their car insurance policy is to return their body to “pre-injury status.”  Often, the forces of the car accident brings much of a person’s deeply stored tensions and stresses to the surface to be addressed.  This actuality is rather serendipitous.  As the person receives chiropractic adjustments, their body not only heals the injuries and symptoms resulting from the car accident, but a much deeper reorganization occurs simultaneously.  Many find themselves enjoying life and expressing who they are more completely than before the accident.

Once a person has experienced living in a less-subluxated body, it is natural for them to become inspired to address their continued well-being by becoming pro-active about getting checked regularly for subluxation, getting adjusted to move through deeper layers of tension and interference.  Life never stops happening, life’s forces always need to be integrated for the system to function optimally.  Maximize the clear expression of YOUR life force and keep chiropractic as part of your wellness-focused lifestyle.

Don’t let an ache or sniffle stress you out this fall.  Instead, open into the recognition that your body is just riding the cycle of the change of seasons.  Do what you need to to support your body to do what it knows how to do.  Stressing out that we are about to “get sick” and start expressing symptoms of cold of flu will only make it worse.  Here’s why:

When we are under stress, we spend most of our time overworking the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system.  This is the part of our physiology that governs that primal “fight or flight” state of consciousness.  Over-stimulation of this part of our nervous system can drive us right into the ground.

When we are stressed, the sympathetic nerve fibers release a type of neurochemical called catecholamines, specifically norepinephrine (also known as noradrenaline — simply because early physiologists had different ways of using latin to describe the location of the glandular tissue on top of the kidneys (adrenal glands)).  When high levels of these sympathetic neurotransmitters are circulating in the blood stream, the immune system responds by changing the type of immune proteins it releases.

Immunoglobulins (Ig) are blobby proteins on patrol in your bloodstream looking out for foreign invaders.  When we’re stressed (lack of sleep, too much caffeine, mental and muscle tension), the adrenal glands release norepinephrine, which signals the immune system to produce IgE.  IgE is a type of immunoglobulin associated with hypersensitivity reactions, such as allergies, hay fever, excema, and other atopic disorders (think itchy, redness, swelling).  In short, oversympathetic activity is VERY irritating to the immune system!

For immune function, you would much rather have plenty of IgG circulating.  IgG is the blob that loves to grapple with bacterial and viral invaders. The flu pandemic of 1819 took more lives than the World War I that had just ended – in fact more lives than several US wars combined.  Records show that people with flu symptoms receiving spinal adjustments during that period suffered just one fortieth the death rate of the rest of the population.  That’s forty times fewer deaths among those getting adjusted.  How could their spinal adjustments effect their IgG production?

There are specialized nerve endings in the joints called mechanoreceptors that richly populate spinal joint capsules, the outsides of the vertebral discs, the muscle spindle fibers, and the sacroiliac joints.  Chiropractic adjustments fire these specialized cells and change the body’s sympathetic nerve activity, allowing IgE levels to drop and IgG levels to rise.  Getting adjusted makes folks with flu able to recover more effectively.

So, instead of a flu shot this year (keep in mind, there is a strong likelihood you will be exposed to all kinds of pathogens that are not addressed in the vaccine anyway!), consider the option of being proactively healthy.  Get adjusted, get adequate rest, enjoy warm nourishing foods as the days shorten and temperatures drop, move your body regularly, get fresh air.  Support nature to do what nature does – THRIVE!  That includes your body’s nature.  We are here to serve you, naturally!

Sustainability is about reducing waste, reducing use of resources, wisely using what is used, taking little to no toll on the ecosystem, or better yet, enhancing it as we dance with it.  We all know it takes more energy to fix a problem than to design a system that functions smoothly.  Sustainability is about organizing efficient systems that supply maximum benefit to the public and ecological good, that can run in perpetuity without negatively impacting people or the environment down the line.

Thrive offers chiropractic care in a very progressive way.  Most chiropractors can attest that next to medical care, we are gentle not only on the environment, but on the human body:  We use nothing toxic, generate no biohazardous waste, and do not need to clean or dispose of dangerous items.  We do not break the skin, we take nothing out of the body and put nothing in (only force (which is energy), love and intention!).  Though chiropractic is famous for relieving peoples headaches, back and neck pain, most people are unaware that chiropractic offers a valuable and important way to not only get better or be preventive, but to be proactive about health.

Thrive Chiropractic focuses on this opportunity with our clientele and with the marketplace.  In our care, not only do we help people shift and resolve what is concerning them about their health, we educate and support those who come to us for care to take responsibility for being well.  We offer free monthly classes explaining scientifically why receiving regular chiropractic care enhances health and physiological performance.  We provide suggestions for more supportive lifestyle choices and invite people to choose sustainable healthy habits.  Our mission is to support the community to experience optimal physical, mental and social wellbeing, not merely the absence of disease.  Keep the body-mind-spirit near optimum, a person’s system functions more smoothly/efficiently, less energy is required to recover health as fewer lose it.  We are dedicated to bringing this reality to the present, as the future starts now.

What’s most fun is that well-adjusted community members tend to function more clearly on all levels in body, mind and spirit – so, hey, they are gonna be more fun to play with! They are more fully expressing what they really are.  As people choose to be proactive about their health, they are more likely to start keeping the health of the planet in mind, since clarity and awareness, connected with feeling, tends to spill over into action.

It will be an economic and ecological victory the fewer people need toxic medical care in their lifetimes.  In essence, sustainability and proactive chiropractic care means a better party for everyone – the planet included!

I just had a phenomenal weekend attending a Bio Geometric Integration seminar with Dr. Sue Brown.  At BGI seminars, not only do I get an opportunity to grow personally and professionally, it is also a special occasion for me to receive chiropractic care from the perspective with which I resonate most.  At these seminars, we are all engaging with clinical concepts such as force dynamics, tensegrity, tone and geometry.  What’s more, we are all adjusting one another with the philosophical appreciation that interference to neural coordination, the subluxation, is a necessary component of the ongoing evolution of human consciousness.  Getting adjusted at a BGI seminar is like coming home: not just home to my tribe, but home to the fullness of my total being.

Then I came home, literally, to Eugene and my practice at Thrive Chiropractic.  Ever since the launch of the Thrive Chiropractic website 2 years ago I have been aware of the opportunity to blog regularly to not only express more of who I am and what Thrive is all about but also to provide useful or thought provoking information to people on line.  On my way in to the office yesterday I thought – Holy Cow!  I have been SO subluxated around writing regular blog posts!  What has been blocking me here?

As I often share with the community members at Thrive, I understand that it is not so important to consciously articulate precisely what the block is or where it is coming from as it is important to open through it!  I am integrating the effects of the adjustments I received all weekend and fabulously my resistance and procrastination is melting away.  So looky here, I’m blogging!  Look Ma!  Both hands (on the keyboard)!!!  What a breakthrough, I am SO grateful!

(…and many happy returns…)