Chiropractic Position on Drugs...

Chiropractors say this all the time: "Medication is not part of a healthy lifestyle". What do they mean by this? This often causes defensive reactions from those who need medication and those who prescribe it. Well, I want my patients to understand my position on drug therapies because understanding this will greatly improve your life and ideally will clarify the different role that chiropractors play in the health care system as compared with medical doctors.

Drugs are a means to achieve short term symptomatic relief. The use of medication typically is in the following applications:

1) In the most ideal of circumstances, it is a matter of the patient knowing what to do to correct the cause of the dysfunction (and subsequently the symptoms), but needing short term relief and/or to reduce or avoid collateral organic damage as the necessary correction is undertaken.

2) Other times, in persistent chronic disease, when the patient and health professionals are unable to identify and/or address the root cause, this is all someone is left with as a last effort to improve quality of life.

3) And then there are those cases where the patient has been told and knows what to do but won't do it, for various reasons.

For clarification, chiropractors do not, or at least should not, make a blanket proclamation that drugs are bad. The problem, as I see it, is when people are misinformed about the drug use. Specifically, and again, according to the use applications as detailed above...

Case #1, above: The patient is misled to believe that the prescribed drug is "all good" and, like a laser, the drug(s) acts only on the "sick part". Patients need to be wary of taking a drug simply for relief. Patients need to remain vigilant and aware of the total effect that drugs have on their bodies. They need to acquaint themselves with side effects, interactions, complications (one good resource: http://www.rxlist.com). They should also fully recognize the toxic load placed on their bodies, even from the "good" drugs. And patients need to figure out why the disease process occurred in the first place. My ongoing concern is when, for example, a patient is "cured" of a bacterial infection through the proper use of an antibiotic, prescribed by an MD, but that MD fails to inform them, and it never occurs to them on their own that perhaps there is an underlying reason why that infection successfully invaded and took hold in their body in the first place. With the help of a "functional medicine" doctor, patients need to learn what they can do to fortify their bodies so as to reduce susceptibility to the same problem in the future. And they need to educate their friends and family to help them make similar functional and lifestyle corrections.

Case #2, above: The patient often gives up trying to find or working towards a solution. They resolve themselves to taking medications for the rest of their lives and lose motivation to continue to strive for better health. It may turn out to be necessary to continue drug therapies indefinitely - ultimately, that is a decision to be made on a continuous and ongoing basis between the patient and their medical doctor. But these persons must absolutely re-double their efforts to incorporate healthy lifestyle changes and maintain them forever, including exercise, stress & psychologic management, diet, chiropractic, massage, etc. "Spontaneous Remissions" occur all the time, for unknown reasons, but almost never result from neglect and ignorance. And in long term chronic disease, healthy lifestyle choices are known to SIGNIFICANTLY improve the quality and quantity of life and "fortifying the host" has been shown to delay progression of most disease processes.

Case #3, above: For these people, I believe it is much like a smoker. Deep down, it is self-destructive behavior to knowingly participate in an activity that is stealing your health away. And, if you are knowingly taking medications to allow you to engage in that behavior more comfortably... well, it is just more of the same thing. In this situation, the medical doctor is like a co-dependant facilitating another's addiction. Hardly of model of good health.