0b backs tk
loctors ail t)

I’M ON the side of the chiro-
practors in their current bat-
tle with pediatricians over
treating kids for things like
colic and insomnia. I say, by
all means.

And what do I know? [ have only
my own experience, which is merely
anecdotal, not scientific. A bit like
life itself.

Nevertheless. I believe, generally
speaking, patients should be free to
seek whichever treatment they want.
How much of our “medicine” actu-
ally works, and how much is snake
oil, is harder to figure out than you
night think.

Studies are useful, but few can be
trusted. Apart from the assumptions
built into them, any figures they pro-
duce are subject to revision at any
time.

Percentages routinely acquire a
whole new significance when mea-
sured against other percentages pre-
viously factored in. Tricky, the
search for scientific truth.

Maybe certain cures simply work
better for some than for others. My
wife reacts to sleeping pills by
speeding up, for instance.

In this case, as fate would have it,
the childcare debate betveen chiro-
practors and pediatricians blew into
the open just a couple of weeks after
my wife started taking our daughter
to tae chiropractor.

She got side-swiped by a car two
years ago, and while we
thought she had
escaped unscathed, she
hadn’t, even though, at
the hospital, they said
she was fine and
released her.

It took a while
before the thought even
crossed our minds of
taking her to a chiro-
practor, which is odd
when you consider that
both of us happen to be firm believ-
ers in chiropractic treatment, espe-
cially when some of the new elec-
tronic acupuncture is thrown in.

My wife and I have been going to
chiropzactors for years. in my case,
my spine used to be so badly
messed-up that when it periodically
““went out,” I would spend days at a
time immobilized, lying frozen in a
cramp of pain until the spasms
passed, and J could get stiffly up and
start limping around again. At one
point, I had to use a cane.

ft was all my own fault. In 1964,
I'd fused the two bottom vertebrae
of my spite by landing badly on my
first and last parachute jump.

My GP advised me to go the
surgery route, but the memory of my
poor uncle Dave on his death bed
stopped me in my tracks.

In the mid-1950s, Uncle Dave
had an accident in which his spine
got jolted out of position.

As was the practice back then,
his regular doctor recommended

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surgery, and because doctors were
almost as revered as priests, that was
that.

Off my uncie went for his one-
time, cure-all back operation brave
and confident. Suffice to say, he
died four or five operations later.

Every operation after the first one
was to correct a previous mistake. In
the end, Uncle Dave couldn’t take it
any more, and mercifully departed.

So { was determined not to let
them get a knife into my own back
no matter what the cost.

For a few years { got by on
steady doses of painkillers. Until I
realized the stuff was addictive and

66 A friend finally convinced me to try
a chiropractor. Up until this point, I'd
assumed they were quacks. 99

did counterproductive things to my
head.

A friend finally convinced me to
try a chiropractor. Up until this
point, I'd assumed they were
quacks. You can imagine my relief
after my first session, when the
bleody pain actually eased.

The damage was so severe how-
ever, that it took several years of
regular treatment tc get to the point
where fam now.

Barring some stupidity, like my
lifting furniture, f only stop in at the
chirapractor’s once every four or
five months.

it amounts to a tune-up. [can
canoe and clinzh and sail and bike
and garden.

MS UF A

1e
ie Way

ack

I do not miss back pain at all. 1
am a big admirer of chiropractors.
But I guess I was stili carrying
enough of an old prejudice that it
took nearly two years before the
thought occurred to take my daugh-
ter over to the chiropractor, just to
be on the safe side. Sure enough, he
found a rib out of line, a twisted ver-
tebrae.

Surprisingly, he asked if she’d
been a colic baby. Yes, indeed. And
did she still have trouble sleeping?
Yes, yes, yes!

He cited a Swedish study of
babies with colic who were given

_ chiropractic treatment compared

with similar cases that weren't.

In a high percentage of the cases,
according to the study, the treatment
helped ease their condition. They
slept bettes, far better.

I’ve since read that there were
some flaws in the study, but it did
show very strongly that chiropractic
adjustments can benefit children
with colic.

Still, it’s just one more study, so
what?

The test is whether something
works. I'll round this out by saying
we seem to have seen an improve-
ment in our daughter’s sleeping pat-
tern already, but nothing conclusive
yet. Still, being parents, we are
happy to have an option to give it a
t

We are all familiar enough with
the idea behind personality changing
drugs, artificial mood
enhancement, even
good old-fashioned
tranquilizers. It is to
calm the chemically
imbalanced brain
down. It works, but it
is arisky game.

When we talk
about physical adjust-
ments to achieve the
same food (peace of
mind, sanity too, if
you're lucky), it makes more sense.

‘You're not tossing anything
volatile into the neurological brew
inside that brain of yours. You’re
just realigning some bones and liga-
meiits, giving some muscles a break.

There are great, saintly chiro-
practors out there. | know because
I’ve met a few of them. And, of
course, there must be human slime,
too, as in everything else.

But if the goal of the pediatri-
cians really is to create a monopoly
in which only niedical doctors can
treat children, shutting chiropractors
out, that’s shameful. | was going to
say despicable, but I’m in a good
mood — probably because my back
isn’t hurting, eh? '

any

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