Wellness Articles

Exactly how powerful is the experience of receiving a chiropractic adjustment? New evidence suggests that chiropractic care does much more than alleviate back pain—it positively affects body chemistry all the way down to the cellular level. In a nutshell, chiropractic adjustments strengthen the body, making cells and DNA more resistant to disease.

In March 2006, the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research published a landmark study that offered a long-awaited scientific explanation for why chiropractic patients experience positive health benefits. The article stated that chiropractic care could stimulate basic physiological processes that help diminish bodily stress and enhance DNA repair.

In the study, a diverse group of 76 people were divided into three categories. Group one received short-term chiropractic care. Group two received long-term chiropractic care. Group three was the control group that did not receive chiropractic adjustments. Results indicated that long-term chiropractic care of two or more years produced healthier bodies. Age, sex, nutritional supplements and prior health conditions did not hinder or enhance these results. Basically stated, chiropractic adjustment improved the overall health of everyone in groups one and two.

To look at the study results on a deeper, more scientific level, let’s examine the average human body. Everything from your career, to your family dynamic, to your eating and sleeping habits produces physical, chemical and emotional stress in your body. These stresses can obstruct and negatively affect your nervous system, which in turn hinders your body’s ability to produce naturally occurring antioxidants that fight off disease and other illness.

However, chiropractic adjustment works to remove obstructions to the nervous system. This allows internal body processes to begin functioning at normal levels, thus enhancing the body’s ability to produce healthy chemicals that work to protect cells and DNA from becoming mutated by disease.

[Source: Medical News Today, March 2006]

Contributed by: Dr. Aaron on April 30, 2008   ·  Filed under: portland oregon chiropractic  ·  

If you have been to any of our talks than this should come as no surprise to you. I have been talking about this kind of stuff at our Chiropractic Clinic called Discover Chiropractic in Beaverton Oregon for years. If you review the available research, the fact that most drugs don’t work as expected is not the real issue, but that these drugs cause very serious side effects. The scariest thing I have seen prozac linked to is the school shootings that have happened over the past years. From reports, all of the school shooters were on prozac, ritalin or another version of these drugs.

Prozac, used by 40m people, does not work say scientists
Analysis of unseen trials and other data concludes it is no better than placebo
Full text: the PLoS paper
Sarah Boseley, health editor The Guardian, Tuesday February 26 2008 Article history · Contact us Contact usClose Contact the Society editor
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Advertising guide License/buy our content About this articleClose This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday February 26 2008 on p1 of the Top stories section. It was last updated at 09:56 on February 26 2008.
A single Prozac capsule. Photograph: Alamy

Prozac, the bestselling antidepressant taken by 40 million people worldwide, does not work and nor do similar drugs in the same class, according to a major review released today.

The study examined all available data on the drugs, including results from clinical trials that the manufacturers chose not to publish at the time. The trials compared the effect on patients taking the drugs with those given a placebo or sugar pill.

When all the data was pulled together, it appeared that patients had improved - but those on placebo improved just as much as those on the drugs.

The only exception is in the most severely depressed patients, according to the authors - Prof Irving Kirsch from the department of psychology at Hull University and colleagues in the US and Canada. But that is probably because the placebo stopped working so well, they say, rather than the drugs having worked better.

“Given these results, there seems little reason to prescribe antidepressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients, unless alternative treatments have failed,” says Kirsch. “This study raises serious issues that need to be addressed surrounding drug licensing and how drug trial data is reported.”

The paper, published today in the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine, is likely to have a significant impact on the prescribing of the drugs. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) already recommends that counselling should be tried before doctors prescribe antidepressants. Kirsch, who was one of the consultants for the guidelines, says the new analysis “would suggest that the prescription of antidepressant medications might be restricted even more”.

The review breaks new ground because Kirsch and his colleagues have obtained for the first time what they believe is a full set of trial data for four antidepressants.

They requested the full data under freedom of information rules from the Food and Drug Administration, which licenses medicines in the US and requires all data when it makes a decision.

The pattern they saw from the trial results of fluoxetine (Prozac), paroxetine (Seroxat), venlafaxine (Effexor) and nefazodone (Serzone) was consistent. “Using complete data sets (including unpublished data) and a substantially larger data set of this type than has been previously reported, we find the overall effect of new-generation antidepressant medication is below recommended criteria for clinical significance,” they write.

Two more frequently prescribed antidepressants were omitted from the study because scientists were unable to obtain all the data.

Concerns have been raised in recent years about the side-effects of this class of antidepressant. Evidence that they could prompt some young people to consider suicide led to a warning to doctors not to prescribe them for the under-18s - with the exception of Prozac, which was considered more effective than the rest.

In adults, however, the depression-beating benefits were thought to outweigh the risks. Since its launch in the US in 1988, some 40 million people have taken Prozac, earning tens of billions of dollars for the manufacturer, Eli Lilly. Although the patent lapsed in 2001, fluoxetine continues to make the company money - it is now the active ingredient in Sarafem, a pill sold by Lilly for premenstrual syndrome.

Eli Lilly was defiant last night. “Extensive scientific and medical experience has demonstrated that fluoxetine is an effective antidepressant,” it said in a statement. “Since its discovery in 1972, fluoxetine has become one of the world’s most-studied medicines. Lilly is proud of the difference fluoxetine has made to millions of people living with depression.”

A spokesman for GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Seroxat, said the authors had failed to acknowledge the “very positive” benefits of the treatment and their conclusions were “at odds with what has been seen in actual clinical practice”.

He added: “This analysis has only examined a small subset of the total data available while regulatory bodies around the world have conducted extensive reviews and evaluations of all the data available, and this one study should not be used to cause unnecessary alarm and concern for patients.”

Contributed by: Dr. Aaron on February 26, 2008   ·  Filed under: portland oregon chiropractic, Information and Research  ·  

This a very interesting and thought provoking article I just read. It is written by Dr. Kent who I have heard speak personally many times.

By Christopher Kent, D.C., J.D.

Recreational drugs, including cocaine and heroin, are responsible for an estimated 10,000-20,000 American deaths per year [1,2]. While this represents a serious public health problem, it is a “smokescreen” for America’s real drug problem. America’s “war on drugs” is directed at the wrong enemy. It is obvious that interdiction, stiff mandatory sentences, and more vigorous enforcement of drug laws have failed.
The reason is simple. Cause and effect have been reversed.
The desire to solve problems by taking drugs is a product of our culture. When a child is taught by loving parents that the appropriate response to pain or discomfort is taking a pill, it is obvious that such a child, when faced with the challenges of adolescence, will seek comfort by taking drugs.
Drugs are Dangerous Whether Pushed or Prescribed
While approximately 10,000 per year die from the effects of illegal drugs, an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that an estimated 106,000 hospitalized patients die each year from drugs which, by medical standards, are properly prescribed and properly administered. More than two million suffer serious side effects. [3]
An article in Newsweek [4] put this into perspective. Adverse drug reactions, from “properly” prescribed drugs, are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. According to this article, only heart disease, cancer, and stroke kill more Americans than drugs prescribed by medical doctors. Reactions to prescription drugs kill more than twice as many Americans as HIV/AIDS or suicide. Fewer die from accidents or diabetes than adverse drug reactions. It is important to point out the limitations of this study. It did not include outpatients, cases of malpractice, or instances where the drugs were not taken as directed.
According to another AMA publication, drug related “problems” kill as many as 198,815 people, put 8.8 million in hospitals, and account for up to 28% of hospital admissions. [5] If these figures are accurate, only cancer and heart disease kill more patients than drugs. Has the situation improved since the publication of this information? Hardly. Null [6] et al have published the most comprehensive and well-documented study I have seen of deaths associated with medical practice. In this report, their research revealed some shocking facts. The findings are summarized in the abstract:
“A definitive review and close reading of medical peer-review journals, and government health statistics shows that American medicine frequently causes more harm than good. The number of people having in-hospital, adverse drug reactions (ADR) to prescribed medicine is 2.2 million. Dr. Richard Besser, of the CDC, in 1995, said the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections was 20 million. Dr. Besser, in 2003, now refers to tens of millions of unnecessary antibiotics.
The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million. The total number of iatrogenic deaths shown in the following table is 783,936. It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States. The 2001 heart disease annual death rate is 699,697; the annual cancer death rate, 553,251.”
Drugs Number One Killer
The authors conclude: “When the number one killer in a society is the healthcare system, then, that system has no excuse except to address its own urgent shortcomings. It’s a failed system in need of immediate attention. What we have outlined in this paper are insupportable aspects of our contemporary medical system that need to be changed — beginning at its very foundations.”
A recent article in Archives of Internal Medicine [7] stated that in the seven year period from 1998 through 2005, reported serious adverse drug events increased 2.6-fold, and fatal adverse drug events increased 2.7-fold. The authors noted that reported serious events increased 4 times faster than the total number of outpatient prescriptions during the period. Another study concluded that the majority(86%) of the adverse drug reactions for which patients were admitted to a medical intensive care unit were preventable. [8]
One proposed solution to the illegal drug problem was encouraging potential users to ignore peer pressure and “just say no.” Interestingly, this strategy is not being recommended for prescription drugs. Bruce Pomeranz, MD , one of the authors of the JAMA paper, said he is not warning people to stay away from drugs. “That would be a terrible message,” he said. Lucian Leape, MD, of the Harvard School of Public Health said, “When you realize how many drugs we use, maybe those numbers aren’t so bad after all.” [4]
Does that mean that the number of deaths due to illegal drugs, suicide, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, accidents, and drunk driving “aren’t so bad” either? Does it mean that we shouldn’t discourage drunk driving or unsafe sex?
The folly of such double standards should be obvious to all. It is time to address the real drug problem — the cultural notion that the first solution to seek for relief of life’s problems is a drug. That’s the drug culture we need to address.

References
1. “Drug deaths.” Globe & Mail (Canada). February 27, 1998.
2. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. CDC. 2007;56(05):93-96.
3. Lazarou J, Pomeranz BH, Corey PN: “Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients.” JAMA 1998;279:1200.
4. Kalb C: “When drugs do harm.” Newsweek. April 27, 1998. Page 61.
5. “Reaction.” American Medical News. January 15, 1996. Page 11.
6. 1. Null G, Dean C, Feldman, M, Rasio, D, Smith D: “Death by Medicine.” Life Extension. March, 2004. www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/mar2004_awsi_death_01.htm
7. Moore TJ, Cohen MR, Furberg CD: Serious adverse drug events reported to the Food and Drug Administration, 1998-2005. Archives of Internal Medicine 2007;167:1752-1759.
8. Rivkin A: Admissions to a medical intensive care unit related to adverse drug reactions. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy 2007;64(17):1840-1843.

Contributed by: Dr. Aaron on January 15, 2008   ·  Filed under: portland oregon chiropractic  ·  

Something is going very wrong in the United States; we are losing health freedoms at an alarming rate.

Last month the State of Maryland demanded that parents show documentation proving that their children had received a chickenpox and/or hepatitis B shot. Failure to show proof of this vaccination, along with failure to have your child vaccinated, resulted in potential imprisonment and fines up to $50 a day until their child had been injected.

Barbara Loe Fisher, an activist and noted speaker on informed consent issues surrounding vaccinations, showed up at a Maryland courthouse on November 17 to investigate what was taking place. What she encountered was a long line of confused, angry or simply uneducated parents and their children. They were waiting to enter the courthouse to face the judge who had ordered them to show proof of their child’s vaccination. Patrolling the scene was a SWAT team and police dogs.

As Barbara spoke to parents emerging from the courthouse she discovered something horrible. Upon entering the courthouse, parents were not asked questions about their child’s medical history, or if their children had experienced problems from a previous vaccination. Parents were not being informed of potentially life-threatening vaccination side-effects, nor were they given information on religious and medical exemptions to vaccinations, as allowed in Maryland. INSTEAD, PARENTS STOOD BY HELPLESSLY AS VACCINE INJECTIONS WERE FORCED UPON THEIR CHILDREN.

Judge C. Philip Nichols, a Maryland government official enforcing the vaccination mandate, was at the courthouse that day. In an interview about the children waiting in line to be vaccinated he was quoted as saying, “It’s cute. It looks like their parents are dragging them to church.”

What Judge Nichols fails to realize is that unlike a vaccination, an hour of praying in church never results in horrific brain damage or death.

It’s alarmingly evident that the health freedoms of our country are being attacked. No one should ever have the right to inject a child with a potentially harmful toxic substance without the consent of the parent(s). It’s evident that multitudes more of us need to speak up for our rights. We need to educate elected officials on the proven dangers associated with vaccinations. We need to preserve our lawful right to protect our children and say no to dangerous injections. Thousands of parents with children who now suffer with health disabilities and autism—resulting from vaccinations—are struggling to be heard. It’s time to join the fight before it’s too late.

For more information about vaccinations, side-effects, informed consent issues, and what you can do to make a difference, visit: The National Vaccine Information Center: http://www.nvic.org/ or Vaccine Info Net: http://www.vaccineinfo.net/.

[Source: article “Police with Dogs: Vaccinating Kids in Maryland” by Barbara Loe Fisher. http://www.vaccineawakening.blogspot.com/]

Contributed by: Dr. Aaron on December 13, 2007   ·  Filed under: portland oregon chiropractic, childcare and kids  ·  

There are many myths surrounding the common cold. One common myth states that a sick person is only contagious during the first three days of symptoms. But when this theory, and others, was put to the test, scientists drew conclusions that are very different from what many of us believe.

While it is difficult to pinpoint the exact time a sick person becomes contagious, scientist agree that most common colds become infectious before the first symptoms emerge, and they remain infectious throughout the duration of the cold.

The time between becoming infected with a cold virus and the emergence of symptoms—like a sore throat, sneezing, sinus congestion and nasal drip—is usually three to five days. The common cold may develop a bit faster, becoming contagious only 24 hours after a person has been infected, even though the person experiences no cold symptoms.

Even after cold symptoms disappear, a person can still infect others for up to three days. What’s most fascinating is that just because you come in contact with someone who is contagious, more often than not you do not get sick. Our bodies are designed to defend themselves. When your spine is strong, healthy and well-aligned your bodies ability to defend itself is at it’s highest potential. When it is improperly aligned, a condition called a subluxations, it effects the immune system and lowers your resistance to getting sick.

It’s clear, if you want to avoid the common cold, you need to do more than just steer clear of sick people. Here are a few tips to help you stay healthy this winter: wash your hands regularly; eat healthy food; minimize white refined sugar in your diet because of its known effect on lowering the immune system; get plenty of rest; do not get chilled and get to your Chiropractor regularly. Chiropractic adjustments enhance your body’s natural ability to ward off sickness.

Here’s some good news. If you do catch the common cold, chiropractic adjustments will help your body’s immune system get stronger faster.

[Source: New York Times, “The Claim: A Cold Is Contagious Only Before Symptoms Emerge”

Contributed by: Dr. Aaron on December 6, 2007   ·  Filed under: portland oregon chiropractic  ·  

The body is one of those things in life that needs to be regularly maintained. Your body needs regular and frequent water intake to remove the dangerous toxins that our body takes in from the air you breathe and the food you eat. Water also cushions your joints, carries oxygen and nutrients into all your cells, regulates your body temperature and keeps your metabolism working properly. Your body also needs regular food intake not just for the nutrients, but to for regular cleansing of the intestinal tract. This is why we will never be able to be like the cartoon “The Jetsons” and just take a pill to get all of our food. Your teeth need to be regularly brushed and checked. It is not luck to get to your 80’s and still have all of your own teeth. Your spine needs to be regularly maintained as well because of the things we do every day; lifting wrong, sitting, driving, falls, accidents, sports impacts, childhood injuries, birth process, etc… All of these things over a lifetime can cause your spine to shift out of alignment and affect your health. Just like the tires on your car, if they are misaligned they wear out much faster. Your spine is no different; if there is misalignment it wears out causing osteoarthritis and degenerative disc disease. With your car you can put new tires on, however you cannot replace your spine.

Contributed by: Dr. Aaron on November 28, 2007   ·  Filed under: portland oregon chiropractic  ·  

At my office Discover Chiropractic in Beaverton Oregon we are seeing less people who smoke compared to years past. It has been great to see people making more healthy choices.

On average, people who smoke will reduce their life expectancy by approximately 14 years. Respiratory diseases, lung cancer, and other smoking-related health problems are responsible for 440,000 deaths each year in the United States.

Smoking-related sickness and disease is not an easy battle to fight or win. That’s why smokers are asked to stop smoking today, make efforts to maintain a healthy weight, eat more vegetable and fruits, exercise each week and be screened for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer on a regular basis.

Remember, you’re only given one body to live in. Do all you can to take care of it and enhance the quality of your life. In addition to kicking the habit, make sure you’re eating plenty of vegetables, increase your heart rate for 30 minutes a day, and participate in weekly chiropractic adjustments.

[Source: www.dccps.nci.nig.gov]

Contributed by: Dr. Aaron on November 1, 2007   ·  Filed under: portland oregon chiropractic  ·  

If you have family members and friends suffering with painful physical conditions and illness, encourage them to give chiropractic adjustments a try. Here’s what they probably don’t know.

A vertebral subluxation is a misalignment of the spine that many times goes unnoticed, yet causes many bodily discomforts and physical aliments. When a vertebra in the spine goes out of alignment it can interfere with nerve, brain and spinal cord communication, causing various body parts to stop functioning as they should, and instead, experience pain and deterioration.

For example, a misalignment in the spine can do the following things:

- Disrupt the function of your internal organs, glands, muscles, joints and discs

- Cause pain not only in the back region, but anywhere in your body

- Induce headaches

- Accelerate joint aging

- Cause osteoarthritis

- Open the door to disease, by lessening your body’s ability to adapt to stress and heal itself

- Drain you of energy

Prescription drugs can’t remedy a structural problem, they only mask the symptoms of one. Encourage your family and friends to get checked by a chiropractor where they can start to enhance their health and quality of life the safe and noninvasive way.

Contributed by: Dr. Aaron on October 24, 2007   ·  Filed under: portland oregon chiropractic  ·  

If you have family members and friends suffering with painful physical conditions and illness, encourage them to give chiropractic adjustments a try. Here’s what they probably don’t know.

A vertebral subluxation is a misalignment of the spine that many times goes unnoticed, yet causes many bodily discomforts and physical aliments. When a vertebra in the spine goes out of alignment it can interfere with nerve, brain and spinal cord communication, causing various body parts to stop functioning as they should, and instead, experience pain and deterioration.

For example, a misalignment in the spine can do the following things:

- Disrupt the function of your internal organs, glands, muscles, joints and discs

- Cause pain not only in the back region, but anywhere in your body

- Induce headaches

- Accelerate joint aging

- Cause osteoarthritis

- Open the door to disease, by lessening your body’s ability to adapt to stress and heal itself

- Drain you of energy

Prescription drugs can’t remedy a structural problem, they can only mask symptoms.
Encourage your family and friends to get checked by a chiropractor where they can start to enhance their health and quality of life the safe and noninvasive way.

Contributed by: Dr. Aaron on   ·  Filed under: portland oregon chiropractic  ·  

At my chiropractic clinic, Discover Chiropractic in the SW Portland / Beaverton area I get several questions daily about diets. I am not a fan of most of the fad diets I have seen and read about. It seems everyone I know has tried a few and failed. What I do recommend is to ADD good quality foods to what you normally eat (fruits & vegetables). It has been working much better with my patients instead of taking away foods. Once you get used to the added quality foods it becomes easier to drop away the unhealthy ones. We have advanced lectures in our office in Beaverton / SW Portland on Nutrition. If you are interested in learning more call our office to find out the date for our next nutrition lecture.

Contributed by: Dr. Aaron on September 26, 2007   ·  Filed under: portland oregon chiropractic  ·