The Myth or the Reality ... It's Really up to You!

The chiropractic concept of innate intelligence is not totally
wrong, misnamed perhaps, but not wrong! Life is nothing if not a
play or interaction of forces, continually changing by the
always present action of gravity. As modern science confirms,
matter is energy that gives force, velocity, motion, animation, and
motivation a purpose to life. And what seems to be solid is but a
static appearance of innumerable subtle moving forces.

If we consider the human body as composed of many pathways, some hollow and some not, and that these pathways supply the various tissues of the body so that they may perform their normal function, could we not say that health is proper flow of forces through these pathways? And disease, being improper flow, (which may be
deficient, intermittent, blocked, or excessive flow) out of the
pathway? The work of Korr and Denslow and the two-part paper, "The spine as an organizer of the disease process," is a must for all to
read).

D.D. Palmer once eluded to the fact that too much stimulation is as
bad as not enough stimulation. This is very good reason for
doctors and students to study the afferent input to the dorsal horn
and to be aware of its effects elsewhere in the body. Their
consequences and their qualities refer to the eight components of
the subluxation complex and how they are causes or contributing
factors to aberrant energy flow along the pathways.

(1) kinesiopathology
(2) neuropathology
(3) myopathology
(4) connective tissue abnormalities
(5) vascular implications
(6) inflammatory conditions & states
(7) histopathology
(8) biochemical abnormalities & nutritional considerations

Energy is life. Hidden in all of our bodies, energy -- be it
nervous energy or fluid energy -- is the working of a conscious
will. Energy is action! Energy is the power behind determination!
Lack of "energies" causes depression; loss of REM sleep; disuse and
atrophy; an inhibition of the limbic system serotonergic descending
inhibitory pathways leading to sympathetic hyperactivity; muscle
spasm; vasoconstriction; and a cause of the subluxation complex.
This natural or organic energy intelligence is conscious and
steadfast in its plan and methodology. It is not conscious by
choice or intent but intuitively and spontaneously a movement of
energy to our living tissues. The very essence of the chiropractic
way of life is the maintenance of these "energies" via chiropractic
care of the entire subluxation complex to create a linking of
energy forces into one great harmony. The cohesiveness achieved by
chiropractic care of the subluxation complex reveals a conscious
intent by chiropractic to be a major player in the managed health
care system of the future.

When one critically analyzes the component parts of the subluxation
complex one thing becomes intuitively obvious: Most diseases a
patient is prone to can be treated or prevented by correcting or
maintaining each of the subluxation complex parts. Think about it!
Through chiropractic care we can prescribe a life plan for
ourselves and our patients for health maintenance and to optimize
our creative potentials. Chiropractic care has broad powers for
disease prevention, health maintenance, longevity enhancement,
and the treatment for the various causes of the subluxation
complex. (Dr. David Seaman in his writings has postulated that the
subluxation complex in reality is a disease.)

The disease entity known as the subluxation complex as a function
of "mind set," sociopsychological occupational considerations, and
ability to deal with the stress of life, must also be in the
forefront of our minds. Dr. H. Selye wrote extensively on the
topic of stress. Cortisol output and the limbic system was
discussed in considerable detail and if we incorporate his work
into the subluxation complex, one fact leaps out: that disease can
be a failure of intelligence. This is not to be considered a lack
of or shortfall of intellectual, educational or verbal acuity, but
a failure of application of "innate" wisdom. That which allows us
to separate fact from fiction and the now from the past.
It is a lack of understanding of the "normal" natural harmonious
interactions between our limbic systems and the many causes of
afferent input, be it noci or mechano in nature and its processing
and dissemination. It is a lack of comprehension and understanding
of the natural laws of nature as they apply to all the component
parts of the subluxation complex, and how to adapt to its many
manifestations. This failure of our ability to understand,
assimilate and engage our natural "innate" intelligence is caused
by the continual bombardment of sensory input from years of
external conditioning factors like television, fear, peer
pressures, and numerous other desires that tempt us throughout our
lives. The nociceptive input inhibits creative thought,
originality and traps us in convention or preconception.Its
manifestations are seen as a lack of faith and trust in our jobs
and daily lives, and a general lack of respect for life, and an
uncaring perfunctory attitude.

This indifferent and anthropic attitude within chiropractic begins
to look like a name for the repository in which we set aside all
the things that "bone out of place" chiropractic cannot yet
explain. It is always the bin (garbage can) of last resort.
Chiropractic is used, extrapolated as far as it can be to explain
why chiropractic has to be the way it is. But when this is done and
some facts remain unexplained, the anthropic principle is brought
in to select (from the very limited menu that chiropractic research
has to offer) the universe that seems most agreeable to us. In
very simple terms chiropractic has mastered the art of relying on
the past and ignoring the obvious direction of the future, a
pathway that, if not intercepted soon, will eventually lead to
long-term strife if not eventual destruction. Necessarily the
anthropic principle depends on how far chiropractic has advanced.
The anthropic principle is used to explain those things for which
chiropractic philosophy alone, I suspect, cannot provide an answer.
It performs the role that less skilled scientists in earlier ages
ascribed unabashedly to as a prime mover or the omnipresent innate
intelligence.

If chiropractic discards the anthropic principle, we are back to
the original dilemma. Either we believe that a true theory of
everything will one day come about, with the capacity to answer
every question we can put to it, or we must accept an irreducible
element of arbitrariness in the making of chiropractic as it will
be in the future. The latter course seems a painfully inadequate
end to the great quest that is chiropractic. So perhaps we must
believe that the hope for a true theory of one cause for
everything, in the most extreme sense possible, is justified.

The burning question that becomes diaphanous is this: Present
attempts at theories of everything rely on an abundance of
fundamental principles (which themselves may or may not be
independently testable) and suffer at the same time from a
deficiency of detail. The theories must be augmented by:
compacting of extra dimensions (the component parts of the
subluxation complex is a good example, but few understand these
parts); symmetry of thinking to distinguish the various interactions
from each other; and more symmetry dissections to identify the
scientifically valid points from those historical perspectives that
haunt our very existence. This ornamentation does not emerge
naturally in any of the present theories of one cause. All of it
has to be manipulated by hand to make the theory come out to
justify our postulations on the way chiropractic works. But at the
same time, these details and man-made additions or manipulations of
data, these departures from the perfection of the theory of
everything from one cause in its pristine state, are the only
things we can hope to measure. A serious dilemma! Educational
decay, for example, is little more than a side effect, a tiny
finite aftershock of a grand separation within the profession as a
whole.

It is characteristic of all would-be-theories of one central cause
that whatever chiropractic or aesthetic perfection they possess is
apparent only at the elitist levels. In other words, in reality it
does not exist for the common chiropractor, nor was it ever
intended to. Once the big bang is underway, and the asymmetries of
the theory of one cause for everything begins to fracture into what
we now are beginning to catch glimpses of, that theoretical
perfection is lost. We can study only the chiropractic of today --
the shattered, complicated, messy, remnant that was our sole
bequest from the theory of one cause for everything -- like
archaeologists trying to reconstruct the daily habits of the
Babylonians from a handful of remains.

This theory of one cause for everything will be, in very precise
terms, a myth. A myth makes sense within its own terms, offers
explanations for everything we can see around us, but can be
neither tested nor disproved. A myth is an explanation that
everyone agrees on because it is convenient to agree. This myth
will indeed spell the end of chiropractic if we continue to
perpetuate it. It will be the end not because the myth has at last
been able to explain everything in the universe, but because it has
reached the end of all the things it has the power to explain. The
reality of the subluxation complex has finally set in!

Keith Innes, DC
Scarborough, Ontario