Look Well To The Spine For
The Cause of Disease

by: Dr. Jeff Prystupa

Hippocrates:
“Look well to the spine for the cause of disease.”

Here we are looking backwards, looking the wrong way through the telescope, trying to determine how we got so far off track. What has gone wrong? Why are we, as a species, so sick? We have better sanitation. We have better refrigeration. We have vaccines for this and vaccines for that. Everyday in the papers and on television we hear of the latest drug breakthrough. Why doesn’t our health improve? Instead, we grow more frail and beset with ‘superbugs,’ viruses, prions, mycoplasmas, and all forms of microscopic assassins. Modern medicine, rather than the arrogant champion it postures as, is a failure. That failure is not due only to its methods, but is more so the result of a faulty premise.

For thousands of years, except for a small cult-like group of healers, Hippocrates advice has been overlooked. The most ignored area of human health is the spine. Early Chiropractors used the spine as the avenue of approach for treating the total range of ailments affecting mankind. In fact, the first Chiropractic patient did not have low back pain or a stiff neck, Harvey Lillard who received the first recognized chiropractic adjustment was deaf!

A Little Healing Arts History:

Mr. Lillard was the janitor in the building where Dr. Daniel David Palmer was treating patients with a variety of modalities. Dr. Palmer was a contemporary of Dr. Alexander Taylor Still. As they rode up and down the Mississippi river between Davenport, Iowa and St. Louis, Missouri, they would argue over which system played the dominant role in health and disease.

Dr. Palmer believed that the nervous system was the key to health and that the communication between the brain and the body through the spinal cord was the avenue through which dis-ease entered the body. Dr. Still believed that the circulatory system was the communication system of first importance. Dr. Palmer developed a very precise and specific method of short-lever adjustments to correct dis-relationships within the spinal vertebrae. He named this new healing art Chiropractic, which he meant as “done by the hand.”

Dr. Still developed a system of long-lever general manipulations of the trunk and extremities to restore blood flow to areas that he felt became restricted and therefore undernourished. His new healing art became known as Osteopathy. Both of these forms of hands-on care flourished in treating all kinds of ailments until the later 1930’s when the Flexner report ushered in the era of petro-chemical, pill-for-every-ill, modern medicine.

When the American Medical Association (AMA) launched its now famous boycott against its competitors, it first approached the Osteopaths and offered them a deal. If the DO’s, Doctors of Osteopathy, agreed to adopt the philosophy of drugs and surgery and forsake their heritage of natural health care, then the AMA would not include them in its proposed and scheduled boycott. They agreed. From that point on, the DO’s were incorporated into the medical profession.

Knowing that the Doctors of Chiropractic were like a herd of cats, the AMA knew that there was no hope of leading them into the pen, and so these independent-thinking doctors suffered two decades of slings and arrows from the poison-pen and exclusionary practices of the AMA, hospitals and the insurance industry. They even bought off Ann Landers! But it has been the patients, those with the greatest need, who have borne the brunt of this anti-competitive behavior.

Perhaps if the AMA had not been so selfish, greedy and short-sighted, patients like Chris Reeves would be walking. There are so many who suffer for the rest of their lives because the AMA has seen to it that the most qualified doctors in the world are not allowed into the delivery rooms, the emergency rooms and the operating rooms, where they could employ their superior skills and training. Who suffers for that? Everyone does.

• Why is the human, the one with the brain, the only animal on Planet Earth that is sick? (The other animals that are sick are being poisoned by the same things making man sick.)
• In 1900, 1 in 300 people got cancer, in 2000, 1 in 3 got cancer. Why such an increase?
• Why, according to JAMA, is medicine the third leading cause of death in the U.S.?
• Why is Autism, a disease that did not exist 40 years ago, affecting 1 in 150 children?
• Why is Alzheimer’s claiming so many GrandMa’s and GrandDad’s?
• Why are drugs which patients cannot obtain advertised on television?
• Why is prescription rights (i.e., others paying for drugs for Seniors) being debated by the government?
• What scientific studies have shown a positive relationship between taking drugs and improved health?
• What are the ingredients in a vaccine?
• Why is it important to schools that kids are vaccinated, but not hospitals? Hospitals never ask.
• Why do doctors always think the body is making a mistake by being ‘sick’? In other words, why do medical doctors think that the body is so stupid?

It is time we re-examined the reigning paradigm upon which modern medicine stands - because it has fallen - and it can’t get up! Like too many women who developed weak bones from medical advice, medicine itself can not bear its own weight any longer. Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) is the latest casualty of this failed system. They have found that HRT is like pouring gas on the Cancer fire.

Doctors of Chiropractic, in comparison, have been providing an alternative to the ‘stupid body’ allopathy of medicine for over 100 years. Despite the claims made by the medical establishment, there is no medical procedure as well researched by medicine as Chiropractic. The results in the United States and British Isles have clearly proven the superiority of Chiropractic over medicine.

The major finding of all this research, in this author’s opinion, is that patients who received Chiropractic care, universally related that other symptoms that they were having, also improved! These patients stated that with Chiropractic care, symptoms they were also experiencing but that they did not feel were related to the problem they sought Chiropractic care for, also improved.

It is this fact that is the foundation for this article. In my over 30 years of experience in the mainstream and alternative healing arts, using methods which range from Acupuncture to Zypan, the most consistent and beneficial results, as well as the miraculous, have been obtained with Chiropractic manual spinal adjusting therapy. A ten year-old blind girl received her full sight, another little girl was deaf and had a full restoration of her hearing, these are just two of the miraculous responses to the adjustment. Other amazing stories of recoveries were told on the front pages of ‘Sports’ in the Boulder and Denver papers. Scoliosis have been corrected without surgery. Discs have been repaired without surgery. Relief from excruciating migraines is a daily occurrence. Every car accident victim needs to be checked.

The human body requires no help in expressing health - once the interference to that expression is removed. Most often that interference is found in the spine. Clearing the nervous system of ‘static’ allows for the intelligence within the body to flow to where the healing is needed. Pass this info along to family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc. What they do not know - can not help them. Be a friend.