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July 2005, Vol. 15, Iss. 3
Table of Contents
A Great Opportunity • Age of Confusion •
APMR Accepts CBP® Research • CBP® has 13 Published Clinical Trials • Chronic Back Pain, Your Brain, & Chiropractic •
Creating a Great First Impression • Evidence Based Exams •
Had Enough? • Lateral Head Flexion from Vestibular Dysfunction •
Letters to the Editor • Life's Rise from the Ashes •
PosturePrint™ is now a Validated Posture Analysis •
The Disease of Unrealistic Expectation • Thousands of Heroes •
When You Can't Critique CBP® in the Peer-reviewed Literature
back to front page
Letters to the Editor
Regaring the Palmer Alumni Association
Regarding Mirror Image® Exercise and Adjusting
Regarding Ideal Spinal Alignment
Regarding the Palmer Alumni Association
Dear Dr. Don Harrison:
It may be politically incorrect for you to answer this letter, so just let it be a stand alone opinion from me. I read your front page article that was reprinted from the Davenport, Iowa newspaper. For Palmer College of Chiropractic to actually take its own Alumni Association (PAA) to court, as well as disavow and ostracize its own Alumni Association (on an unimportant, inconsequential, irrelevant, trivial usage of Palmer’s logo), is a monumental disgrace and travesty to Palmer’s Alumni Association. This association created the Palmer legacy, as well as the legacy of the entire chiropractic profession. Palmer suing their own Alumni Association is likened to a father suing his son for using his family name.
I have practiced chiropractic for 35 years, and I have observed and witnessed the ecstasy and agony of chiropractic. Palmer’s actions against their PAA, because of their legal “precious” logo being used by their own Alumni Association, represents chiropractic “Agony” to me.
Sincerely yours,
Charles N. Cooper, DC
Baltimore, MD
Regarding Mirror Image® Exercise and Adjusting
Dear Dr. Deed Harrison:
I would first like to compliment you, your father, and other CBP® researchers for your ongoing research and advances. I have only taken two seminars (in 1989 & 1994), along with a couple of national conventions (years ago), but I have purchased CBP® books, videos, and used your tutorial program. I have integrated some of your concepts and procedures, namely Mirror Image® exercises, traction protocols, instrument adjusting, Mirror Image® diversified and drop table techniques.
The reason for this letter is that I have a few concerns of CBP® and its chiropractic relationship. From my observation, most of the research and commentary in your journal relates to ideal/optimal spine models, and what procedures to use to provide that objective. The “adjusting” part, drop table/diversified, and instrument seem to take a “back seat” in comparison to traction and Mirror Image® exercises, especially to spinal changes. Even you state that SMT is best used for pain relief and if “corrective” care is given, switch over to the other CBP® procedures. Why can’t CBP® diversified, Mirror Image® adjusting be done immediately?
If this direction continues, I envision Mirror Image® exercises traction to be incorporated by other practitioners (medical community) and be integrated in their rehabilitation procedures. Look at the “Biotonix” or “Posture-Pro” procedures that take pictures of the body and recommend exercises to improve the patient’s posture. Where is the chiropractic (adjustive) component?
I can see non-DCs asking, “Why do we need adjusting, (besides pain relief), if we can achieve the same results without the “subluxation jargon” in regards to spinal changes?” This then regulates the DC’s distinctive advantage or uniqueness to manipulation procedures.
I have talked to other practitioners, who use non-CBP® adjustive techniques, but use traction/exercises and get spinal changes. Even some chiropractic consultants, who recommend CBP®, when you “corner them,” they will admit the key is traction and exercises. Maybe that is why some chiropractic techniques claim they get structural changes in their unique adjustments, because they are doing exercises and/or traction.
This ultimately brings many chiros, who have studied CBP®, to attend the other technique seminars. They believe its easier to just adjust and cheaper compared to rehab, etc.
Therefore, I hope that some of your research will evaluate Mirror Image® spinal adjustments and its role in corrective care and pain management.
Sincerely,
John J. LaHoda, DC
Richboro, PA
Dear Dr. LaHoda:
Thank you for your letter, kind remarks, and questions. Because Randomized Clinical Trials (RCTs) are so expensive (40-50K for even a small one), hard to do in a one-doctor office, and time consuming, the first 6 published CBP® Clinical Control trials are Non-randomized. In our studies, all patients received a CBP® “Package” of care. In order to determine exactly what procedure in the CBP® package made what percentage of spinal change in our studies, we would have to “randomly” send patients to different treatment groups, such as one exercise group, one traction group, one Mirror Image® drop table group, one Mirror Image® instrument adjusted group, one Mirror Image® diversified group, etc. This has never been done yet, although some day, I would like to have such studies performed.
However, let me remind you that, in the beginnings of CBP® technique, my father was an upper cervical chiropractor, who added extension traction and Mirror Image® exercises as time progressed. As a teenager, I remember going to his office and seeing many miracle cases done with instrument adjusting on C1 only. Thus, just because we have not studied it yet, does not mean that the Mirror Image® adjustments do not result in spinal changes.
Although we are now nearing 80 publications in CBP® Nonprofit, we have a long list of projects that we would like to do. As my father gets older (he will be 60 next year), responsibilities land more and more on my shoulders. While he was/is interested in showing that his CBP “package” of care results in health benefits and spinal correction, he is not too interested in what does exactly what percentage of spinal correction, but I am. However, we will need to grow in numbers and we will need many more research dollars to do the proper studies that need to be done.
Lastly, concerning practice management groups and other techniques that take bits and pieces of CBP® Technique: 1) These groups do a great disservice to the profession and patients due to a lack of complete understanding of full spine relationships and appropriate treatment applications. Many of these groups ignore the thoracic and lumbar spines and can actually cause problems instead of correcting something; 2) The majority of these groups never donate back to CBP® NonProfit, Inc. and do not recommend that their attendees do either; thus, many of these DC’s are generally unexposed to our research process and never realize the value/need for financial support of the advancement of chiropractic treatment through research; 3) Many of these groups teach non-supportable programs of care under the “guise” of CBP® technique and create a bad name for CBP® Technique both nationally and internationally. Lately, I have been involved in a number of Board complaints and litigation situations due to this and am not in support of this abuse. Accordingly, I do not hold these groups in high regard as they are “leaching” off and abusing CBP® corrective care techniques and research without supporting it. Total Practice Management (TPMI) is the only exception to my statements and these individuals (Radermacher & Heun) are listed in our AJCC under the donation column, which is printed at least one time per year.
Sincerely,
Deed E. Harrison, DC
Regarding Ideal Spinal Alignment
Dear Editor,
While an Ideal Spinal Alignment seems to have escaped most DC’s abilities to reason, not so with Neurosurgeons. At a meeting of our local NY Chiropractic Council in May, Dr. Saeed Bajwa, a neurosurgeon, who teaches and performs a technique for disc replacement, explained that synthetic discs are thicker anteriorly and thinner posteriorly to restore lordotic curves. He stated that this thickness difference is angled differently at different levels of the spine according to an ideal curve model. He stated, “Of course we are aiming for ideal alignment, otherwise you are just leaving the same lousy alignment that caused the problem in the first place.” Unlike some DCs, Neurosurgeons are not claiming that loss of lordosis and/or a kyphosis are normal variants in the lumbar and cervical regions. How did some of our Chiropractic brethren go from alignment was extremely important historically, to no importance recently?
Samuel Cooper, DC
Endicott, NY
Dear Dr. Cooper,
Yes, it is odd that MDs are increasingly stating the obvious... sagittal curves are important clinical outcomes, while our Chiropractic brethren seem lost when it comes to biomechanics.
Sincerely,
Don Harrison, PhD, DC, MSE
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