What’s My Diagnosis?
I am into my fourth decade of being a chiropractor. One of the things that has made the biggest impression on me is how many people traverse their way through the allopathic medical system with a useless diagnosis. By useless I mean they are given a label that supports the prescription of pharmaceuticals but leaves them struggling to be well and healthy from nervous system interference.
Too often the label and the medications a person brings to my office have addressed only symptoms. My experience is that the label is a distraction from the path to wellness. I usually do not care what the label is, and a primary goal becomes to get them off their medications. The path to wellness is about asking the questions that allow us to find out the why of the label they have been given. Finding the why means finding the underlying cause(s) of a person’s condition. Understanding the underlying root causes of nervous system interference allows me to illuminate and correct the weaknesses in the person’s physiological systems with chiropractic neurological rehabilitation. All of this is accomplished in my practice by asking questions of the patient with clinical kinesiology muscle testing. The art of this kind of practice is developing a combined instinct intellect for asking better and better questions. Only then is a truly personalized Chiropractic treatment plan for the nervous system is enabled.
The why for any condition is a combination of energetic weaknesses in organs, systems, glands influenced by toxin, pathogen, buried emotion, and other energies. The weaknesses are triggered by the pathologically stressful world we inhabit, and in a small part by genetic predisposition. For the most part genetics are secondary to the triggers. Genes are mostly like a light switch that we turn on and off with our lifestyle choices.
There are a few common denominators in the very wellness challenged person’s presentation. One is the gut. The gut is the liver, gall bladder, pancreas, stomach and intestines. Very few people have a healthy gut environment and that lack of health challenges every other system in the body. Over time those challenges can become an auto immune process. That means a person’s immune system attacks other systems in the body. This is a protective mechanism the body has to prevent the degradation of organs, glands and systems. However, when the immune system cannot keep up with the degradation the autoimmune process can become a full blown autoimmune high inflammation producing event that goes on and on. Then the labels begin as doctors attempt to address the painful symptoms their patients present.
Any time I find the autoimmune process to be part of a person’s presentation I tell them that process is the first and most important thing to be addressed. Why? Because it is the underlying root cause and can affect everything else. Until it is addressed, everything is simply chasing symptoms within the nervous system, a common allopathic approach. The next most important thing is to heal the gut and the endocrine system. Only then is it effective to chase many of the associated factors. Addressing autoimmune processes and the gut are major parts of chiropractic neurological rehabilitation.
Starting with the root cause is the long and slow way to recovery of nervous system function, but I fail to see another effective way. For the autoimmune challenged It almost always demands a person to make lifestyle changes and take supplements. My job is to guide them through that process and restore function in the nervous system so that it can restore function in the body.
Dr. Pat Dougherty is a holistic chiropractor in Spokane, Washington. He uses muscle testing to evaluate the health of every bodily system as well as food intolerances. Located at 2110 N Washington St. He can be reached on his business cell phone at 509-844-4206. $95 for an initial exam and insurance is not accepted. No new patients will be accepted after August 17th and the last day in the office is September 28th.
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