While speaking at Life University's Lyceum last month, I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Guy Riekeman give his presentation at opening ceremonies. During a few of his presentations, he will sometime mention the different types of health care. They consist of:
1. Do nothing
2. Treatment of diseases with drugs and surgeries.
3. Treatment of diseases with everything but drugs and surgeries.
4. True chiropractic (ADIO)
I feel sad to have to put any type of prefix or suffix on chiropractic, but it is getting necessary to qualify your position more and more. As a professor at a chiropractic college, my students will have the health care philosophy of numbers 2, 3, and 4. This is generally why we have such lively debates in class because some think health needs to come from the outside, others from within.
The similarity between #2 and #3 is a mechanistic philosophy. The body is weak, susceptible to outside forces and it needs help to heal. The manifestations in the chiropractic profession include the outrageous bill in New Mexico to include prescriptive rights in chiropractic http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=109949199 to treating different ailments with vitamins, herbs, exercise, rehab and other outside influences.
Numbers 3 and 4 have a natural philosophy in similar but have one key difference. The shy away from artificial or man-made products with high side effects and focus on working with things provided by nature.
But a key difference is that the fourth model centers around the body as a self-healing and self-regulating system via proper mental impulse communication. If 100% communication exists through the application of chiropractic care, the body can express itself without the help from the outside. Health flows from Above-Down, Inside-Out guided by Innate Intelligence.
Every chiropractic student needs to answer this dilemma for themselves. Straddling the fence of chiropractic philosophy will only lead to problems down the road.
