RE: continued discussion

[Guest guest]

Excellent insiders view Sunny...I for one know it is way past time to break the medical monopoly in this state. Though it may sound cornball I intend to make this my personal focus for the balance of my chiropractic career. Our wonderful profession absolutely deserves a level playing field and most importantly the general public of which we have the professional privilege of treating deserves open access to chiropractic care.

With that said we as a profession must absolutely adopt a universal evidence based measuring stick by which all parties involved use to determine what constitutes reasonable and necessary chiropractic treatment and what does not.

This is especially germane to the treatment of common musculoskeletal conditions such as acute and chronic neck and low back pain...what we as a profession are most associated with by the lay public and that which has the strongest evidence as per our efficacy in treating.

Outcomes Management can provide this for us. The entire health care field is, and has been moving in this direction for years. Combining patient driven outcome assessment self reporting tools which document the patient's current level, distribution, and quality of Pain and their current level of activity intolerance (disability/ADLs), with provider driven physical examination and physical performance measures is critical. It is critical for us as a profession to finally take the lead for once, to be proactive rather than reactive.

The final draft proposal for the Worker's Compensation Cost Comparison Study (4 years of work) is done and I meet with the Majority Leader and other officials next week. I can assure you the issue of "over-utilization" or excessive treatment will come up and we as a profession must have a answer with teeth or we are simply sunk.

The proposed Administrative Rule which speaks to "over-utilization" or excessive treatment and "under-utilization" (IME/DME findings) absolutely must go forward or we are sunk in this state.

Like it or not, regardless of whether you believe excessive treatment to be real or perceived our "MO" as a profession within the ranks of the policy makers is that...."ya what chiropractors do works, trouble is they keep you coming back, and back, and back, and back..."

I am absolutely convinced that without this Administrative Rule to point to during Legislative Committee hearings when our enemies attack on the "excessive treatment" issue we have NO CHANCE.

With out our profession addressing the excessive treatment issue in a meaningful way (an Admin. Rule) it is likely our proposed W/C study will not be run, we run the real danger next session of losing PIP to closed paneled managed care groups then finally losing it completely like Colorado, no chance whatsoever of gaining Insurance equality, Any willing provider, nor mandated hospital privileges for DCs...etc., etc., etc.

I am absolutely convinced we as a profession are at a critical cross roads where if we indeed for once as a profession act proactive and preemptively can gain everything (that level playing field with medicine) we have always wanted for our patients and this profession...or alternatively due to the actions of a few combined with timely inaction as a profession absolutely lose everything....

....do we as a profession wish to write our own destiny or allow others to do so for us, and what future will we allow them to write?

Vern Saboe

continued discussion

Hi Sharon,

You asked me why I have disdain for traditional western doctors and allopathic medicine ... and, if I have such disdain how can I continue to type RN after my name. When I started this letter, sharing it with the listserve was not part of my plan but, after writing it, I decided I was brave enough to share it. To the rest of the field, this is long so please be gentle with me in your comments, but it will help you understand why I chose chiropractic and am SO pleased to be in 'this side of medicine'.

It is that 30 years of nursing that is the source of the continued level of disdain. Let me see if I can help you understand.

As I reply to you, please understand, it is not my intent to paint the entire allopathic profession with a tar-brush. Many MDs are good people. But, an ever greater many are not, at least not when they are one-on-one with the public, especially behind closed doors or curtains. As I have thought about this reply over the last several days, I realize it is the allopathic 'culture' that may be more at fault.

You see MDs at their best: writing reports (they are sooooo gooooddd at writing reports) and in deposition. This is where their professionalism and authority and arrogance can shine without being judged.

My experience comes from 30 years of watching them at the bedside. Participation in 4 - 30 physician-bedside visits per day can give one a bird's eye view of how the allopathic culture (as expressed by individual MDs) regards the rest of society. And the picture isn't pretty. Here the arrogance is demeaning, disrespectful, belittling and steamrolling. Yes, a few take time with their patients (they've learned they have to...have you seen the ratio of MD vs CAM visits lately?) talking to each on the level of that person...but it is a serious minority. They have no idea of what they leave in their wake . most don't even realize they leave a wake!

The rest treat people as though they know nothing and are capable of learning nothing:

- not bothering to explain procedures (tho the informed-consent regs have slowed that somewhat );

- not listening to what patients are attempting to say to them or hearing them when the patient does speak up to them;

- brushing fears and concerns aside with a belittling word or gesture or no reply at all;

- not explaining what a drug will do for them or what the side effects are and NEVER talking about toxic effects;

- actually looking a person in the eye who talks about the difficulties the side effects are causing with the reply "so what?"; it doesn't seem to matter to them that the side effects can sometimes (oftentimes) cause more problems than the problem they originally came in for;

- taking test after test after test that comes back 'normal' and then telling the person (who is doubled over in pain in front of them) that "it is all in your head";

- ignoring the underlying causes of a problem despite having seen the same person with the same complaint 7 times in the past month;

- demanding that a problem show up on some kind of radar (labs, scans, films, other testing) before they will label it or start treating it;

- they belittle the fact that body indicators and muscle testing can often find problems or at least provide loud clues to where to look long before problems show up on the radar; - dismissing a full explanation of a person's problem;

- not teaching anything about preventative care;

- talking over an anaesthetized person about their latest and goriest amputation (insert any gory trauma or surgical care) they have had to do or how "Sally (another patient) has only 3 days left to live" despite tons of data about hearing often being still intact during anesthesia. (And that is BEFORE we talk about their behavior when the patient really is asleep and the only ones left to impress is each other.)

- they do not study nutrition (yes, in the last 5 years they have decided that maybe the RDA could be real . and might even need increasing... but have not yet realized that vitamins don't/can't work without minerals; (remember your biochemistry...have you looked at the soil-refurbishment tables lately?)

- they do not study foods and/or their interaction with the body; (Registered dieticians study foods but not how they interact with the human body...read any material from Dr. n Whitaker, Alan Gaby, Jonathon , McDougall, even Weil and you can quickly see how off track the current understanding of human nutrient needs are in the allopathic community);

- they do not study the dynamics of the human structure with the importance of appropriate human articulation on functional metabolism;

- they continue to insist that structural dysfunction and misalignment has no effect on disease processes;

- they have NO concept of the primary respiratory mechanism and it's affect on human organic function;

- they are taught to believe they are infallible (and that was reaffirmed to me twice in the 99 pieces of literature I have just finished reading for the Pt. Safety chapter so I actually have references for that one!) and 'wear' ( or hide behind) that attitude of infallibility in front of people constantly;

- they rarely refer to the chiropractic community; daily I see cases that, had they been referred even just months before they finally (out of desperation) came to a chiropractor, I could have prevented the disc collapse or stopped the knee surgery or kept the wrist from scarring so severely from the inappropriate carpel tunnel surgery or prevented the liver dysfunction from being as bad as it is, etc., etc., etc.

- they continue to ignore the fact that (short of mind numbing sleep) pain from structural problems is not adequately addressed by the current genre of pain medications, from NSAIDS to narcotics.

- they continue to insist the human body can be adequately addressed on a 'system-by-system' approach. When was the last time you saw a body walk into your office part by part? It is one system and functions as one system....what goes wrong in a toe CAN affect what happens in your head; what happens in your gallbladder WILL create pain in your knee; etc., etc., etc.

So, as one of the few doctors that has put both bases of knowledge into one brain, I am appalled at their ignorance. What happened to their so-called 'scientific mind'? Doesn't that mean 'keeping an open mind'? Their unwillingness to even look at what the structural/chiropractic community has to offer is insulting and speaks poorly of them. You see that expressed by the listserve frequently. And we DCs in the field see and hear it expressed by our patients on a daily basis. So this is not just me...I'm just the one with the magnitude of daily experience of their insensitivities.

In your side of the profession, respect is demanded and so comes as an 'of course'. But behind your back, by and large, they have little to no respect for your DC. And yes, it is changing, inch by inch (read millimetre by millimetre). In the meantime, the waiting rooms of chiropractic doctors are under-filled. Our doctors are hurting and our population is hurting .... both from lack of use.

In l998/99 I attended every meeting around the state of the Governor's Task Force on Pain And Symptom Management, a series of meetings designed to discover why Oregon uses the most morphine of any other state in the US. We heard tale after tale after tale of people with structural problems being ignored and treated only with greater and greater levels of pain medications. In the final meeting, the so-called professionals (supposedly from every level) sat around the table offering their various solutions: "maybe we could do this or maybe we could do this or maybe this would work". When I put my hand up and asked why referral to chiropractors wasn't happening, after diplomatically sharing that over 80% of the problems I had heard, in the months of testimony, could be and were daily addressed in chiropractic offices, to a person, they sat there and looked at me. Not one person even gave me the courtesy of a reply. In fact, a few had a facial expression that suggested "what right did I even have to ask that question?" Talk about disrespect?! That was when I realized how serious the division between the MDs and the DCs is in Oregon.

It is all an economic game. Allopathic medicine is not interested in the health of the public...all they are interested in is their disease. Traditional western medicine is about selling medicine and tests. It is not about getting people well ... only symptom free, even if it means keeping them drugged into mindlessness. Our concept of treating disease has no component of 'quality of life' .... it is about keeping people alive at all costs ... to the point we are willing to bankrupt our populace.

At the same time, I am the first to acknowledge that, in the case of trauma or crisis, traditional western medicine can be the best of the best...but, in chronic disease, it is the worst. There will come a time when this is known as the dark ages of medicine. At least in the medieval times, they didn't know what we know today.

I continue to use the RN because 1) there really are 30 years of experience back there that I am proud of and cannot be ignored and 2) the public respects and responds to it so greatly. Being disdainful is not something of which I am proud ... but listening to and watching the problems with which my patients struggle, when structural care earlier in their course of degeneration could have made SUCH a difference, keeps me shaking my head.

Sad to be disdainful but disdainful from preponderance of experience,

Sunny

Sunny Kierstyn, RN DCFibromyalgia Care Center of Oregon59 Santa Clara St.,Eugene, Oregon, 97404541-689-0935

[Guest guest]

Sunny- I love hearing your "insiders" view of Medicine. I did not understand one comment though: "read any material from Dr. n Whitaker, Alan Gaby, Jonathon , McDougall, even Weil and you can quickly see how off track the current understanding of human nutrient needs are in the allopathic community."

Most of these Docs I really respect and often agree with or learn from. Can you explain?

Again, thanks so much for sharing about your 30 year experience as an RN! jk

M. Kalb MS DCThe Wellness Chiropractor and Health Coachwww.DrKalb.com 541.488.3001/888.488.3001

continued discussion

Hi Sharon,

You asked me why I have disdain for traditional western doctors and allopathic medicine ... and, if I have such disdain how can I continue to type RN after my name. When I started this letter, sharing it with the listserve was not part of my plan but, after writing it, I decided I was brave enough to share it. To the rest of the field, this is long so please be gentle with me in your comments, but it will help you understand why I chose chiropractic and am SO pleased to be in 'this side of medicine'.

It is that 30 years of nursing that is the source of the continued level of disdain. Let me see if I can help you understand.

As I reply to you, please understand, it is not my intent to paint the entire allopathic profession with a tar-brush. Many MDs are good people. But, an ever greater many are not, at least not when they are one-on-one with the public, especially behind closed doors or curtains. As I have thought about this reply over the last several days, I realize it is the allopathic 'culture' that may be more at fault.

You see MDs at their best: writing reports (they are sooooo gooooddd at writing reports) and in deposition. This is where their professionalism and authority and arrogance can shine without being judged.

My experience comes from 30 years of watching them at the bedside. Participation in 4 - 30 physician-bedside visits per day can give one a bird's eye view of how the allopathic culture (as expressed by individual MDs) regards the rest of society. And the picture isn't pretty. Here the arrogance is demeaning, disrespectful, belittling and steamrolling. Yes, a few take time with their patients (they've learned they have to...have you seen the ratio of MD vs CAM visits lately?) talking to each on the level of that person...but it is a serious minority. They have no idea of what they leave in their wake .. most don't even realize they leave a wake!

The rest treat people as though they know nothing and are capable of learning nothing:

- not bothering to explain procedures (tho the informed-consent regs have slowed that somewhat );

- not listening to what patients are attempting to say to them or hearing them when the patient does speak up to them;

- brushing fears and concerns aside with a belittling word or gesture or no reply at all;

- not explaining what a drug will do for them or what the side effects are and NEVER talking about toxic effects;

- actually looking a person in the eye who talks about the difficulties the side effects are causing with the reply "so what?"; it doesn't seem to matter to them that the side effects can sometimes (oftentimes) cause more problems than the problem they originally came in for;

- taking test after test after test that comes back 'normal' and then telling the person (who is doubled over in pain in front of them) that "it is all in your head";

- ignoring the underlying causes of a problem despite having seen the same person with the same complaint 7 times in the past month;

- demanding that a problem show up on some kind of radar (labs, scans, films, other testing) before they will label it or start treating it;

- they belittle the fact that body indicators and muscle testing can often find problems or at least provide loud clues to where to look long before problems show up on the radar; - dismissing a full explanation of a person's problem;

- not teaching anything about preventative care;

- talking over an anaesthetized person about their latest and goriest amputation (insert any gory trauma or surgical care) they have had to do or how "Sally (another patient) has only 3 days left to live" despite tons of data about hearing often being still intact during anesthesia. (And that is BEFORE we talk about their behavior when the patient really is asleep and the only ones left to impress is each other.)

- they do not study nutrition (yes, in the last 5 years they have decided that maybe the RDA could be real .. and might even need increasing... but have not yet realized that vitamins don't/can't work without minerals; (remember your biochemistry...have you looked at the soil-refurbishment tables lately?)

- they do not study foods and/or their interaction with the body; (Registered dieticians study foods but not how they interact with the human body...read any material from Dr. n Whitaker, Alan Gaby, Jonathon , McDougall, even Weil and you can quickly see how off track the current understanding of human nutrient needs are in the allopathic community);

- they do not study the dynamics of the human structure with the importance of appropriate human articulation on functional metabolism;

- they continue to insist that structural dysfunction and misalignment has no effect on disease processes;

- they have NO concept of the primary respiratory mechanism and it's affect on human organic function;

- they are taught to believe they are infallible (and that was reaffirmed to me twice in the 99 pieces of literature I have just finished reading for the Pt. Safety chapter so I actually have references for that one!) and 'wear' ( or hide behind) that attitude of infallibility in front of people constantly;

- they rarely refer to the chiropractic community; daily I see cases that, had they been referred even just months before they finally (out of desperation) came to a chiropractor, I could have prevented the disc collapse or stopped the knee surgery or kept the wrist from scarring so severely from the inappropriate carpel tunnel surgery or prevented the liver dysfunction from being as bad as it is, etc., etc., etc.

- they continue to ignore the fact that (short of mind numbing sleep) pain from structural problems is not adequately addressed by the current genre of pain medications, from NSAIDS to narcotics.

- they continue to insist the human body can be adequately addressed on a 'system-by-system' approach. When was the last time you saw a body walk into your office part by part? It is one system and functions as one system....what goes wrong in a toe CAN affect what happens in your head; what happens in your gallbladder WILL create pain in your knee; etc., etc., etc.

So, as one of the few doctors that has put both bases of knowledge into one brain, I am appalled at their ignorance. What happened to their so-called 'scientific mind'? Doesn't that mean 'keeping an open mind'? Their unwillingness to even look at what the structural/chiropractic community has to offer is insulting and speaks poorly of them. You see that expressed by the listserve frequently. And we DCs in the field see and hear it expressed by our patients on a daily basis. So this is not just me...I'm just the one with the magnitude of daily experience of their insensitivities.

In your side of the profession, respect is demanded and so comes as an 'of course'. But behind your back, by and large, they have little to no respect for your DC. And yes, it is changing, inch by inch (read millimetre by millimetre). In the meantime, the waiting rooms of chiropractic doctors are under-filled. Our doctors are hurting and our population is hurting .... both from lack of use.

In l998/99 I attended every meeting around the state of the Governor's Task Force on Pain And Symptom Management, a series of meetings designed to discover why Oregon uses the most morphine of any other state in the US. We heard tale after tale after tale of people with structural problems being ignored and treated only with greater and greater levels of pain medications. In the final meeting, the so-called professionals (supposedly from every level) sat around the table offering their various solutions: "maybe we could do this or maybe we could do this or maybe this would work". When I put my hand up and asked why referral to chiropractors wasn't happening, after diplomatically sharing that over 80% of the problems I had heard, in the months of testimony, could be and were daily addressed in chiropractic offices, to a person, they sat there and looked at me. Not one person even gave me the courtesy of a reply. In fact, a few had a facial expression that suggested "what right did I even have to ask that question?" Talk about disrespect?! That was when I realized how serious the division between the MDs and the DCs is in Oregon.

It is all an economic game. Allopathic medicine is not interested in the health of the public...all they are interested in is their disease. Traditional western medicine is about selling medicine and tests. It is not about getting people well ... only symptom free, even if it means keeping them drugged into mindlessness. Our concept of treating disease has no component of 'quality of life' .... it is about keeping people alive at all costs ... to the point we are willing to bankrupt our populace.

At the same time, I am the first to acknowledge that, in the case of trauma or crisis, traditional western medicine can be the best of the best...but, in chronic disease, it is the worst. There will come a time when this is known as the dark ages of medicine. At least in the medieval times, they didn't know what we know today.

I continue to use the RN because 1) there really are 30 years of experience back there that I am proud of and cannot be ignored and 2) the public respects and responds to it so greatly. Being disdainful is not something of which I am proud ... but listening to and watching the problems with which my patients struggle, when structural care earlier in their course of degeneration could have made SUCH a difference, keeps me shaking my head.

Sad to be disdainful but disdainful from preponderance of experience,

Sunny

Sunny Kierstyn, RN DCFibromyalgia Care Center of Oregon59 Santa Clara St.,Eugene, Oregon, 97404541-689-0935OregonDCs rules:1. Keep correspondence professional; the purpose of the listserve is to foster communication and collegiality. No personal attacks on listserve members will be tolerated.2. Always sign your e-mails with your first and last name.3. The listserve is not secure; your e-mail could end up anywhere. However, it is against the rules of the listserve to copy, print, forward, or otherwise distribute correspondence written by another member without his or her consent, unless all personal identifiers have been removed.

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

Thanks for bringing that up ... as I reread it from your veiwpoiint, I can see that it is misleading.

Those four doctors are among my gurus of nutrition. They are brave enough to lstate the need for nutritional intervention rather than drugs and teach the 'how' of how to do it. I was comparing their attitudes (and you note there are only 4 of them) to the rest of the pack who appear to have their heads in the ground, staying safely 'within the box' adding more and more pharmaceuticals to any given patient picture.

Hope that clears it up. Thanks for your kudos. Sunny

Sunny Kierstyn, RN DCFibromyalgia Care Center of Oregon59 Santa Clara St.,Eugene, Oregon, 97404541-689-0935

continued discussion

Hi Sharon,

You asked me why I have disdain for traditional western doctors and allopathic medicine ... and, if I have such disdain how can I continue to type RN after my name. When I started this letter, sharing it with the listserve was not part of my plan but, after writing it, I decided I was brave enough to share it. To the rest of the field, this is long so please be gentle with me in your comments, but it will help you understand why I chose chiropractic and am SO pleased to be in 'this side of medicine'.

It is that 30 years of nursing that is the source of the continued level of disdain. Let me see if I can help you understand.

As I reply to you, please understand, it is not my intent to paint the entire allopathic profession with a tar-brush. Many MDs are good people. But, an ever greater many are not, at least not when they are one-on-one with the public, especially behind closed doors or curtains. As I have thought about this reply over the last several days, I realize it is the allopathic 'culture' that may be more at fault.

You see MDs at their best: writing reports (they are sooooo gooooddd at writing reports) and in deposition. This is where their professionalism and authority and arrogance can shine without being judged.

My experience comes from 30 years of watching them at the bedside. Participation in 4 - 30 physician-bedside visits per day can give one a bird's eye view of how the allopathic culture (as expressed by individual MDs) regards the rest of society. And the picture isn't pretty. Here the arrogance is demeaning, disrespectful, belittling and steamrolling. Yes, a few take time with their patients (they've learned they have to...have you seen the ratio of MD vs CAM visits lately?) talking to each on the level of that person...but it is a serious minority. They have no idea of what they leave in their wake .. most don't even realize they leave a wake!

The rest treat people as though they know nothing and are capable of learning nothing:

- not bothering to explain procedures (tho the informed-consent regs have slowed that somewhat );

- not listening to what patients are attempting to say to them or hearing them when the patient does speak up to them;

- brushing fears and concerns aside with a belittling word or gesture or no reply at all;

- not explaining what a drug will do for them or what the side effects are and NEVER talking about toxic effects;

- actually looking a person in the eye who talks about the difficulties the side effects are causing with the reply "so what?"; it doesn't seem to matter to them that the side effects can sometimes (oftentimes) cause more problems than the problem they originally came in for;

- taking test after test after test that comes back 'normal' and then telling the person (who is doubled over in pain in front of them) that "it is all in your head";

- ignoring the underlying causes of a problem despite having seen the same person with the same complaint 7 times in the past month;

- demanding that a problem show up on some kind of radar (labs, scans, films, other testing) before they will label it or start treating it;

- they belittle the fact that body indicators and muscle testing can often find problems or at least provide loud clues to where to look long before problems show up on the radar; - dismissing a full explanation of a person's problem;

- not teaching anything about preventative care;

- talking over an anaesthetized person about their latest and goriest amputation (insert any gory trauma or surgical care) they have had to do or how "Sally (another patient) has only 3 days left to live" despite tons of data about hearing often being still intact during anesthesia. (And that is BEFORE we talk about their behavior when the patient really is asleep and the only ones left to impress is each other.)

- they do not study nutrition (yes, in the last 5 years they have decided that maybe the RDA could be real .. and might even need increasing... but have not yet realized that vitamins don't/can't work without minerals; (remember your biochemistry...have you looked at the soil-refurbishment tables lately?)

- they do not study foods and/or their interaction with the body; (Registered dieticians study foods but not how they interact with the human body...read any material from Dr. n Whitaker, Alan Gaby, Jonathon , McDougall, even Weil and you can quickly see how off track the current understanding of human nutrient needs are in the allopathic community);

- they do not study the dynamics of the human structure with the importance of appropriate human articulation on functional metabolism;

- they continue to insist that structural dysfunction and misalignment has no effect on disease processes;

- they have NO concept of the primary respiratory mechanism and it's affect on human organic function;

- they are taught to believe they are infallible (and that was reaffirmed to me twice in the 99 pieces of literature I have just finished reading for the Pt. Safety chapter so I actually have references for that one!) and 'wear' ( or hide behind) that attitude of infallibility in front of people constantly;

- they rarely refer to the chiropractic community; daily I see cases that, had they been referred even just months before they finally (out of desperation) came to a chiropractor, I could have prevented the disc collapse or stopped the knee surgery or kept the wrist from scarring so severely from the inappropriate carpel tunnel surgery or prevented the liver dysfunction from being as bad as it is, etc., etc., etc.

- they continue to ignore the fact that (short of mind numbing sleep) pain from structural problems is not adequately addressed by the current genre of pain medications, from NSAIDS to narcotics.

- they continue to insist the human body can be adequately addressed on a 'system-by-system' approach. When was the last time you saw a body walk into your office part by part? It is one system and functions as one system....what goes wrong in a toe CAN affect what happens in your head; what happens in your gallbladder WILL create pain in your knee; etc., etc., etc.

So, as one of the few doctors that has put both bases of knowledge into one brain, I am appalled at their ignorance. What happened to their so-called 'scientific mind'? Doesn't that mean 'keeping an open mind'? Their unwillingness to even look at what the structural/chiropractic community has to offer is insulting and speaks poorly of them. You see that expressed by the listserve frequently. And we DCs in the field see and hear it expressed by our patients on a daily basis. So this is not just me...I'm just the one with the magnitude of daily experience of their insensitivities.

In your side of the profession, respect is demanded and so comes as an 'of course'. But behind your back, by and large, they have little to no respect for your DC. And yes, it is changing, inch by inch (read millimetre by millimetre). In the meantime, the waiting rooms of chiropractic doctors are under-filled. Our doctors are hurting and our population is hurting .... both from lack of use.

In l998/99 I attended every meeting around the state of the Governor's Task Force on Pain And Symptom Management, a series of meetings designed to discover why Oregon uses the most morphine of any other state in the US. We heard tale after tale after tale of people with structural problems being ignored and treated only with greater and greater levels of pain medications. In the final meeting, the so-called professionals (supposedly from every level) sat around the table offering their various solutions: "maybe we could do this or maybe we could do this or maybe this would work". When I put my hand up and asked why referral to chiropractors wasn't happening, after diplomatically sharing that over 80% of the problems I had heard, in the months of testimony, could be and were daily addressed in chiropractic offices, to a person, they sat there and looked at me. Not one person even gave me the courtesy of a reply. In fact, a few had a facial expression that suggested "what right did I even have to ask that question?" Talk about disrespect?! That was when I realized how serious the division between the MDs and the DCs is in Oregon.

It is all an economic game. Allopathic medicine is not interested in the health of the public...all they are interested in is their disease. Traditional western medicine is about selling medicine and tests. It is not about getting people well ... only symptom free, even if it means keeping them drugged into mindlessness. Our concept of treating disease has no component of 'quality of life' .... it is about keeping people alive at all costs ... to the point we are willing to bankrupt our populace.

At the same time, I am the first to acknowledge that, in the case of trauma or crisis, traditional western medicine can be the best of the best...but, in chronic disease, it is the worst. There will come a time when this is known as the dark ages of medicine. At least in the medieval times, they didn't know what we know today.

I continue to use the RN because 1) there really are 30 years of experience back there that I am proud of and cannot be ignored and 2) the public respects and responds to it so greatly. Being disdainful is not something of which I am proud ... but listening to and watching the problems with which my patients struggle, when structural care earlier in their course of degeneration could have made SUCH a difference, keeps me shaking my head.

Sad to be disdainful but disdainful from preponderance of experience,

Sunny

Sunny Kierstyn, RN DCFibromyalgia Care Center of Oregon59 Santa Clara St.,Eugene, Oregon, 97404541-689-0935OregonDCs rules:1. Keep correspondence professional; the purpose of the listserve is to foster communication and collegiality. No personal attacks on listserve members will be tolerated.2. Always sign your e-mails with your first and last name.3. The listserve is not secure; your e-mail could end up anywhere. However, it is against the rules of the listserve to copy, print, forward, or otherwise distribute correspondence written by another member without his or her consent, unless all personal identifiers have been removed.

[Guest guest]

Hi Vern,

I couldn't agree with you m ore. Our populace desperately needs our care, but, with the economic machine being what it is, the only ones who are going to stand up for us is us. We have to use 'their' rules however because we need to match/beat them on their ground. And I believe we can do it.

You are working on the legislative side: ;my passion is the educational side. Teaching the public the 'why' it take coming back (you can't take a condition that has been there for years andnot use some time to heal it) will dilute the argument of the insurance and allopathic arguments that create doubt in the mind of the public. To do that, we need the legislative pieces (outcome measure statement) in place. Both are needed to put us and keep us on the playing field. Sunny

Sunny Kierstyn, RN DCFibromyalgia Care Center of Oregon59 Santa Clara St.,Eugene, Oregon, 97404541-689-0935

continued discussion

Hi Sharon,

You asked me why I have disdain for traditional western doctors and allopathic medicine ... and, if I have such disdain how can I continue to type RN after my name. When I started this letter, sharing it with the listserve was not part of my plan but, after writing it, I decided I was brave enough to share it. To the rest of the field, this is long so please be gentle with me in your comments, but it will help you understand why I chose chiropractic and am SO pleased to be in 'this side of medicine'.

It is that 30 years of nursing that is the source of the continued level of disdain. Let me see if I can help you understand.

As I reply to you, please understand, it is not my intent to paint the entire allopathic profession with a tar-brush. Many MDs are good people. But, an ever greater many are not, at least not when they are one-on-one with the public, especially behind closed doors or curtains. As I have thought about this reply over the last several days, I realize it is the allopathic 'culture' that may be more at fault.

You see MDs at their best: writing reports (they are sooooo gooooddd at writing reports) and in deposition. This is where their professionalism and authority and arrogance can shine without being judged.

My experience comes from 30 years of watching them at the bedside. Participation in 4 - 30 physician-bedside visits per day can give one a bird's eye view of how the allopathic culture (as expressed by individual MDs) regards the rest of society. And the picture isn't pretty. Here the arrogance is demeaning, disrespectful, belittling and steamrolling. Yes, a few take time with their patients (they've learned they have to...have you seen the ratio of MD vs CAM visits lately?) talking to each on the level of that person...but it is a serious minority. They have no idea of what they leave in their wake . most don't even realize they leave a wake!

The rest treat people as though they know nothing and are capable of learning nothing:

- not bothering to explain procedures (tho the informed-consent regs have slowed that somewhat );

- not listening to what patients are attempting to say to them or hearing them when the patient does speak up to them;

- brushing fears and concerns aside with a belittling word or gesture or no reply at all;

- not explaining what a drug will do for them or what the side effects are and NEVER talking about toxic effects;

- actually looking a person in the eye who talks about the difficulties the side effects are causing with the reply "so what?"; it doesn't seem to matter to them that the side effects can sometimes (oftentimes) cause more problems than the problem they originally came in for;

- taking test after test after test that comes back 'normal' and then telling the person (who is doubled over in pain in front of them) that "it is all in your head";

- ignoring the underlying causes of a problem despite having seen the same person with the same complaint 7 times in the past month;

- demanding that a problem show up on some kind of radar (labs, scans, films, other testing) before they will label it or start treating it;

- they belittle the fact that body indicators and muscle testing can often find problems or at least provide loud clues to where to look long before problems show up on the radar; - dismissing a full explanation of a person's problem;

- not teaching anything about preventative care;

- talking over an anaesthetized person about their latest and goriest amputation (insert any gory trauma or surgical care) they have had to do or how "Sally (another patient) has only 3 days left to live" despite tons of data about hearing often being still intact during anesthesia. (And that is BEFORE we talk about their behavior when the patient really is asleep and the only ones left to impress is each other.)

- they do not study nutrition (yes, in the last 5 years they have decided that maybe the RDA could be real . and might even need increasing... but have not yet realized that vitamins don't/can't work without minerals; (remember your biochemistry...have you looked at the soil-refurbishment tables lately?)

- they do not study foods and/or their interaction with the body; (Registered dieticians study foods but not how they interact with the human body...read any material from Dr. n Whitaker, Alan Gaby, Jonathon , McDougall, even Weil and you can quickly see how off track the current understanding of human nutrient needs are in the allopathic community);

- they do not study the dynamics of the human structure with the importance of appropriate human articulation on functional metabolism;

- they continue to insist that structural dysfunction and misalignment has no effect on disease processes;

- they have NO concept of the primary respiratory mechanism and it's affect on human organic function;

- they are taught to believe they are infallible (and that was reaffirmed to me twice in the 99 pieces of literature I have just finished reading for the Pt. Safety chapter so I actually have references for that one!) and 'wear' ( or hide behind) that attitude of infallibility in front of people constantly;

- they rarely refer to the chiropractic community; daily I see cases that, had they been referred even just months before they finally (out of desperation) came to a chiropractor, I could have prevented the disc collapse or stopped the knee surgery or kept the wrist from scarring so severely from the inappropriate carpel tunnel surgery or prevented the liver dysfunction from being as bad as it is, etc., etc., etc.

- they continue to ignore the fact that (short of mind numbing sleep) pain from structural problems is not adequately addressed by the current genre of pain medications, from NSAIDS to narcotics.

- they continue to insist the human body can be adequately addressed on a 'system-by-system' approach. When was the last time you saw a body walk into your office part by part? It is one system and functions as one system....what goes wrong in a toe CAN affect what happens in your head; what happens in your gallbladder WILL create pain in your knee; etc., etc., etc.

So, as one of the few doctors that has put both bases of knowledge into one brain, I am appalled at their ignorance. What happened to their so-called 'scientific mind'? Doesn't that mean 'keeping an open mind'? Their unwillingness to even look at what the structural/chiropractic community has to offer is insulting and speaks poorly of them. You see that expressed by the listserve frequently. And we DCs in the field see and hear it expressed by our patients on a daily basis. So this is not just me...I'm just the one with the magnitude of daily experience of their insensitivities.

In your side of the profession, respect is demanded and so comes as an 'of course'. But behind your back, by and large, they have little to no respect for your DC. And yes, it is changing, inch by inch (read millimetre by millimetre). In the meantime, the waiting rooms of chiropractic doctors are under-filled. Our doctors are hurting and our population is hurting .... both from lack of use.

In l998/99 I attended every meeting around the state of the Governor's Task Force on Pain And Symptom Management, a series of meetings designed to discover why Oregon uses the most morphine of any other state in the US. We heard tale after tale after tale of people with structural problems being ignored and treated only with greater and greater levels of pain medications. In the final meeting, the so-called professionals (supposedly from every level) sat around the table offering their various solutions: "maybe we could do this or maybe we could do this or maybe this would work". When I put my hand up and asked why referral to chiropractors wasn't happening, after diplomatically sharing that over 80% of the problems I had heard, in the months of testimony, could be and were daily addressed in chiropractic offices, to a person, they sat there and looked at me. Not one person even gave me the courtesy of a reply. In fact, a few had a facial expression that suggested "what right did I even have to ask that question?" Talk about disrespect?! That was when I realized how serious the division between the MDs and the DCs is in Oregon.

It is all an economic game. Allopathic medicine is not interested in the health of the public...all they are interested in is their disease. Traditional western medicine is about selling medicine and tests. It is not about getting people well ... only symptom free, even if it means keeping them drugged into mindlessness. Our concept of treating disease has no component of 'quality of life' .... it is about keeping people alive at all costs ... to the point we are willing to bankrupt our populace.

At the same time, I am the first to acknowledge that, in the case of trauma or crisis, traditional western medicine can be the best of the best...but, in chronic disease, it is the worst. There will come a time when this is known as the dark ages of medicine. At least in the medieval times, they didn't know what we know today.

I continue to use the RN because 1) there really are 30 years of experience back there that I am proud of and cannot be ignored and 2) the public respects and responds to it so greatly. Being disdainful is not something of which I am proud ... but listening to and watching the problems with which my patients struggle, when structural care earlier in their course of degeneration could have made SUCH a difference, keeps me shaking my head.

Sad to be disdainful but disdainful from preponderance of experience,

Sunny

Sunny Kierstyn, RN DCFibromyalgia Care Center of Oregon59 Santa Clara St.,Eugene, Oregon, 97404541-689-0935

[Guest guest]

Sunny et al,

Thanks for the great discussion. It is critical to our growth as a profession that all of these ideas are raised and shared. I would like to chime in on a couple of points:

1. I am not as critical of our medical brethren as Sunny, but she has a different perspective than most of us. I spent 2 years doing medical school rotations observing and working with good docs and gained a better appreciation for what they do than I had previously (I also learned that I didn't want to do what they do - chiropractors have the best deal going for results and happy patients, in my opinion). What I have come to conclude about the majority of MDs is that they are much more willing to believe that a patient's complaint is psychogenic, that the pain that patient complains of is not too big of a deal, and that it's fine for folks in pain to just "live with it." I think this is because they are trained to deal with more life-threatening illnesses and not trained at all to deal with musculoskeletal pain (and have little in their armamentarium to address such problems. They can always prescribe NSAIDs but these drugs have a one in 1200 death rate). So even very good docs will send a patient away with a "do your exercises and come back when you are really sick" attitude.

2. I cringe every time I see Weil's name. In reading his books he has repeatedly bad mouthed chiropractors with no evidence to back up his claims (actually there is little evidence to back up many of his claims, even some of the ones that I like). Perhaps he has changed his tune but I don't trust him; he appears to me to be more of an opportunist who has echoed other people's recommendations (admittedly I don't know everything about him and may be doing him an injustice). On the other hand, Deepak Chopra (while also perhaps an opportunist) has brought something unique to the general public, and his ideas are much more revolutionary and interesting. These are just my semi-uninformed opinions and I am willing to be educated.

Freeman

Re: continued discussion

Hi Vern,

I couldn't agree with you m ore. Our populace desperately needs our care, but, with the economic machine being what it is, the only ones who are going to stand up for us is us. We have to use 'their' rules however because we need to match/beat them on their ground. And I believe we can do it.

You are working on the legislative side: ;my passion is the educational side. Teaching the public the 'why' it take coming back (you can't take a condition that has been there for years andnot use some time to heal it) will dilute the argument of the insurance and allopathic arguments that create doubt in the mind of the public. To do that, we need the legislative pieces (outcome measure statement) in place. Both are needed to put us and keep us on the playing field. Sunny

Sunny Kierstyn, RN DCFibromyalgia Care Center of Oregon59 Santa Clara St.,Eugene, Oregon, 97404541-689-0935

continued discussion

Hi Sharon,

You asked me why I have disdain for traditional western doctors and allopathic medicine ... and, if I have such disdain how can I continue to type RN after my name. When I started this letter, sharing it with the listserve was not part of my plan but, after writing it, I decided I was brave enough to share it. To the rest of the field, this is long so please be gentle with me in your comments, but it will help you understand why I chose chiropractic and am SO pleased to be in 'this side of medicine'.

It is that 30 years of nursing that is the source of the continued level of disdain. Let me see if I can help you understand.

As I reply to you, please understand, it is not my intent to paint the entire allopathic profession with a tar-brush. Many MDs are good people. But, an ever greater many are not, at least not when they are one-on-one with the public, especially behind closed doors or curtains. As I have thought about this reply over the last several days, I realize it is the allopathic 'culture' that may be more at fault.

You see MDs at their best: writing reports (they are sooooo gooooddd at writing reports) and in deposition. This is where their professionalism and authority and arrogance can shine without being judged.

My experience comes from 30 years of watching them at the bedside. Participation in 4 - 30 physician-bedside visits per day can give one a bird's eye view of how the allopathic culture (as expressed by individual MDs) regards the rest of society. And the picture isn't pretty. Here the arrogance is demeaning, disrespectful, belittling and steamrolling. Yes, a few take time with their patients (they've learned they have to...have you seen the ratio of MD vs CAM visits lately?) talking to each on the level of that person...but it is a serious minority. They have no idea of what they leave in their wake . most don't even realize they leave a wake!

The rest treat people as though they know nothing and are capable of learning nothing:

- not bothering to explain procedures (tho the informed-consent regs have slowed that somewhat );

- not listening to what patients are attempting to say to them or hearing them when the patient does speak up to them;

- brushing fears and concerns aside with a belittling word or gesture or no reply at all;

- not explaining what a drug will do for them or what the side effects are and NEVER talking about toxic effects;

- actually looking a person in the eye who talks about the difficulties the side effects are causing with the reply "so what?"; it doesn't seem to matter to them that the side effects can sometimes (oftentimes) cause more problems than the problem they originally came in for;

- taking test after test after test that comes back 'normal' and then telling the person (who is doubled over in pain in front of them) that "it is all in your ZZZhead";

- ignoring the underlying causes of a problem despite having seen the same person with the same complaint 7 times in the past month;

- demanding that a problem show up on some kind of radar (labs, scans, films, other testing) before they will label it or start treating it;

- they belittle the fact that body indicators and muscle testing can often find problems or at least provide loud clues to where to look long before problems show up on the radar; - dismissing a full explanation of a person's problem;

- not teaching anything about preventative care;

- talking over an anaesthetized person about their latest and goriest amputation (insert any gory trauma or surgical care) they have had to do or how "Sally (another patient) has only 3 days left to live" despite tons of data about hearing often being still intact during anesthesia. (And that is BEFORE we talk about their behavior when the patient really is asleep and the only ones left to impress is each other.)

- they do not study nutrition (yes, in the last 5 years they have decided that maybe the RDA could be real . and might even need increasing... but have not yet realized that vitamins don't/can't work without minerals; (remember your biochemistry...have you looked at the soil-refurbishment tables lately?)

- they do not study foods and/or their interaction with the body; (Registered dieticians study foods but not how they interact with the human body...read any material from Dr. n Whitaker, Alan Gaby, Jonathon , McDougall, even Weil and you can quickly see how off track the current understanding of human nutrient needs are in the allopathic community);

- they do not study the dynamics of the human structure with the importance of appropriate human articulation on functional metabolism;

- they continue to insist that structural dysfunction and misalignment has no effect on disease processes;

- they have NO concept of the primary respiratory mechanism and it's affect on human organic function;

- they are taught to believe they are infallible (and that was reaffirmed to me twice in the 99 pieces of literature I have just finished reading for the Pt. Safety chapter so I actually have references for that one!) and 'wear' ( or hide behind) that attitude of infallibility in front of people constantly;

- they rarely refer to the chiropractic community; daily I see cases that, had they been referred even just months before they finally (out of desperation) came to a chiropractor, I could have prevented the disc collapse or stopped the knee surgery or kept the wrist from scarring so severely from the inappropriate carpel tunnel surgery or prevented the liver dysfunction from being as bad as it is, etc., etc., etc.

- they continue to ignore the fact that (short of mind numbing sleep) pain from structural problems is not adequately addressed by the current genre of pain medications, from NSAIDS to narcotics.

- they continue to insist the human body can be adequately addressed on a 'system-by-system' approach. When was the last time you saw a body walk into your office part by part? It is one system and functions as one system....what goes wrong in a toe CAN affect what happens in your head; what happens in your gallbladder WILL create pain in your knee; etc., etc., etc.

So, as one of the few doctors that has put both bases of knowledge into one brain, I am appalled at their ignorance. What happened to their so-called 'scientific mind'? Doesn't that mean 'keeping an open mind'? Their unwillingness to even look at what the structural/chiropractic community has to offer is insulting and speaks poorly of them. You see that expressed by the listserve frequently. And we DCs in the field see and hear it expressed by our patients on a daily basis. So this is not just me...I'm just the one with the magnitude of daily experience of their insensitivities.

In your side of the profession, respect is demanded and so comes as an 'of course'. But behind your back, by and large, they have little to no respect for your DC. And yes, it is changing, inch by inch (read millimetre by millimetre). In the meantime, the waiting rooms of chiropractic doctors are under-filled. Our doctors are hurting and our population is hurting .... both from lack of use.

In l998/99 I attended every meeting around the state of the Governor's Task Force on Pain And Symptom Management, a series of meetings designed to discover why Oregon uses the most morphine of any other state in the US. We heard tale after tale after tale of people with structural problems being ignored and treated only with greater and greater levels of pain medications. In the final meeting, the so-called professionals (supposedly from every level) sat around the table offering their various solutions: "maybe we could do this or maybe we could do this or maybe this would work". When I put my hand up and asked why referral to chiropractors wasn't happening, after diplomatically sharing that over 80% of the problems I had heard, in the months of testimony, could be and were daily addressed in chiropractic offices, to a person, they sat there and looked at me. Not one person even gave me the courtesy of a reply. In fact, a few had a facial expression that suggested "what right did I even have to ask that question?" Talk about disrespect?! That was when I realized how serious the division between the MDs and the DCs is in Oregon.

It is all an economic game. Allopathic medicine is not interested in the health of the public...all they are interested in is their disease. Traditional western medicine is about selling medicine and tests. It is not about getting people well ... only symptom free, even if it means keeping them drugged into mindlessness. Our concept of treating disease has no component of 'quality of life' .... it is about keeping people alive at all costs ... to the point we are willing to bankrupt our populace.

At the same time, I am the first to acknowledge that, in the case of trauma or crisis, traditional western medicine can be the best of the best...but, in chronic disease, it is the worst. There will come a time when this is known as the dark ages of medicine. At least in the medieval times, they didn't know what we know today.

I continue to use the RN because 1) there really are 30 years of experience back there that I am proud of and cannot be ignored and 2) the public respects and responds to it so greatly. Being disdainful is not something of which I am proud ... but listening to and watching the problems with which my patients struggle, when structural care earlier in their course of degeneration could have made SUCH a difference, keeps me shaking my ZZZhead.

Sad to be disdainful but disdainful from preponderance of experience,

Sunny

Sunny Kierstyn, RN DCFibromyalgia Care Center of Oregon59 Santa Clara St.,Eugene, Oregon, 97404541-689-0935

OregonDCs rules:1. Keep correspondence professional; the purpose of the listserve is to foster communication and collegiality. No personal attacks on listserve members will be tolerated.2. Always sign your e-mails with your first and last name.3. The listserve is not secure; your e-mail could end up anywhere. However, it is against the rules of the listserve to copy, print, forward, or otherwise distribute correspondence written by another member without his or her consent, unless all personal identifiers have been removed.

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

Your observations about MDs being willing to tell people 'to live with it' is a large area where I fault them. THAT is the point where a referral to our arena is appropriate. But this blankety-blank battle between the MDs and DCs come up, keeping our populace in pain or dependent on un-relieving pharmaceuticals un-necessarily. Fortunately for us, it is (sllooowwwwly) being understood by the populace. two - four times per month I answer questions on the DC national Ask-A-DC forum and the questions asked the doubt and fear still largely held. Almost every day I'm 'on-deck', questions come in from people

who have been in pain far longer than they needed to be just because they were uncertain 'this is something that chiropractic can take care of'....and that adds up the number of times the patient comes in, furthering the perception of the insurance and allopathic community that we are 'over-utilizing'. This is how we get set up and further abused. They've created a lose-lose situation that makes me want to screech. It is so sad for our populace. There is more than enough business out there for all of us. But they drive the economic machine and chose to keep their patients in pain rather than walk the high road of facillitation. But, the good news is that the public is catching and the medics are losing face.

And I also agree with you about Weil ... his only saving grace is that he,too, is willing to stand up and say that natural, nutritional and herbal medicine can often be more powerful (and in some instances is more powerful) than pharmaceutical medicines, we (physicians and public both) just have to use it appropriately...and preventatively.

Sunny

Sunny Kierstyn, RN DCFibromyalgia Care Center of Oregon59 Santa Clara St.,Eugene, Oregon, 97404541-689-0935

continued discussion

Hi Sharon,

You asked me why I have disdain for traditional western doctors and allopathic medicine ... and, if I have such disdain how can I continue to type RN after my name. When I started this letter, sharing it with the listserve was not part of my plan but, after writing it, I decided I was brave enough to share it. To the rest of the field, this is long so please be gentle with me in your comments, but it will help you understand why I chose chiropractic and am SO pleased to be in 'this side of medicine'.

It is that 30 years of nursing that is the source of the continued level of disdain. Let me see if I can help you understand.

As I reply to you, please understand, it is not my intent to paint the entire allopathic profession with a tar-brush. Many MDs are good people. But, an ever greater many are not, at least not when they are one-on-one with the public, especially behind closed doors or curtains. As I have thought about this reply over the last several days, I realize it is the allopathic 'culture' that may be more at fault.

You see MDs at their best: writing reports (they are sooooo gooooddd at writing reports) and in deposition. This is where their professionalism and authority and arrogance can shine without being judged.

My experience comes from 30 years of watching them at the bedside. Participation in 4 - 30 physician-bedside visits per day can give one a bird's eye view of how the allopathic culture (as expressed by individual MDs) regards the rest of society. And the picture isn't pretty. Here the arrogance is demeaning, disrespectful, belittling and steamrolling. Yes, a few take time with their patients (they've learned they have to...have you seen the ratio of MD vs CAM visits lately?) talking to each on the level of that person...but it is a serious minority. They have no idea of what they leave in their wake . most don't even realize they leave a wake!

The rest treat people as though they know nothing and are capable of learning nothing:

- not bothering to explain procedures (tho the informed-consent regs have slowed that somewhat );

- not listening to what patients are attempting to say to them or hearing them when the patient does speak up to them;

- brushing fears and concerns aside with a belittling word or gesture or no reply at all;

- not explaining what a drug will do for them or what the side effects are and NEVER talking about toxic effects;

- actually looking a person in the eye who talks about the difficulties the side effects are causing with the reply "so what?"; it doesn't seem to matter to them that the side effects can sometimes (oftentimes) cause more problems than the problem they originally came in for;

- taking test after test after test that comes back 'normal' and then telling the person (who is doubled over in pain in front of them) that "it is all in your ZZZhead";

- ignoring the underlying causes of a problem despite having seen the same person with the same complaint 7 times in the past month;

- demanding that a problem show up on some kind of radar (labs, scans, films, other testing) before they will label it or start treating it;

- they belittle the fact that body indicators and muscle testing can often find problems or at least provide loud clues to where to look long before problems show up on the radar; - dismissing a full explanation of a person's problem;

- not teaching anything about preventative care;

- talking over an anaesthetized person about their latest and goriest amputation (insert any gory trauma or surgical care) they have had to do or how "Sally (another patient) has only 3 days left to live" despite tons of data about hearing often being still intact during anesthesia. (And that is BEFORE we talk about their behavior when the patient really is asleep and the only ones left to impress is each other.)

- they do not study nutrition (yes, in the last 5 years they have decided that maybe the RDA could be real . and might even need increasing... but have not yet realized that vitamins don't/can't work without minerals; (remember your biochemistry...have you looked at the soil-refurbishment tables lately?)

- they do not study foods and/or their interaction with the body; (Registered dieticians study foods but not how they interact with the human body...read any material from Dr. n Whitaker, Alan Gaby, Jonathon , McDougall, even Weil and you can quickly see how off track the current understanding of human nutrient needs are in the allopathic community);

- they do not study the dynamics of the human structure with the importance of appropriate human articulation on functional metabolism;

- they continue to insist that structural dysfunction and misalignment has no effect on disease processes;

- they have NO concept of the primary respiratory mechanism and it's affect on human organic function;

- they are taught to believe they are infallible (and that was reaffirmed to me twice in the 99 pieces of literature I have just finished reading for the Pt. Safety chapter so I actually have references for that one!) and 'wear' ( or hide behind) that attitude of infallibility in front of people constantly;

- they rarely refer to the chiropractic community; daily I see cases that, had they been referred even just months before they finally (out of desperation) came to a chiropractor, I could have prevented the disc collapse or stopped the knee surgery or kept the wrist from scarring so severely from the inappropriate carpel tunnel surgery or prevented the liver dysfunction from being as bad as it is, etc., etc., etc.

- they continue to ignore the fact that (short of mind numbing sleep) pain from structural problems is not adequately addressed by the current genre of pain medications, from NSAIDS to narcotics.

- they continue to insist the human body can be adequately addressed on a 'system-by-system' approach. When was the last time you saw a body walk into your office part by part? It is one system and functions as one system....what goes wrong in a toe CAN affect what happens in your head; what happens in your gallbladder WILL create pain in your knee; etc., etc., etc.

So, as one of the few doctors that has put both bases of knowledge into one brain, I am appalled at their ignorance. What happened to their so-called 'scientific mind'? Doesn't that mean 'keeping an open mind'? Their unwillingness to even look at what the structural/chiropractic community has to offer is insulting and speaks poorly of them. You see that expressed by the listserve frequently. And we DCs in the field see and hear it expressed by our patients on a daily basis. So this is not just me...I'm just the one with the magnitude of daily experience of their insensitivities.

In your side of the profession, respect is demanded and so comes as an 'of course'. But behind your back, by and large, they have little to no respect for your DC. And yes, it is changing, inch by inch (read millimetre by millimetre). In the meantime, the waiting rooms of chiropractic doctors are under-filled. Our doctors are hurting and our population is hurting ... both from lack of use.

In l998/99 I attended every meeting around the state of the Governor's Task Force on Pain And Symptom Management, a series of meetings designed to discover why Oregon uses the most morphine of any other state in the US. We heard tale after tale after tale of people with structural problems being ignored and treated only with greater and greater levels of pain medications. In the final meeting, the so-called professionals (supposedly from every level) sat around the table offering their various solutions: "maybe we could do this or maybe we could do this or maybe this would work". When I put my hand up and asked why referral to chiropractors wasn't happening, after diplomatically sharing that over 80% of the problems I had heard, in the months of testimony, could be and were daily addressed in chiropractic offices, to a person, they sat there and looked at me. Not one person even gave me the courtesy of a reply. In fact, a few had a facial expression that suggested "what right did I even have to ask that question?" Talk about disrespect?! That was when I realized how serious the division between the MDs and the DCs is in Oregon.

It is all an economic game. Allopathic medicine is not interested in the health of the public...all they are interested in is their disease. Traditional western medicine is about selling medicine and tests. It is not about getting people well ... only symptom free, even if it means keeping them drugged into mindlessness. Our concept of treating disease has no component of 'quality of life' .... it is about keeping people alive at all costs ... to the point we are willing to bankrupt our populace.

At the same time, I am the first to acknowledge that, in the case of trauma or crisis, traditional western medicine can be the best of the best...but, in chronic disease, it is the worst. There will come a time when this is known as the dark ages of medicine. At least in the medieval times, they didn't know what we know today.

I continue to use the RN because 1) there really are 30 years of experience back there that I am proud of and cannot be ignored and 2) the public respects and responds to it so greatly. Being disdainful is not something of which I am proud ... but listening to and watching the problems with which my patients struggle, when structural care earlier in their course of degeneration could have made SUCH a difference, keeps me shaking my ZZZhead.

Sad to be disdainful but disdainful from preponderance of experience,

Sunny

Sunny Kierstyn, RN DCFibromyalgia Care Center of Oregon59 Santa Clara St.,Eugene, Oregon, 97404541-689-0935

OregonDCs rules:1. Keep correspondence professional; the purpose of the listserve is to foster communication and collegiality. No personal attacks on listserve members will be tolerated.2. Always sign your e-mails with your first and last name.3. The listserve is not secure; your e-mail could end up anywhere. However, it is against the rules of the listserve to copy, print, forward, or otherwise distribute correspondence written by another member without his or her consent, unless all personal identifiers have been removed.

[Guest guest]

- Dr Weil has been converted to a supporter of ours by a DC in his home town of Austin, I believe. I do agree with you about him and Deepak.

On the whole, Weil has brought natural medicine to millions of people in this country

so he is doing some good in my opinion! jk

M. Kalb MS DCThe Wellness Chiropractor and Health Coachwww.DrKalb.com 541.488.3001/888.488.3001

continued discussion

Hi Sharon,

You asked me why I have disdain for traditional western doctors and allopathic medicine ... and, if I have such disdain how can I continue to type RN after my name. When I started this letter, sharing it with the listserve was not part of my plan but, after writing it, I decided I was brave enough to share it. To the rest of the field, this is long so please be gentle with me in your comments, but it will help you understand why I chose chiropractic and am SO pleased to be in 'this side of medicine'.

It is that 30 years of nursing that is the source of the continued level of disdain. Let me see if I can help you understand.

As I reply to you, please understand, it is not my intent to paint the entire allopathic profession with a tar-brush. Many MDs are good people. But, an ever greater many are not, at least not when they are one-on-one with the public, especially behind closed doors or curtains. As I have thought about this reply over the last several days, I realize it is the allopathic 'culture' that may be more at fault.

You see MDs at their best: writing reports (they are sooooo gooooddd at writing reports) and in deposition. This is where their professionalism and authority and arrogance can shine without being judged.

My experience comes from 30 years of watching them at the bedside. Participation in 4 - 30 physician-bedside visits per day can give one a bird's eye view of how the allopathic culture (as expressed by individual MDs) regards the rest of society. And the picture isn't pretty. Here the arrogance is demeaning, disrespectful, belittling and steamrolling. Yes, a few take time with their patients (they've learned they have to...have you seen the ratio of MD vs CAM visits lately?) talking to each on the level of that person...but it is a serious minority. They have no idea of what they leave in their wake . most don't even realize they leave a wake!

The rest treat people as though they know nothing and are capable of learning nothing:

- not bothering to explain procedures (tho the informed-consent regs have slowed that somewhat );

- not listening to what patients are attempting to say to them or hearing them when the patient does speak up to them;

- brushing fears and concerns aside with a belittling word or gesture or no reply at all;

- not explaining what a drug will do for them or what the side effects are and NEVER talking about toxic effects;

- actually looking a person in the eye who talks about the difficulties the side effects are causing with the reply "so what?"; it doesn't seem to matter to them that the side effects can sometimes (oftentimes) cause more problems than the problem they originally came in for;

- taking test after test after test that comes back 'normal' and then telling the person (who is doubled over in pain in front of them) that "it is all in your ZZZhead";

- ignoring the underlying causes of a problem despite having seen the same person with the same complaint 7 times in the past month;

- demanding that a problem show up on some kind of radar (labs, scans, films, other testing) before they will label it or start treating it;

- they belittle the fact that body indicators and muscle testing can often find problems or at least provide loud clues to where to look long before problems show up on the radar; - dismissing a full explanation of a person's problem;

- not teaching anything about preventative care;

- talking over an anaesthetized person about their latest and goriest amputation (insert any gory trauma or surgical care) they have had to do or how "Sally (another patient) has only 3 days left to live" despite tons of data about hearing often being still intact during anesthesia. (And that is BEFORE we talk about their behavior when the patient really is asleep and the only ones left to impress is each other.)

- they do not study nutrition (yes, in the last 5 years they have decided that maybe the RDA could be real . and might even need increasing... but have not yet realized that vitamins don't/can't work without minerals; (remember your biochemistry...have you looked at the soil-refurbishment tables lately?)

- they do not study foods and/or their interaction with the body; (Registered dieticians study foods but not how they interact with the human body...read any material from Dr. n Whitaker, Alan Gaby, Jonathon , McDougall, even Weil and you can quickly see how off track the current understanding of human nutrient needs are in the allopathic community);

- they do not study the dynamics of the human structure with the importance of appropriate human articulation on functional metabolism;

- they continue to insist that structural dysfunction and misalignment has no effect on disease processes;

- they have NO concept of the primary respiratory mechanism and it's affect on human organic function;

- they are taught to believe they are infallible (and that was reaffirmed to me twice in the 99 pieces of literature I have just finished reading for the Pt. Safety chapter so I actually have references for that one!) and 'wear' ( or hide behind) that attitude of infallibility in front of people constantly;

- they rarely refer to the chiropractic community; daily I see cases that, had they been referred even just months before they finally (out of desperation) came to a chiropractor, I could have prevented the disc collapse or stopped the knee surgery or kept the wrist from scarring so severely from the inappropriate carpel tunnel surgery or prevented the liver dysfunction from being as bad as it is, etc., etc., etc.

- they continue to ignore the fact that (short of mind numbing sleep) pain from structural problems is not adequately addressed by the current genre of pain medications, from NSAIDS to narcotics.

- they continue to insist the human body can be adequately addressed on a 'system-by-system' approach. When was the last time you saw a body walk into your office part by part? It is one system and functions as one system....what goes wrong in a toe CAN affect what happens in your head; what happens in your gallbladder WILL create pain in your knee; etc., etc., etc.

So, as one of the few doctors that has put both bases of knowledge into one brain, I am appalled at their ignorance. What happened to their so-called 'scientific mind'? Doesn't that mean 'keeping an open mind'? Their unwillingness to even look at what the structural/chiropractic community has to offer is insulting and speaks poorly of them. You see that expressed by the listserve frequently. And we DCs in the field see and hear it expressed by our patients on a daily basis. So this is not just me...I'm just the one with the magnitude of daily experience of their insensitivities.

In your side of the profession, respect is demanded and so comes as an 'of course'. But behind your back, by and large, they have little to no respect for your DC. And yes, it is changing, inch by inch (read millimetre by millimetre). In the meantime, the waiting rooms of chiropractic doctors are under-filled. Our doctors are hurting and our population is hurting .... both from lack of use.

In l998/99 I attended every meeting around the state of the Governor's Task Force on Pain And Symptom Management, a series of meetings designed to discover why Oregon uses the most morphine of any other state in the US. We heard tale after tale after tale of people with structural problems being ignored and treated only with greater and greater levels of pain medications. In the final meeting, the so-called professionals (supposedly from every level) sat around the table offering their various solutions: "maybe we could do this or maybe we could do this or maybe this would work". When I put my hand up and asked why referral to chiropractors wasn't happening, after diplomatically sharing that over 80% of the problems I had heard, in the months of testimony, could be and were daily addressed in chiropractic offices, to a person, they sat there and looked at me. Not one person even gave me the courtesy of a r! eply. In fact, a few had a facial expression that suggested "what right did I even have to ask that question?" Talk about disrespect?! That was when I realized how serious the division between the MDs and the DCs is in Oregon.

It is all an economic game. Allopathic medicine is not interested in the health of the public...all they are interested in is their disease. Traditional western medicine is about selling medicine and tests. It is not about getting people well ... only symptom free, even if it means keeping them drugged into mindlessness. Our concept of treating disease has no component of 'quality of life' .... it is about keeping people alive at all costs ... to the point we are willing to bankrupt our populace.

At the same time, I am the first to acknowledge that, in the case of trauma or crisis, traditional western medicine can be the best of the best...but, in chronic disease, it is the worst. There will come a time when this is known as the dark ages of medicine. At least in the medieval times, they didn't know what we know today.

I continue to use the RN because 1) there really are 30 years of experience back there that I am proud of and cannot be ignored and 2) the public respects and responds to it so greatly. Being disdainful is not something of which I am proud ... but listening to and watching the problems with which my patients struggle, when structural care earlier in their course of degeneration could have made SUCH a difference, keeps me shaking my ZZZhead.

Sad to be disdainful but disdainful from preponderance of experience,

Sunny

Sunny Kierstyn, RN DCFibromyalgia Care Center of Oregon59 Santa Clara St.,Eugene, Oregon, 97404541-689-0935

OregonDCs rules:1. Keep correspondence professional; the purpose of the listserve is to foster communication and collegiality. No personal attacks on listserve members will be tolerated.2. Always sign your e-mails with your first and last name.3. The listserve is not secure; your e-mail could end up anywhere. However, it is against the rules of the listserve to copy, print, forward, or otherwise distribute correspondence written by another member without his or her consent, unless all personal identifiers have been removed.

[Guest guest]

Very nice post, Sunny. I hear nothing but

a big, big heart and a determination to do the best for the public health. You

are not throwing out the baby with the bath water, but you ARE recognizing that

the baby is still dirty.

Thanks for taking the time.

Terry Petty, D.C.

continued discussion

Hi

Sharon,

You

asked me why I have disdain for traditional western doctors and allopathic

medicine ... and, if I have such disdain how can I continue to type RN after my

name. When I started this letter, sharing it with the listserve was not

part of my plan but, after writing it, I decided I was brave enough to share

it. To the rest of the field, this is long so please be gentle with me in your

comments, but it will help you understand why I chose chiropractic and am SO

pleased to be in 'this side of medicine'.

It is that 30 years of

nursing that is the source of the continued level of disdain. Let me see

if I can help you understand.

<SNIP>