I love being a chiropractor in Colorado Springs! And recently I shared with one of my networking groups some of the reasons why I became a chiropractor. What I had to share with them is important and I think everyone should know the things I have to share. What they decide to do with the knowledge is up to them, but they should know.
I feel my story is kind of interesting because I didn’t decide to become a chiropractor because I had an amazing recovery after going to a chiropractor. In fact, when I made the decision to become a chiropractor I wasn’t even going to a chiropractor. But I became a chiropractor because chiropractic made so much sense to me.
You see, the body is designed to be healthy and heal itself. Outside interventions (including chiropractic) do not heal the body, but those interventions can either support or hinder the natural healing process.
Now to be upfront, some of my comments may sound harsh and I don’t want them to be taken the wrong way. We have many wonderful medical doctors and nurses that work hard and save lives. And there will always be a need for medical care.
Overall however, the “healthcare” system as a whole is broken! It has been bought by pharmaceutical companies that teach you to mistrust your body’s own ability to heal; that you NEED this or that drug to be healthy. Drug advertisements teach us that we are broken and inherently flawed and the only way to “fix” us is with some new wonder drug. This is a lie!
I want to share some statistics from our medical system that you probably have not heard before.
- 11% of people in the US take 5 or more prescription medications and that jumps to 40% in those 60 years and older.1
- Adverse drug reactions reported to the FDA tripled between 1995 and 2005.1
- In 2004, over 1.2 million hospital stays had an adverse drug event2
- 90.3% of the adverse drug events were from properly prescribed and administered drugs.2 This means there was no way of avoiding the adverse effect.
- 2.7% of the over 1.2 million adverse drug events resulted with the patient dying in the hospital.2 That comes to about 32,700 deaths!
- 1 in 25 patients get an infection in the hospital and of those 75,000 die each year!3
- Estimates are that adverse drug events would be the 4th leading cause of death in the US,1 however these statistics are not reported in the mortality statistics on the CDC website.
- Conservative estimates are that 16,500 NSAID-related deaths occur among patients with rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis every year in the US.4
- Another estimate is that unnecessary medical procedures claim another 37,136 people a year in the US.5
Now I don’t give these statistics to say that medicine is bad, but we do have a broken system and are taught that health comes from a pill. It does NOT!
I became a chiropractor to help teach people that healing comes from their own amazing body and to trust and listen to their body. Medicine will always have a place and we need it, but it is overused and it is killing us.
I became a chiropractor to let people know there is an alternative.
I became a chiropractor to help restore proper nerve function to allow people’s natural ability to heal to be restored.
I became a chiropractor to teach people about health care not about sick care. Health comes from doing healthy things—eating healthy, exercising regularly, reducing stress, getting adequate sleep, etc. You don’t have to believe all the drug advertisements. You can be healthy without their drugs!
References
- Hunt LM, Kreiner M, Brody H. The changing face of chronic illness management in primary care: a qualitative study of underlying influences and unintended outcomes. Ann Fam Med. 2012 Sep-Oct;10(5):452-60.
- Elixhauser A, Owens P. Adverse Drug Events in U.S. Hospitals, 2004. Statistical Brief #29, April 2007, Healthcare Cost And Utilization Project, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
- http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/26/health/hospital-infections/index.html accessed on October 1, 2014.
- Wolfe MM, Lichtenstein DR, Singh G. Gastrointestinal Toxicity of Nonsteroidal Antiinflammatory Drugs. N Engl J Med 1999; 340:1888-1899
- http://www.webdc.com/pdfs/deathbymedicine.pdf accessed on October 1, 2014.
