Integrated Chiropractic Care

IF YOU DON'T STAND ON YOUR OWN FEET, ON WHOSE WILL YOU STAND???

René Thomas, D.C., N.D.

We wouldn't think of driving our cars on their tire rims, nor would we ever ride a bicycle on the metal of its wheels. Not only would that be quite uncomfortable for us, but also very detrimental to the vehicles. As road conditions or general wear and tear cause us to spend a small fortune each year on aligning our cars, we make these necessary adjustments to ensure a comfortable and safe ride. Just as it is with our cars, so should it be with our body's transport mechanisms. Yet we continually walk on uneven surfaces in uneven shoes or with unstable arch supports (if any) in our shoes. Additionally, we wear synthetic materials on our feet which means they can't breathe or give us the mechanical stability we need. No wonder we have such a large population of people with foot problems, low back problems, knee problems, shin splints, etc.

By way of example, while on a walking excursion which should not have caused any physical problems, my niece fractured her foot. Upon examination I found that the heel of one shoe was literally 1/16th of an inch shorter than the other when both shoes were placed on a flat surface. The left shoe was also narrower than the right and the heel cups looked like they were from two distinctly different pair of shoes!

Another example is the patient who is given hard plastic orthotics that hold them in a rigid position. Hard plastic orthotics in an already synthetic shoe--this spells DISASTER! One 'good' thing, if you can call it good, is that such misguidance provides a great number of patients for the educated health care practitioner. These examples describe many patients, whose unstable pedal base creates a tremendous distortion in the body and presents a continuing number of subluxations that are secondary to the real problem for which the patient is seeking solutions.

Have you ever had a patient exclaim, when adjusted, "Yes! that feels great. I feel like I got my head back on straight -- my neck feels wonderful!," only to walk out to their car and their problems return? What happened? Was it the carpet, the floor, the air, their emotions or could it possibly be that their body is in so much distortion that the patient has a different subluxation pattern when lying, standing or sitting?

I began testing patients in the three postural positions and found in many patients that the subluxation pattern was distinctly different in the three above-mentioned positions. This baffled me. I also discovered that after walking, the supine subluxation pattern did not necessarily recur, rather the sitting and standing patterns became more prevalent, causing another adaptive pattern to develop. Then it became a situation of chasing patterns to get to the primary area.

I theorized that if I could find the primary pattern then I wouldn't be treating my patients for the same symptoms but rather I could get to the deeper patterns. As such, we would need not constantly repeat the same therapeutics. Thereby patients would gain confidence in our ability to solve problems and we could also teach them that the body is a wonderful hologram of energetic patterns which, if respected, would bring about tremendous possibilities of health.

Foreseeing the overall potential benefits, my search for primary patterns went on. I rationalized that anyone skilled in the construction or engineering fields would always measure carefully to bring precise calibration to the instruments they manufacture. Carpenters use tools to make sure the foundation on which they are building is level. Similarly auto mechanics use tools to align cars. I thought to myself, why not develop an instrument of measurement for human body alignment?

Using the computer as an analogy for the body we might be able to imagine how energetic patterns of the body work The computer is made up of basically three main components: a keyboard, a central processing unit, the screen for visual output and the printer for written output. If any of the components are not connected properly the output is garbled and the computer, being so precise, won't work if one little pixel is off.

In relation to posture let's make another analogy. The feet could be likened to the keyboard, sending the information regarding posture to the brain, which is the central processing unit. The output of the body would be the posture. If the feet are not properly aligned (and they are the foundation of the body) the obvious visual output is that the hips are not level, shoulders are not level, knees can be hyperextended, the trunk is torqued, the feet are pronated or supinated, the arches can fall or be excessively high, or any number of other aberrations. Could you imagine a house with this type of foundation error?

POSTURE ANALYSIS

BEFORE	AFTER

The so-called "short leg" syndrome is rampant with numerous patients wearing heel lifts in order to level them yet the inherent body torques are still present. I once took a survey of male patients asking each if they had to alter their pant legs . An excessive number stated that they had to have their pants altered to accommodate for one leg being longer than the other. The most ludicrous part of their response was that they considered this to be normal because they had spoken to so many of their friends who had the same problem.

With the above analogy we can see that due to the postural distortion the body would now have numerous osseous subluxations in order to try to accommodate the severe distortion. But if we look further, the body, due to the numerous areas of adaptations, could need to have different patterns of subluxations for the different positions, i.e.., sitting, standing and lying. So, how can we fix the different patterns of subluxations that occur in the three positions if we treat the patient in the supine or prone position?

Science, especially physics, speaks of frequency and tells us that everything has a specific frequency, a certain vibration that can be measured. Therefore we should be able to measure the frequency of the body! Yet when we started researching the frequency of the body it soon became apparent that it has numerous combinations of frequencies depending upon the area measured and the function of the area measured. This became very complicated. I then isolated the problem to determine if there was a frequency that was specific to the postural complex.

Using microcurrent to measure, I tried to determine if there was a frequency that would give the same measurable information whether the patient was in the standing, sitting or supine position. The theory was that, if the body were in its center, it would show only one subluxation pattern per area of complaint. The challenge was to find it. Numerous checks were used to determine if the frequency was accurate. Patient leg length was checked supine and prone, subluxations were electronically measured in the three positions, three dimensional posture analysis was done, and patient symptoms were recorded.

Success would mean that when the frequency was applied, the primary subluxation related to an area of complaint would surface and the measurement would be the same lying, sitting and standing. Then once adjusted, the patient would show the same response in all there positions. If this was the primary correction, the posture should immediately change, the leg length would now be level and the symptoms would show immediate response.

This has now been achieved. Not only have the above measurements been documented but if foot cast is made, using the Foot Leveler cast system, before and after the frequency is applied, you will see two distinctly different casts taken within a few second, even though taken in the standing position.

How can this happen? The body (as everything else) has a resonance frequency which is necessary for balance. Walking with poorly designed shoes on concrete, synthetic, or distorted floor surfaces creates environmental distortion for the body. The centering mechanism of the body is continually resetting to accommodate to unlevel and distorted surfaces. Tremendous adaptation takes place. Once this is reset the body has the ability to right itself, allowing the irritating factors to surface so they can be easily treated.

The instrument used is the SP 100. It provides the frequency called the "Center of Gravity" frequency to establish stability of the body. Once the Center is found the patient is measured for the Foot Leveler orthotic, as it is the only one found to give the correction that is needed to hold the frequency. What is wonderful about the Foot Leveler orthotic is that it is flexible, it is individually constructed for the patient, and it provides total body stability not just foot correction. Additionally it's casted in weight bearing posture which allows for gravity to be factored into normal measurement.