HEALTH CARE
“OUTSIDE THE SQUARE”
The Missing Link?
We are taught from a very early age that health is all about body parts, chemistry, genes, germs and aging, and the presence of all symptoms are a reliable sign of illness even though some are signs of healing. Following a horse-riding accident at age 9, these long-held beliefs were shaken when my GP and a hospital specialist were unable to rid me of leg pains that were severe and frequent enough to prevent participation in school sports. A nurse advised me to see an “alternative“ practitioner who pinpointed the reason for my being unwell in no time at all. His training was different to orthodoxy. When I responded well to his efforts, it dawned on me that there was at least one gap in medical knowledge and training.
As time passed, my future wife recovered from chronic asthma she had endured since childhood, after consulting a colleague in the same profession that had relieved my complaint. Now I began to suspect there were other gaps in conventional health care. My career of 6 years as a broadcast television technician in Auckland became less of a challenge, so I sought another path in life and turned to the natural health professions. After my studies at the Palmer School of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa in the U.S. where I graduated with honours in 1974, my wife and I decided to start practice and a family in Nelson (my childhood days were at Woodbourne RNZAF base where I became interested in aircraft).
In my early years of practice it became obvious the intent to find displaced spinal bones and re-align the spine was too simplistic in the light of modern science. With my electronic experience, it made more sense that bone position and motion is determined by muscle action and that in turn was the result of brain control. The idea that the brain is the equivalent of a master computer and following physical, chemical or emotional trauma, commands to the muscles became distorted and /or blocked, made more sense. Abnormal muscle tension resulted. Because muscle action determines bone movement and other specialised muscles affect organ function, that would go some way to explain why diverse conditions like allergic asthma and musculoskeletal pain could be influenced by chiropractic care. It seemed to me that the body works on similar principles as man-made electronics, but at a more sophisticated level. Body electronics regulates and controls around 30 trillion parts (cells). My chiropractic training regarded nerves as the wires, but evidence has emerged that the cells can also communicate wirelessly, at greater speeds than nerves. So there is potential for the body’s electronics to impact health significantly. This activity has been largely ignored by medical research and I believe is a “missing link” in whole body care.
After 50 years of clinical experience, retirement has become unappealing and has been postponed indefinitely in the hope that my brain will not become rusty. Traditional Chiropractic care involves joint manipulation, which infers that bones are being re-aligned. It is my view that manipulation is a corrective stimulus to the brain via the nerve endings in joints and there are many other techniques that can provide that stimulus with less effort. The noise that accompanies manipulation re-assures the patient that something has been done but does not confirm the correct thing has been done
C M Burke DC(Hons.)
What Electronic Kinesiology "Treats" - The Science
What About Genes, Germs & Old Age?