This month has been a little slim on original interviews. Next Wednesday we’ll go back to having a regular interview, but for this week, it’s one more installment of visions for the future of upper cervical!
Dr. Kyle Troyer – “Upper Cervical Care is, in my mind, the second greatest gift to humanity, only surpassed by the Christ idea. What a gift to the world! I am so thankful to be a part of the Upper Cervical Health Centers team as we, together, AS ONE, continue to deliver this principle to the world.
Our profession has been subluxated since what seems like 1961. The great people like Dr. Kale, Dr. Sweat, Dr. Dickholtz, Dr. Grostic, Dr. Blair, Dr. Sherman, etc. carried on the TRUTH about Chiropractic. We now feel like an adjustment has been made, and our profession is healing. Their will be some retracing, it won’t happen overnight, but the most important thing is WE ARE ON THE RIGHT PATH. Unity is key, and I have a hat that says ‘One Team. One Dream.’ This, I believe, needs to be our motto moving forward in the Upper Cervical Chiropractic world.
Upper Cervical Care will one day be known in every household as the cornerstone to health and abundance. In the meantime, we will do all we can to carry it forward. I’ll leave with a challenge from BJ, pg. 76, Vol. XXV:
‘Sooner or later, each of us is called upon to face this battle within ourselves and answer which of the roads to travel. Shall we become a follower of the satisfied group? Shall we become a battler for the future service which the vast group ridicule? We faced that issue when a boy of 16. We found ourself! We have never hesitated from that day to this, to work for the future. Will you? Only YOU can answer THAT question.’“
Dr. Michael Wagner – “This one is easy. I see a day when Upper Cervical is the pre-eminent health care model of the world. When sick people go to their UC Doc before seeking help anywhere else. When drugs are NOT the first choice, or even the second. When we are recognized as the primary health care providers and everyone wants to make sure their head is on straight first and foremost.
I think that day will see the end of war, greed, strife and injustice to all. Thus, satisfying my mission statement, “…To help all the families divinely possible, to change the world one spine at a time.”
Dr. Stan Pierce, Jr. - “To envision the future, you have to look at the past and the present.
In the past, strong egos collided, UC techniques fought against each other, and UC practitioners tried to position their technique as the only one that really gets the job done. Presently, the Upper Cervical Evolution seminars have ignited a platform for UC unity that seemed impossible. In its 3rd year, the Evolution seminars have received consistent support from all the UC techniques except for one.
This has lead to the initiation of the ICA’s new Council on Upper Cervical Care and the upcoming Diplomate degree in UC care. Research is being aggressively pursued (though more is needed), public awareness of Upper Cervical care is on the rise, patient advocacy groups are passionately spreading the word, and the heads of the UC techniques are moving strongly in a unified direction.
In the future, I predict the Council on Upper Cervical Care will unite the membership and political voice of the upper cervical community, and will form an entity that can provide judicial backing and strength to each UC practitioner. I believe the Diplomate degree will bring educational legitimacy to UC chiropractic and will help to gain the respect of other professions. I see worldwide expansion of UC clinics, and UC care being portrayed as the ELITE approach within chiropractic.
HOWEVER,
if we become apathetic and uninvolved in this movement,
if we believe we have learned all there is to learn and start losing our edge in quality of care,
if we think someone else will do the research or someone else will make the next discovery,
if we just quietly see our patients and stick our heads in the sand and expect it to just turn out ok,
if we try to stay politically hidden,
if we try not to ruffle any feathers and not challenge the trends in chiropractic curriculum,
if we repeat history with the egos and keep to our separate camps,
our future will be quite different than my vision.
By ourselves we can impact our little communities, but together we can impact the world!”
Dennis Sanders – “I tell everyone I know that has back problems or headaches about upper cervical. It is so effective it is like a miracle. I can’t understand why upper cervical has not received huge amounts of press and is not all over the news. It is really sad because so many people could be helped.”
Dr. Nick Tedder – “My vision is to GET REAL within our profession; Get real with patients; quit watering down chiropractic and GET WITH THE MISSION and help save lives!
My vision is the same as UCHC’s vision…to see the ENTIRE population getting checked on a regular basis for brain stem subluxation. Upper Cervical Care and Subluxation should and WILL be a household name. Just like dentistry has evolved into a separate and distinct essential in a person’s health regimen, so WILL Upper Cervical Specific Care.
Upper Cervical Care IS the leading health choice!”
Dr. Zach Ward - “What I love best about UC care, as a patient, are the aesthetics of it. There’s no experience anywhere else in the world, be it massage, acupuncture, manual therapy, physical therapy, energetic therapeutics, or hypnotherapy that can achieve what a proper UC correction can achieve: lasting head/neck balance which changes baseline human physiology.
We are a market completely unto ourselves, and therefore I’m not in competition with the any of the disciplines I just named, nor with the whole spine practitioner. Our competition is strictly the status quo on what your average American is willing to accept from our health care system. Right now, unless people are blessed with an upbringing that embraces holism and a healthy suspicion of outside-in thinking, people usually have to go through a conversion process in order to get UC care on their radar. Sometimes that conversion means years of pain and thousands of dollars of debt before they’re fed up with the system enough to accept an alternative.
I think it’s about time that we eliminate the length and cost of the conversion process by collaborating with inside-out medical practitioners. They’re out there, you just have to look, and understand the predicament that they find themselves in. And no, just because someone works in a multi-disciplinary setting doesn’t mean they have a holistic worldview. It just means they’re willing to pass off their low back pain patients to a skilled manipulator. That’s a step forward, but it really doesn’t upset the status quo, because the exchange still involves therapy applied to pain. I’m talking about something different.
I’m talking about challenging the purpose of health care to the very core, which, you have to understand, is what UC care does when it maintains its roots and philosophy. UC care as part of a new paradigm in health care, would basically split health care into the two competing philosophies that exist now, Hygean (supporting the health of the whole) and Asclepian (the treatment of the diseased parts), except that Hygea would have a rightful place at the table, and would be the first line of care for non-emergency situations. (Hat tip to Dr. Victor Strang at Palmer College.) As one of our NUCCA magi says, “It’s the difference between non-interference and intervention.”
What’s unique about the correction of the UC subluxation is the way it bridges the divide between non-interference and intervention. The first correction is an intervention. It’s the correction of an actual, measurable, and putative lesion whose presence is actually diminishing the health of the one who has it. Once a momentum towards proper healing is built, then the correction becomes a way of supporting a lifestyle of non-interference.
In that regard UC care would be an ambassador to the two necessary branches of a properly ordered health care system. UC docs would be in the intensive care unit, adjusting cancer patients. And they could be on wellness retreats correcting the subluxations of professional athletes. Two very different settings, yet, in each case the purpose is the same: remove that which is interfering with proper expression of life.
Which brings me back to those inside-out medical doctors and the aesthetics of UC care. By virtue of their degree, MDs work central to the system. By virtue of our size and our lack of credibility, we work on the periphery. To paraphrase an argument made by Wendell Berry about the town (center) versus the country (periphery) and the passing of information, we have to engage not just in communication, but a conversation about the values that drive us, and do it with key gatekeepers in the health care system. People in the center.
We’ve already seen the power of what can happen when this kind of conversation occurs with the NUCCA hypertension study and the absolute bloom in UC research that’s coming out of it. All of the sudden UC care is ripe for research when a couple of years ago it wasn’t. That’s because the periphery brought its knowledge to the center. And the delivery of that knowledge was through the aesthetics of the adjustment.
A man (who happened to be a DC) took a picture of another man’s head and neck (who happened to be an MD). He corrected the misalignment on the picture. He took another picture to prove to the man that the imbalance was no longer present. Lesion, correction, health, in that order. And that man digested what he experienced, and set that new information against the handful of cases of lesion, correction, health he had already seen in that order, in his own patients. And all of the sudden there was no boundary between the center and the periphery for the medical doctor. He was now on the periphery and realized he had an obligation to bring this new knowledge back to the center.
In my mind there’s no clearer way to engage in a conversation about the strength of the inside-out philosophy than the evidence of the UC correction. There’s no better way to reset our clinical understanding of what health is. It’s not manipulation as described in the literature. It’s not massage. It’s not colonics, or acupuncture, or tantric healing. It’s the scientific restoration of a bony misalignment. It’s what DD said it was.”
Billy Doherty - “For the public, Upper Cervical will be global. It will be a household word and UCHC will be the place they go for care. Just like going to the dentist, they will be going to their upper cervical doctor to ensure their body is functioning at its optimum. The TRUTH will be exposed and the way people look at their health will be changed forever! For the UC Doctor and future docs, there will be an Upper Cervical research facility and school that will provide training and certification in all techniques.
The vision of Upper Cervical Health Centers is to create a family of Upper Cervical doctors that does not differentiate among techniques but unifies them to pursue the common goal of bringing Upper Cervical Care to the forefront of the health care industry. To make a global impact, we need an army of strong, passionate doctors to unite and work together as one. The more successful each Upper Cervical doctor becomes, the stronger it makes us as a group, and the bigger impact we will make on the world.”
Dr. Ian Davis-Tremayne – “I see Upper Cervical Chiropractic being THE Chiropractic. I see it as being the leader in the Wellness Industry. I see it as being the “Go To” Technique in Chiropractic. The Upper Cervical docs will be the ones that all of the other Health/Wellness/Medical prefessions come to for the answer, which of course is a very simple answer as we know…just remove the interference. I honestly believe that we already are all of these things.
I think that we already are the “Go-To” technique and we are the leaders in the Wellness Industry. Unfortunately, not many others will admit that due to egos.
The cool part is that we stay humble and aren’t stepping up and demanding recognition. We are waiting patiently. Eventually it will come (I think sooner than later) and we will just smile and go about doing what we do best, getting sick people well. We are a part of the most awesome profession ever and I am so stoked to share it with the rest of the world!
With that being said, there needs to be unity not only between Upper Cervical Docs, but Chiropractors in general. We all have our place and we all have the ability to do great things. The fight should not be about who’s technique is better and what BJ really meant. The fight should be for the well being of our patients.
I have no problem admitting that if Knee Chest isn’t the answer for a particular case, I will refer them out to who I think would be the most appropriate Chiropractor before I send out for any other modalities.
My pride isn’t so big that it blinds me from reality. We must realize that we are all specialists and should be treating one another like colleagues, not enemies.”
Dr. Tron Malachowski – “Specific ChiropracTORS must be educating their patients. If the education is there, then our presence will be felt and the sickest of the sick people will seek us out. But this great responsibility of educating lies on our shoulders.
Specific ChiropracTIC takes hard work, dedication, humility, perseverance, and respect. If an individual embodies those qualities and would like to pursue Specific ChiropracTIC, then the world will be very bright for this incredible profession.”
Elaine Holland – “My vision for upper cervical chiropractic is strong unity and respect between all UC techniques and associations. When we all work together and gain an understanding of each UC technique, then it will grow to be a strong force in the future of chiropractic.
I also have a vision for Upper Cervical at Parker College. Since we are definitely lacking in Upper Cervical education, it is my goal to expand the club as much as possible over the next couple of years. If we can show the school administrators that there is an interest and demand in learning Upper Cervical techniques, then surely we will attract those that are interested in teaching.
If there are any doctors out there that would be interested in speaking at Parker College, please let me know!! Help us to make the Upper Cervical club at Parker the biggest club on Campus!”
Greg Buchanan – “My personal vision is to see it propagated throughout the world in the form that B.J. Palmer would have wanted it to be. I want to see it as easily accessible as other forms of health services. I want to see it receive its share of research funds from governments all around the world. I would like to see medical doctors working in tandem with upper cervical chiropractors and I would like to see ALL chiropractors around the world practicing ‘SPECIFIC’ upper cervical chiropractic care. Nothing more, nothing less…”
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