Be Well Blog

Neutralizing Back Pain

Anyone who has lived with lower back pain knows how debilitating it can be – negatively impacting the most routine daily activities, from sitting down to dinner to tying a shoelace. Conventional medicine typically prescribes rest along with medication and often surgery; small ways to treat the pain and a big hammer to address its cause.

However, chiropractic care – long maligned by mainstream health care practitioners – has gained some well deserved, serious credibility as a more effective and less costly, and less invasive alternative treatment for back pain, thanks to a host of studies published in the highly respected Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics (JMPT).

 

Key JMPT Findings

• A study published in the Washington Post, in June of 2007 revealed that "patients who turned first to chiropractors and other alternative-medicine professionals for care were hospitalized and had surgery 60 percent less often and spent 85 percent less on pharmaceuticals than those with medical doctors as primary care providers."

• A study published in October 2005 revealed that the cost of chiropractic care is identical or superior to traditional medical care for treating chronic low-back pain, with chiropractic care being more effective.

• A January 2005 study showed that patients with chronic spinal pain syndromes did markedly better than patients who received either medication or acupuncture.

Integrative Medicine Explained

By Dr. C. Evers Whyte

What is “Integrated Medicine?”  Ask ten different doctors this question and you might get 10 different answers.  It’s an exciting topic in that new findings are being published every day about how the success of medical outcomes are  improving through integrating different therapies, protocols and even medical paradigms.

My answer is this: Integrated Medicine is a model through which a physician or therapist first looks at a person who is coming for help, asks themselves, “What does this person need to become whole again?” and then uses any and every tool and resource available to facilitate that healing process.  It is more than the combined use of various “conventional” and “alternative” therapies, but aims to access deeper levels of our consciousness.  For example, a hug could be clinically described as, “two persons wrapping their arms around each other and squeezing,” but we all know this explanation lacks the true essence of what a hug is all about!

To begin to understand and appreciate the “process” of Integrated Medicine we first have to appreciate that while our bodies are made of interconnected physical systems–cardiovascular, skeletal, endocrine, nervous, etc, we are more than the sum of these parts.  We are in actual fact, beings composed of integrated and interpenetrating Intelligences: body, mind, soul, and spirit.

To be healthy, we need all these aspects of our beings to be “aligned” and working harmoniously.  If there is dis-harmony, there is dis-ease.  As an Integrated Medical physician, I seek to align and integrate all effective medicinal modalities to heal all the integrated elements, or Intelligences, of your being.

The patient that comes into our office with fatigue and brain-fog may be suffering from iron-deficiency, anemia, or adrenal exhaustion, perhaps hypoglycemia, decreased melatonin production, or the reluctance to go through the natural process of grief at a loved-one’s death after a long illness.  As I work with the patient to find the root of her ailments, we may discover that a number of these diagnoses are correct, perhaps even all of them.  This patient doesn’t have a Prozac deficiency.  She may need a change in

Post Lyme Disease Syndrome

By Dr. C. Evers Whyte

There’s a very good chance that you’ve never heard of “Post-Lyme Disease Syndrome,” even if you’ve suffered from Lyme disease itself.  Post Lyme Disease Syndrome (PLDS) is as controversial as it is complicated, and many doctors will assert that it simply does not exist.  However, if you have been treated for Lyme disease (LD) and still feel ill, you know, along with a growing group of medical professional, that PLDS is in fact, dreadfully real.  And much like LD, PLDS manifests and presents itself in a variety of ways that can make it difficult to decipher and therefore treat.  Sadly, many Lyme experts believe that the generally-accepted assessment and treatment practices are woefully inadequate.  The good news, however, is that more and more doctors are recognizing the realities of PLDS and better still are having success treating it.  There is hope!

HOW IT ALL STARTS
To truly understand PLDS we need to begin with an understanding of LD’s basic biology and how doctors in the US have been directed to view and treat it.

LD is caused by a strain of spirochete bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi.  Unfortunately, a majority of doctors, contrary to both empirical findings and a large body of research, stubbornly insist that once LD is treated with the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) recommended 21-day course of antibiotics, it should be considered cured.  Therefore, patients still experiencing symptoms are too often dismissed with a diagnosis of psychosomatic post-Lyme rather than an ongoing infection, or a set of very real physical ailments stemming from the Lyme disease and probable co-infection(s). 

There are several studies that refute this outdated protocol for LD treatment.  One in particular suggests that an estimated 30% of Lyme disease patients do not recover at all after being treated with the CDC recommended antibiotic protocol. 

In addition to this, it is unusual to contract only one infection from a tick bite.  Co-infections are rampant: Borrelia; Erlichia; Babesia; Bartonella; Micoplasma; and Rickettsia are all prevalent in the northeast, and most ticks are infected with these disease causing bacteria along with the one that causes Lyme.   Still, many doctors don’t test for these co-infections, or look deeper into the patient’s whole picture for breakdowns in various other bodily systems, triggered by these infections. 

To make matters even worse, doctors are under an enormous amount of pressure to argue against the existence of chronic Lyme infection because the insurance industry doesn’t want to pay for the ongoing treatment necessary to rid these unfortunate souls of the tenacious infection(s).

C. Evers Whyte, MS, DC, DACBN

Non-Surgical Spine Specialist
Clinical Nutritionist

Why I Do What I Do

In college, I took up martial arts and while I was training, I stepped in some gymnasts’ chalk as I was throwing a kick.  I slipped and flew about 5 ft up in the air before landing flat on my sacrum on the wooden gym floor.  The pain in my low back was intense and continued to worsen until I was taking 25 Advil just to get through the day.  The stronger pain drugs made me sick.  I stopped exercising because of the pain and gained 20 lbs. After visiting 3 chiropractors, an orthopedist, a neurologist, a rheumatologist, and a neurosurgeon I always ended up with the same result:  “We can’t find anything Physically wrong with you.”  Obviously, my pain itself was not enough to convince these physicians that something was indeed seriously wrong.