Do Away With Levels Of Care And Set The Truth Free

By Joe Strauss

Perhaps we are at the point in the development of our model of chiropractic that we should drop the concept of levels of care and just have one level—chiropractic care. At this one and only level, we check the entire spine for vertebral subluxation and adjust if necessary wherever and whenever we find the need, recognizing that different people may need different adjustments and even the same person may need different adjustments from day to day. We could do away with different kinds of care from initial or intensive, or whatever we call it, to wellness or maintenance care. What is it that is different about our care in these situations anyway? Nothing! We always check for subluxations and adjust if necessary each time the practice member comes in. Which is more important, once a day or once a week? They are both equally important.


Perhaps, if we did away with these "levels" of care, we could get people to truly understand what we are doing. Maybe they would view us more like a gym or health club than a doctor treating them for a condition that they hope in time will be eliminated. (In our case the "condition" is vertebral subluxation). Typically, people don't go to their health club on a temporary basis, until a condition (i.e., being out of shape or overweight) is alleviated. They go because they know it is something they should do for their health. They go because they feel healthier, have more energy, and/or are stronger when they go on a regular basis. Some may stop going after they lose the weight or get in shape (and many even before they do), but that is not because they think that they no longer need to go.

I think sometimes we are afraid to be up front with our practice members and tell them from the start what we are about. We are afraid to tell them what they can expect from us and what we expect from them. So, we explain what we are doing in terms they understand or what we think they will understand. People will decide when they no longer want or need chiropractic care. They are free to do that, but we should do everything we can to give them an accurate perception of the kind of care we offer. To do that we need to present chiropractic differently, even different than what every other chiropractor is presenting. They can use chiropractic however they want for as long as they want, but it is in both our and their best interest to know up front that chiropractic is not a treatment for a condition. It is for a better life expression for the duration of an individual's existence.

Why do we still use levels of care? Could we possibly move past this? #Chiropractic #UpperCervical #UCCare... https://t.co/sC4P2PbrUD

— Travis Robertson (@theuppercblog) April 28, 2016

Upper Cervical Care And The Sum Of The Parts

Adapted from "The Whole Is Equal to the Sum of Its Parts"
by Dr. Joseph Strauss

"The whole is equal to the sum of its parts", that is an axiom, a true statement. The problem is that it can only be easily understood with regard to mathematics and the hard sciences. When it comes to, say, something like the human body, it is a little more difficult to understand, primarily because we can only know some of the parts through our senses. There are parts of the body that are outside the realm of our knowledge, parts of the body that defy understanding in the empirical realm, that is, parts of the body that are not physical. How do you measure love? How do you quantify the will? How much does desire weigh? These are parts of a human being that we cannot measure, yet we know they exist. We know how much the “human” part of you weighs. You can step on a scale and we can measure it. But what about the “being” part of you? Can you measure that?

In upper cervical care we acknowledge an unseen, immeasurable, immaterial part of living things. We call it the innate intelligence. It is the principle of life… whether that life is in the form of a plant, an animal or a living person. While there are differences between plants, animals and human beings, the innate intelligence is the one thing that all living organisms have in common. With it, the organism grows, reproduces, assimilates food and most important, adapts.

How can we prove that if it cannot be measured? Well, we can use the most unscientific means of proving something. It’s called “common sense.” A dead animal or plant does not adapt. A live one does. You can call it whatever you want but innate intelligence is as good a name as any. It is the principle of life that when interfered with causes a degree of loss of life, somewhere between 1% and 100%.

The objective of the upper cervical doctor is to reduce, as completely as possible, the interference that is due to head/neck misalignment. We cannot do anything when that interference is 100%. But with anything less than that, the person would benefit from being under upper cervical care, regardless of what the manifestation of that lack of life is called or even if there is no physical manifestation of that absence. They may also need some other type of care. However, nothing but upper cervical care will reduce the interference in a systematic and repeatable way.