The Science of Chiropractic with Dr. Leonard Faye: Rational Wellness Podcast 173
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Dr. Leonard J. Faye speaks about the Science of Chiropractic with Dr. Ben Weitz.
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Podcast Highlights
2:59 The type of chiropractic technique that I practice is Motion Palpation, which I learned from Dr. Faye and other doctors he had trained who worked with the Motion Palpation Institute, which he founded. Motion palpation is a repeatable, scientific way to analyze the spine and other joints and it gives you a direction to perform your chiropractic adjustments at a specific location and in a specific direction. Then after the adjustments you could repeat the motion palpation procedure to see if you had accomplished what you were trying to do, which was to restore better motion to the joints. It didn’t require taking a bunch of X-rays or having the patients come in five times a week for months on end and it fit better with my active life in motion perspective.
5:30 Dr. Faye, who was born in Canada, contracted rheumatic fever when he was 16 years old and he had such severe polyarthritis that he was in bed for three months. Today this condition can be cured with antibiotics, but at the time they placed him on 3 aspirin every 4 hours and he couldn’t digest any food and all he could eat was soup. He was down to 100 lbs after having been a very competitive hockey player and tennis player. Dr. Fayes SED rate was at 47 and the Medical Doctor told Dr. Faye’s dad, “You know, Leonard isn’t doing very good and 42% of the kids that have this die and 85% of the survivors have serious heart trouble.” Dr. Faye’s dad called a chiropractor who came with a portable table and adjusted him from T1 to T7 while he was lying face down.They lifted him back into bed and the next morning when he awoke his joints were half as swollen and half as painful. Three days later he walked to the bathroom and he was on the path to recovery. He recovered fully without any heart problems and he is now 82 and only finished playing hockey at 76. He was so impressed with chiropractic that he enrolled in chiropractic college after grade 13.
8:47 Chiropractic manipulation serves a lot of functions, including reversing post traumatic restrictions of motion in joints in the body, not only in the spine. Chiropractic manipulation puts a demand on the tissues to become more mobile and stimulates the mechanoreceptors in the joints to improve the range of motion and to reset normal muscle function. Chronic inflammation in the body is often driven by over stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system and this can result from spinal dysfunction that affects the sympathetic ganglion chain along the cervical spine. If you adjust the cervical spine to restore flexion and anterior to posterior rotation you can reduce sympathetic facilitation and this will allow many inflammatory conditions to heal.
15:42 There was an article in the Los Angeles Times on July 7th by David Lazarus entitled “No, A Chiropractor Can’t Cure COVID-19 or Diabetes For That Matter” that criticized a few chiropractors who had claimed that getting regular chiropractic adjustments might protect patients from getting COVID-19 or from having a severe infection and I agree that there is no research to prove that this is the case and I think his criticism is appropriate. Unfortunately, Mr. Lazarus went on to quote from D.D. Palmer, the person credited with starting the chiropractic profession in the 1890s, who described chiropractic treatment as a religious system. Then, Mr. Lazarus attacked chiropractors who help patients to modify their diet and lifestyle using a Functional Medicine approach to help patients with Type II Diabetes, which is essentially a disease caused by poor diet and lifestyle. This is an entirely reasonable way to approach patients with diabetes. Mr. Lazarus says that chiropractors are not endocrinologists, which is true, but endocrinologists are not nutrition experts and just giving prescriptions for Metformin and other insulin and glucose regulating medications for a diet and lifestyle condition without also making a serious attempt to get such patients to modify their diet and lifestyle is also reckless and irresponsible medicine.
Dr. Faye points out that D.D. Palmer was practicing chiropractic in 1895 and medicine was not in a good place at that time either. Surgeons were barbers and really didn’t know what they were doing. In fact, it took 100 years to get surgeons to wash their hands before they did surgery. It wasn’t until Flexner came along in 1935 and cleaned up medicine and closed about 50% of the medical schools because they were just teaching nonsense. Unfortunately D.D. Palmer made up a story and his son, B.J. Palmer propagated that story into the late 30s and opened a chiropractic college based on those stories. [Palmer Chiropractic College] It became the busiest chiropractic college in the United States. They were espousing a concept of universal intelligence, which was God, which expressed itself in the body and this was referred to as innate intelligence. It was said that spinal misalignments were blocking innate from its life force being spread around the body. Dr. Faye points out that we know that it’s just complete nonsense and hopefully today since we have chiropractic colleges all over the world, usually in a university setting, all that dogma has been dropped and we’re starting to find out more and more science evidence for what can explain the results. Fortunately chiropractic is slowly going through this paradigm shift. There is absolutely no evidence that chiropractic can help an acute condition like COVID-19. Some chiropractors have claimed that chiropractic helped patients with the Spanish Influenza of 1918 survive. In Canada at the time, some chiropractors were making housecalls to patients that had the Spanish flu three and four times per day and they survived. But we don’t really have ac curate statistics and we don’t know how many would have survived withut any treatment at all. But the interesting thing is that after this experience that chiropractors in Ontario, Canada got their licenses. The people who survived the Spanish Flu who received chiropractic adjustments demanded that parliament license chiropractors, so they passed the Drugless Practitioner’s Act.
28:17 With respect to helping patients with Type II diabetes, it is clear that it is a condition related to diet and lifestyle factors and there is no reason why we could not help patients with changing their diet and lifestyle and adding exercise and losing weight.
35:05 The use of nutrition in Chiropractic practice. When Dr. Faye went to chiropractic college CMCC was a naturopathic college as well and he learned the principles of naturopathy Royal Lee, who started Standard Process Labs used to come and speak at his school. Royal Lee was a dentist and he had done a bunch of experiments with cats. He took a family of cats and he gave half the offspring a really good cat diet with lots of animal protein. Then he gave the other brothers and sisters a really bad diet. By the second generation of those cats, their jaws in the poorly fed were smaller, their teeth were overcrowded. The cats fed the healthy diet, these cats looked all the same all the way down the generations. Their jaws and facial bone structure, everything was the same. Their builds, their looks. So, he showed through this research in 1957 that nutrition could actually affect our genetics. When it comes to vitamins and minerals, while there is a minimal daily requirement, which is amount of vitamin C to prevent scurvy, etc. But why would you want to take the minimal if you want to function optimally? But to this day, there is no optimum daily requirement.
Dr. Weitz: Absolutely. That whole concept is ridiculous. You could say, “Why don’t we just figure out how much we urinate and stop drinking water so that we don’t urinate because we’re just wasting all that water?”
Dr. Faye: Oh I know. These were basic principles I learned. So, I try and function off that as opposed to specific supplements and things like that. But I do supply patients with certain supplements. I know for a fact we’re all Vitamin D deficient because the skin cancers and whatnot. They’ve stopped us from going in the sun. We used to all lie in the sun. Now nobody does. So now we’re all D deficient.
Dr. Weitz: [crosstalk 00:40:44] out of the sun. We use sunscreen.
Dr. Faye: Then I found out Vitamin K about four years ago was really essential to get that calcium into the bones. I used to wonder why patients I put on good calcium magnesium tablets, they just kept getting osteoporotic. Well, I was missing the K2. I found out about that and different things. I’m trying to think of the mineral that people get overweight if they don’t have enough of it.
Dr. Weitz: A mineral that [inaudible 00:41:29]
Dr. Faye: I had a patient that was a nutritionist at UCLA and she came in one day and she said, “You know, we found out all our obese patients are zinc deficient and they also have this other” … I can’t remember the name of the mineral. But this other mineral that’s …
Dr. Weitz: Iron, selenium.
Dr. Faye: Selenium. Yeah. They’re deficient in zinc and selenium. When they put people on those minerals, they started losing weight. So, I’ve been doing that ever since. That happened about 30 years ago.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah well check chromium levels for patients who have trouble with blood sugar regulation. That’s another super important one.
Dr. Faye: Yeah. Chromium is another one. Yeah. So, I put people on a multiple mineral tablet that are having weight issues. I don’t know if you can send blood off and find out if they’re deficient in those three, but I just clinically apply it.
Dr. Leonard J. Faye is a Doctor of Chiropractic and he is a legend in the chiropractic world. He revolutionized the thinking in chiropractic by developing the concept of motion palpation and he created an institute to teach this method to thousands of chiropractors around the world. Dr. Faye has given over 350 seminars around the world, has published hundreds of articles, and he wrote Good Bye Back Pain and he co-wrote Motion Palpation and Chiropractic Technic and he continues to mentor chiropractic doctors. His next book, Chiropractic Odyssey–A Journey of Practice, Observation and Reading Research and will be available in October 2020. Dr. Faye’s website is chiropracticmentor.com.
Dr. Ben Weitz is available for nutrition consultations, including remote consults via video or phone, specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also specializing in Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure and also weight loss, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111 or go to www.drweitz.com. Phone or video consulting with Dr. Weitz is available.
Podcast Transcript
Dr. Weitz: Hey this is Dr. Ben Weitz, host of the Rational Wellness podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness podcast for weekly updates and to learn more, check out my website, drweitz.com. Thanks for joining me and let’s jump into the podcast. Hello Rational Wellness podcasters. Thank you so much for joining me again today. For those of you who have joined the podcast, please go to Apple podcasts and give us ratings and review. If you’d like to see a video version, you can go to my YouTube page and if you go to my website, drweitz.com, you can find detailed show notes and a complete transcript.
So, today we’re going to talk about chiropractic which is a, even though I’m a chiropractor, I actually haven’t had too many discussions about chiropractic and we’ll also it will involve nutrition as well with one of the most famous chiropractors of all time, Dr. Leonard Faye. So, Dr. Faye is one of my mentors so I’m very proud that he’s here joining us today. I recall when I first went to chiropractic college and I was in my first chiropractic technique class. The instructor started going on about DNA and chiropractic philosophy and in my mind, he was describing the basis of chiropractic in almost religious terms. I challenged him and he told me that I could not be a chiropractor without that philosophical belief system. So, I pushed back and told him that I was interested in the scientific basis of chiropractic and had no interest in such religious or spiritual beliefs.
I did become very proficient in performing chiropractic adjustments despite him and merely shut my ears when discussions of the innate came up. I found my way to a version of chiropractic known as chiropractic biophysics which is a very scientific way of understanding chiropractic based on the shape of the ideal spine and then trying to draw lines on carefully taken X-rays, patients who have been carefully positioned and then using a combination of very specific adjustments, forms of traction and exercises, we would try to reshape their spines to these ideal shapes. This form of chiropractic had a scientific rigor that appealed to me. But it was really too rigid and it really didn’t account for individual variations in form and function.
Then I learned about motion palpation and a motion palpation institute which taught the principles of how to analyze the motion or lack of motion of joints in the various directions of motion that occur. Not only in the spine, but all the joints of the body. I took a bunch of these motion palpation classes. It was a repeatable, reasonably scientific way to analyze the spine and the other joints. It then gave you a direction to perform your chiropractic adjustments at a specific location and in a specific direction. Then after the adjustments you could repeat the motion palpation procedure to see if you had accomplished what you were trying to do which was to restore better motion to the joints. It didn’t require taking a bunch of X-rays or having the patients come in five times a week for months on end and it fit better with my active life in motion perspective. For teaching me this and for creating the Motion Palpation Institute, Dr. Faye, I will always be indebted to you.
Dr. Faye: Thank you.
Dr. Weitz: Dr. Leonard John Faye. Graduated from Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in 1960 and he practiced in England for 14 years, in Canada for 12 years and in Los Angeles for the last 34 years. Dr. Faye is a legend in the chiropractic world. He revolutionized our thinking by developing this concept of motion palpation and created an institute to teach this method to thousands of chiropractors around the world. Dr. Faye has delivered hundreds of seminars, he’s published hundreds of articles and he wrote Goodbye Back Pain and he also co-wrote the book, Motion Palpation and Chiropractic Technique. He continues to mentor chiropractors around the world and he will soon be publishing his next book. Dr. Faye, thank you so much for joining me today.
Dr. Faye: It’s a real pleasure and it’s so much fun for me to hear somebody that’s done so well and has become such an expert doctor. Forget chiropractor and hopefully I’ve started a lot of people down that path and they more than surpassed my knowledge that it’s terrific.
Dr. Weitz: That’s great. So, perhaps you can tell us how you came to decided to become a chiropractor.
Dr. Faye: Yes. As a 16 year old, nearly finished grade 12, I contracted rheumatic fever and had the polyarthritis that put me in bed for three months. The treatment in those days, it wasn’t antibiotics which has wiped out that condition, but I was on three aspirin every four hours around the clock for three months. So needless to say, I couldn’t digest any food. I was drinking consume soup. I was down to 100 pounds having been a really good hockey player and tennis player. So, I was quite an athlete and the doctor said who had taken my sed rate the week before and it was still 47.
Dr. Weitz: Wow.
Dr. Faye: On the scale at the time, 8 to 12 was normal and he then said to my dad, “You know, Leonard isn’t doing very good and 42% of the kids that have this die and 85% of the survivors have serious heart trouble.” So when he left, my dad called a chiropractor and he came in with a portable table and adjusted me from T1 to T7 and I was lying face down so some of my neck moved as well. They lifted me back in bed and the next morning, I woke up, my joints were half as swollen, half as painful. Three days later, I walked to the bathroom and on recovery. I’m now 82 and I only finished playing hockey at 76 so my heart wasn’t involved and that really impressed me. I thought, “My God, I got to learn to do this. The people should know about this.” So, I entered chiropractic college after I got grade 13 which is what’s called matriculation.
Dr. Weitz: Wow.
Dr. Faye: Yeah. It went on from there. When I got to chiropractic college, I had the same experience you had. It was just religious concepts. God was doing this and that and every other damn thing. Because he had no hands, we were using our hands were the hands of God, right? It was unbelievable what was being told to us. But the manipulation I knew there must be some scientific evidence for this. If there wasn’t I dedicated myself to trying to figure out what the heck was going on and support research and to try and help people get into research which did happen over the years. A lot of our top researchers that bumped into me when they were in chiropractic college and decided hey, we got to find out what this is all about.
Dr. Weitz: So maybe you can tell us for a lot of people, they don’t really understand much about chiropractic. What is chiropractic? What does chiropractic manipulation do?
Dr. Faye: Well, it has a lot of different functions. If there’s just post traumatic changes in the joints, that’s producing restriction of ranges of motion, the manipulation puts a demand on the tissues to start reversing and becoming elastic and mobile. The mechanoreceptors around those joints start to talk to the brain so that the muscles can be recruited that move the joints that the body has been ignoring and setting up adaptive changes. So, if you couldn’t raise your shoulder to put a bottle of milk in the refrigerator, you’re automatically would lean over and your hand would go up and the bottle wouldn’t get to the right height and you could put it on … You didn’t have to think about doing that. That was just adaptive mechanisms for the loss of mechanoreceptors coming from your shoulder and in that kind of a condition, we increased by manipulation the shoulder movement and the whole shoulder girdle and deal with the soft tissue changes and eventually with time and increased ranges of motion, the inflammation clears up, the mechanoreceptors and proprioceptors become active.
Your body learns to recruit properly and the whole thing reverses. However, there’s also a effect of the areas of the spine where the sympathetic ganglion chain is and it turns out that the ganglion chains can be irritated mechanically from dysfunction in the spine and this causes a facilitation of the sympathetics and two guys named Basbaum and Levine up at San Francisco discovered that chronic inflammation is often driven by the release of norepinephrine from the end of the sympathetic nerves. In their experiments, they took dogs and cut the sympathetics to an arthritic knee and lo and behold, the arthritis started to heal because it was no longer getting this norepinephrine. Then they discovered the norepinephrine caused the mass cells to release PG2 and PG2 was driving the inflammatory response. So, we had known for a long time that if you adjusted the cervical spine to restore flexion and A to P rotation, anterior to posterior rotation, these were the limitations that would irritate the superior sympathetic ganglion chain and cause chronic inflammatory conditions in the shoulder or levator scapulae tendinitis, tennis elbow, carpel tunnel. All these chronic inflammatory conditions down that extremity on the side where the sympathetics were facilitated, then manipulation and other soft tissue procedures would lessen that and remove that sympathetic facilitation and then those tissues would heal and of course, patients would take Advil which is a PG2 blocker or surgeons would go in and then put people on an NSAID and it would heal up and so there’s other ways of doing the same thing, but nothing nonsurgical, nondrug like our chiropractic procedures. [Here is one reference I found to one of their papers: The contribution of neurogenic inflammation in experimental arthritis.
The trouble is that a lot of chiropractors don’t know how to do that and don’t even know that the sympathetics can be facilitated and if they’re in the old paradigm, then they’re cracking away and quite often, they’re not doing flexion and A to P rotation from the lower cervical spine. The same thing can go on in the lumbar spine or the lumbar sympathetic chain and a chronic tendinitis of the knee can often be improved by adjusting the cervical lumbar junction. It’s not always the way it is because there are direct traumas that cause inflammatory conditions, but it’s sad that we haven’t penetrated into the whole diagnostic world as to what it is that we are actually doing because unfortunately, we haven’t standardized our education so that all chiropractors know about sympathetic facilitation. If you hear my phone ring, I won’t be answering it. I’m at the front desk. So sorry about that. So that’s kind of a … There we go. Yeah. So, then in the modern chiropractor is not only changing the function of the joints, but is then going into rehabilitation facilities, getting patients to use the muscles into so that they do recruit in the normal order and weakened muscles become stronger. It’s become now a whole process rather than just cracking the spine.
Dr. Weitz: So, the next couple of questions are going to take a few minutes for me to set up because I want to describe some statements that were made in a recent LA Times article on chiropractic and ask you to comment on a few of the claims. So, I think some of the public gets confused about who and what chiropractors do. In fact, it sounds like a number of chiropractors are confused as well. We’ve recently seen articles attacking claims by chiropractors that they can prevent COVID 19.
Dr. Faye: You were cutting in and out. Do you want to repeat that?
Dr. Weitz: Oh okay. So, let me start again. So, Dr. Faye, the next few questions are going to take a few minutes to set up. I’m going to describe some statements made in recent LA Times article on chiropractic and ask you to comment on a few of these claims that were made. Some of the public is confused about what chiropractors do and who we are and there was recently an article that appeared in the LA Times on July 7th by David Lazarus that was titled, “No, A Chiropractor Can’t Cure COVID 19 or Diabetes For That Matter.” In this article, Mr. Lazarus made some reasonable critiques of some claims by chiropractors that getting chiropractic adjustments regularly might protect patients from getting COVID 19 or from having a severe infection. Mr. Lazarus goes on to explain that the person credited with starting the chiropractic profession, D. D. Palmer claimed in a memoir that the basic principle from 1914 that the basic principles of chiropractic were passed to him during a seance by a long dead doctor. Palmer described chiropractic treatment as a religious system that imparts instruction relating both to this world and the one to come. Then Mr. Lazarus conflated this attack complaint about chiropractic to chiropractors who advertised to be able to help patients with conditions like Type II Diabetes.
So, on the one hand, he’s criticizing chiropractors who are claiming that they can prevent patients from getting COVID 19 or ensure that they’ll have a better outcome if they get regular adjustments. He also threw into the article that chiropractors who are offering diet, lifestyle and a nutritional approach to helping patients with diseases that are like diabetes that are essentially caused by poor diet and lifestyle and I think it was very unfair to throw both of those critiques in together as though they were along the same lines. So, he attacks doctors of chiropractic saying that they are not endocrinologists. Well, that’s true. Chiropractors are not endocrinologists. But endocrinologists are not nutrition experts and just giving prescription for Metformin and other insulin and glucose regulating medications for a diet and lifestyle condition without also making a serious attempt to get such patients to modify their diet and lifestyle is also reckless and irresponsible medicine.
I know that was a long setup Dr. Faye, but perhaps you could comment about chiropractic and you’ve already given us a little information about how chiropractic can affect the body as a whole, but perhaps you can comment about both of these and then maybe also talk a little bit about how nutrition can be a part of a chiropractic practice.
Dr. Faye: Right.
Dr. Weitz: So, take that where you’d like.
Dr. Faye: Well, first of all, D. D. Palmer was 1895.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Faye: At that time, surgeons were barbers and medicine was in a mess. It wasn’t any wonder that he didn’t know what he was doing because nobody really knew what they were doing. It wasn’t until Flexner came along in 1935 that cleaned up medicine and they closed about 50% of the medical schools because they were just teaching nonsense and he managed to get a couple of results. So, he [D.D. Palmer] made up a story and unfortunately, his son [B.J. Palmer] propagated that story into the late 30s and opened a chiropractic college based on those stories. [Palmer Chiropractic College] It became the busiest and put out the most chiropractors in the United States. They were still espousing all those universal intelligence which was God and expressing itself in the body is innate and these little misalignments were blocking innate from its life force being spread around the body. It’s just complete nonsense and hopefully today since we have chiropractic colleges all over the world, usually in a university setting, all that dogma has been dropped and we’re starting to find out more and more science evidence for what can explain the results.
They used to get good results with certain conditions. They just had a ridiculous religious explanation. Right? Today, we still have two colleges. Sherman and Life that espouse to these old concepts and old dogmas. Unfortunately, that’s the way it is until we get it cleaned up completely. We’re probably 85% scientific and rational and only maybe 15% in the old paradigm. I’ve been connected with this paradigm shift since 1962 so I know how slow paradigms shift. One doctor said to me, “Well, you know it took surgeons 100 years to wash their hands before they did surgery.” That was 100 years just to get them to wash their hands. God, the English sailors were eating limes and lemons to stop getting scurvy. In the rest of the world, the sailors were coming down with scurvy right, left and center because nobody would look into the vitamin C in limes and lemons. That’s why Englishmen are called limies. I don’t know if you know that.
But anyways, then he went on about COVID 19. It’s absolutely ridiculous that we could be dealing with a crisis that the COVID 19 causes in the body where we’re asking the body to make a healing response but it’s going too fast and it’s an irreversible pathology for some people. I was taught at CMCC that we’re a drugless and surgeryless therapy only for conditions that are irreversible. Not reversible conditions. Lifestyle conditions are reversible if you catch them early on. But once the pathology becomes irreversible, then we’re stuck where we can’t … My philosophy is that we should be seen up front and once it becomes a disease pathological process, then medicine has really good expertise in managing diseases. They manage diseases really well. Let’s face it. If you had a heart attack, you wouldn’t run to a chiropractor. You’d run to the hospital. Right? So, we have to decide just where we are in this society as a healing profession, but because we still have 15% saying we can help COVID and there’s no evidence that we can help COVID. We should all be evidence influenced if not evidence based in our practice. It’s just we have to stop these people from making these statements. In Canada, you would lose your license for doing that. In Denmark, you would lose your license. In Norway and Sweden, you would lose your license. Until we get those kind of laws that stop these people, it’s just unbelievable what they’re saying and what they advertise. Some of them don’t take any exam. They just crack people three times a week for life at so much a month fee. In Canada, that guy would lose his license in a heartbeat. You can’t not examine patients to see what you’re treating and then declare that everything that happened is due to your manipulation. Now, the virus thing is confusing because in 1918, with the huge flu epidemic, the chiropractors-
Dr. Weitz: You talking about the Spanish Influenza of 1918
Dr. Faye: Spanish Flu.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah.
Dr. Faye: The chiropractors in Toronto did house calls three and four times a day to patients that had Spanish flu and they survived. Now, we don’t know how many they treated. We don’t know how many survived because people survived without any treatment. So, there’s no statistics about it. The only thing that happened was that because there were enough survivors from chiropractic, they demanded at parliament that there become a licensing for chiropractors. It was through that Spanish flu that chiropractors in Ontario, Canada got their licenses. It was called the Drugless Practitioners Act. It wasn’t even for chiropractors. It was for naturopaths and everybody. Drugless practitioners. But we don’t know how many they treated. We don’t know how many survived and how many didn’t survive that were treated. There was no evidence really. So, you can’t say because some chiropractors in Toronto treated some people that survived that it was their chiropractic that made them survive. So, we have no evidence but that’s what you occasionally hear that story and people are saying, “Well, there you go. See? We cured people in the Spanish flu.” Well, we didn’t. So, that’s where that all comes from.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. I have heard that.
Dr. Faye: As far as diabetes II, I’ve helped patients with their diet, exercise, getting their weight down, doing a lot of things that improved their diabetes II. I also did manipulation. Whether the manipulation, we don’t have a study where we changed people’s diets, get them exercising, lose weight and don’t manipulate them and then have a group that we do manipulate that get all those things. Then we have a group that don’t get any of that and start comparing and see what happens. So, we have no evidence. Who’s fault is that? It’s our fault. Right? We keep on doing research on low back pain. It drives me crazy. There’s 52 studies on low back pain. There’s not one study on a whole lot of other things that we can help. So, I don’t know when the research is going to catch up to the practices, but as clinicians, we can be evidence influenced and then we have to go by our experience.
Dr. Weitz: Right. Because there isn’t enough research.
Dr. Faye: No. There’s not enough. What a lot of the researchers believe, until we get a place at the table for back pain, we don’t have the right to come to the table for headaches and paresthesias down the arm and things like that. Discs. They reckon in Switzerland that 95% of discal surgeries could have been helped by a chiropractor in three to five months without surgery. The chiropractic college there is in a university in a hospital setting. So, they’ve done studies on patients with major MRI proven discal budges, herniations, and submitted them to chiropractic care and 95% never went to surgery. It was a good study and it was done properly. So, that’s hard news to bring to orthopedics. They don’t want to hear that. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it is. It’s just like stints. They’ve shown stints aren’t much good, but they still use stints and bypass surgery. So, we’re not the only ones but I know that that becomes a straw man argument. So, straw man arguments aren’t worth a damn, but let’s face it. We’re all in this fish bowl together. So, we have to be looked at in the same light.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. No, I think what you’re hinting at is most people don’t realize this, but even though drugs are subject to randomized control trials, the majority of procedures that are performed in any physicians office have not been subject to randomized clinical trials.
Dr. Faye: That’s right. I was once approached to go into the cancer ward at Cedar Sinai to help with pain control because somebody there read a paper that manipulation has a down regulating of pain. So, I was being interviewed and then an orthopedic. An old guy. He started on about chiropractic. I said, “Well, could you quote one paper about surgery, one that has a control group, a nontreated group and a surgical group?” He didn’t know one. It’s what you just said. Their procedures are not put through the same rigor that drugs are put through. There’s a reason for that. It would be unethical to take somebody that needed a surgery and then let them be the control group with no treatment. So, ethics do come into it.
Dr. Weitz: Right. Essentially what you’re saying and I don’t think people realize this is a perspective randomized clinical trial that is the type of trial that’s done to show efficacy and safety for pharmaceutical interventions, that type of study was designed to test drugs. Applying that to things other than drugs like chiropractic manipulation but equally trying to apply that to surgery or other procedures performed within medicine, it’s very difficult or impossible to do. So, really we need to think about scientific efficacy for procedures. It can’t be based on the type of study that’s designed to test pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Faye: Yes. Rand has been doing studies on chiropractic for about the past 15 years. They’ve tried that old formula. They have now gone to pragmatic studies. So, they look at the outcome. The outcome where you had manipulation or you didn’t have manipulation. The outcome where you had manipulation plus exercise or you didn’t have manipulation with exercise. Then see what the results are. Then after that, you can start figuring out what caused what. But to start with, we need to show do we have an effect on sciatica? It needs to be a pragmatic study. So, that’ll come.
Dr. Weitz: Right. Yeah. Good. So, how about the use of nutrition? How does nutrition play a role in a chiropractic practice, in your practice?
Dr. Faye: I was very lucky. CMCC at the time I went there was a naturopathic college as well. So, I had four hours every week for four years on naturopathic principles. Nutrition was one of the things that was looked into. We were lucky enough to hear Royal Lee speak who started Standard Process Labs. He had done experiments with cats. He took a family of cats and he gave half the offspring a really good cat diet with lots of animal protein. Then he gave the other brothers and sisters a really bad diet. By the second generation of those cats, their jaws in the poorly fed were smaller and the teeth were overcrowding. Because Royal Lee was a dentist and the facial structures were such that you couldn’t recognize these cats were related to the grandparents. But on the good nutrition side, these cats looked all the same all the way down the generations. Their jaws and facial bone structure, everything was the same. Their builds, their looks. So, he showed through this research that nutrition could actually affect our genetics. Now that in 1957 was a huge breakthrough. You couldn’t read that anywhere.
Dr. Weitz: I know. That’s amazing [crosstalk 00:37:10]
Dr. Faye: But we saw the pictures of these cats and what he’d fed them and whatnot. It was really interesting. We all went, “Holy mackerels. We are what we eat.” Right? It can actually change our genes. Everybody knew it could make you fat or skinny or it could be energetic or not energetic, but nobody knew that it could affect the genetic structure in us and actually affect our offspring. So, we were all going by a formula. Eat 50% raw, right? At least 50% raw. We weren’t vegetarians, we weren’t vegans. But we knew that we had to eat a lot of vegetables and fruits and nuts and everything raw. That’s the diet I’ve followed. I’ve eaten a lot of meat, but I also have eaten a lot of raw fruits and vegetables and nuts. So, that was kind of the basics they put in. Then they went through all the conditions that were recognized in pathology texts. Pellagra, scurvy. One nutritional element missing could make the body be a complete mess. Right? Completely destroy the human body with vitamin C missing. So, then the question was well, what else? Then the concept that we got was that if we know what the body needs and we do, why don’t we supply it? That’s got to be logic number one. I don’t know why that’s missed. So, with these basic understandings and then we discussed minimum daily requirement. Well, why would you want the minimum to function optimally?
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Faye: Right? There must be an optimum daily requirement. Well, you can’t find it anywhere. [crosstalk 00:39:24] It doesn’t exist to this day.
Dr. Weitz: This is true.
Dr. Faye: So, you have to overdose and make sure your body kicks out what it doesn’t need. Oh, well that got ridiculed as producing expensive urine. Well, I’d rather produce expensive urine than have a minimum daily requirement that makes me function less than optimally.
Dr. Weitz: Absolutely. That whole concept is ridiculous. You could say, “Why don’t we just figure out how much we urinate and stop drinking water so that we don’t urinate because we’re just wasting all that water?”
Dr. Faye: Oh I know. These were basic principles I learned. So, I try and function off that as opposed to specific supplements and things like that. But I do supply patients with certain supplements. I know for a fact we’re all Vitamin D deficient because the skin cancers and whatnot. They’ve stopped us from going in the sun. We used to all lie in the sun. Now nobody does. So now we’re all D deficient.
Dr. Weitz: [crosstalk 00:40:44] out of the sun. We use sunscreen.
Dr. Faye: Then I found out Vitamin K about four years ago was really essential to get that calcium into the bones. I used to wonder why patients I put on good calcium magnesium tablets, they just kept getting osteoporotic. Well, I was missing the K2. I found out about that and different things. I’m trying to think of the mineral that people get overweight if they don’t have enough of it.
Dr. Weitz: A mineral that [inaudible 00:41:29]
Dr. Faye: I had a patient that was a nutritionist at UCLA and she came in one day and she said, “You know, we found out all our obese patients are zinc deficient and they also have this other” … I can’t remember the name of the mineral. But this other mineral that’s …
Dr. Weitz: Iron, selenium.
Dr. Faye: Selenium. Yeah. They’re deficient in zinc and selenium. When they put people on those minerals, they started losing weight. So, I’ve been doing that ever since. That happened about 30 years ago.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah well check chromium levels for patients who have trouble with blood sugar regulation. That’s another super important one.
Dr. Faye: Yeah. Chromium is another one. Yeah. So, I put people on a multiple mineral tablet that are having weight issues. I don’t know if you can send blood off and find out if they’re deficient in those three, but I just clinically apply it.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah you can. We do a lot of those nutrition panels as part of our practice.
Dr. Faye: Yeah I think obviously that’s the way to go.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. One of the founders of functional medicine, Dr. Sidney Baker, he said a long time ago, medicine is basically the principle to make people healthy is find out what they don’t have enough of and give it to them. Find out what they have too much of and let’s remove some of that.
Dr. Faye: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: So, if they have too many toxins or too much et cetera.
Dr. Faye: I know.
Dr. Weitz: Poor diet, sugar, et cetera. Yep.
Dr. Faye: So, you can’t treat patients without looking at their nutrition. It’s impossible. Even a dentist should be doing that. Let alone medical doctors and chiropractors.
Dr. Weitz: Absolutely. You got people coming in with cavities and gum disease and we know that nutrition is a major factor. If you don’t clear that up, you’re never really going to help them.
Dr. Faye: That’s right. That’s right. I’ve always given patients stretches and had them walking or if they’re athletic going to the gym and getting themselves fit. So many patients are unfit it’s ridiculous.
Dr. Weitz: Yeah. Sedentary lifestyle is one of the big killers today for sure.
Dr. Faye: Yeah. 70% of patients in hospital are there because of lifestyle conditions. Now admittedly, they do get to a pathology status where they do need medical care.
Dr. Weitz: Sure.
Dr. Faye: Right. Just because that’s what put them in there doesn’t mean that you can just take them out and start their nutrition going. It’s too late.
Dr. Weitz: No. Absolutely. In fact, there are people in nursing homes who can’t get out of bed and the only thing wrong with them is that they are too weak. They have sarcopenia. They’ve lost all their muscle from lack of activity.
Dr. Faye: Yeah.
Dr. Weitz: That’s sad.
Dr. Faye: Yeah. I read a study last year, even 90 year olds can build muscle.
Dr. Weitz: Oh absolutely.
Dr. Faye: If they do exercise. It’s never too late to increase your strength.
Dr. Weitz: Absolutely. Everybody should be doing regular exercise and one component that exercise should be some sort of strength training, cardiovascular training, flexibility training and balance. All four of those should be included in everybody’s regular exercise program.
Dr. Faye: Yeah. I don’t know why medical doctors can’t tell patients that. But they just don’t.
Dr. Weitz: Well, unfortunately our healthcare system is largely controlled by insurance companies who are pressuring medical doctors to spend no more than 10 minutes with a patient and they simply don’t have the time. They’re stuck in this system. Patients don’t realize [crosstalk 00:46:04] it’s the insurance companies in the United States that are making the rules.
Dr. Faye: Right. In Australia, my wife had to go to a gynecologist and the sign on his desk was my fee is based on 15 minutes. If you go over 15 minutes, you’ll be charged a second fee. So, maybe that’s what should happen for people that [crosstalk 00:46:30]
Dr. Weitz: Well, you don’t get 15 minutes in the United States. That’s a long office visit.
Dr. Faye: Right. It’s terrible. Anyways, I’ve got a new book coming out.
Dr. Weitz: Good.
Dr. Faye: Chiropractic Odyssey A Journey of Practice, Observation and Reading Science.
Dr. Weitz: Awesome.
Dr. Faye: I go through all the books and papers that I read that changed my behavior from 1960 onward. So, I think it’ll be an interesting read.
Dr. Weitz: That’s great. I’m looking forward to it. When is it going to be out and where-
Dr. Faye: September 15th.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Faye: The pre-publication is on offer now at www.chiropracticmentor.com.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Faye: So, it’s a reduced price and it’ll be a hard cover. When the real book comes out, it’ll be soft cover for $20 more. So, there’s a benefit from buying it up front.
Dr. Weitz: Oh. I’ll be heading over there and getting it [crosstalk 00:47:41].
Dr. Faye: I’m always selling something. You know me.
Dr. Weitz: I’ll be sure to give you a review, doc. So, is it going to be self published or do you have a publisher? Is it self published?
Dr. Faye: Yeah. I’m self publishing it because I don’t want it to go to the public. It’s all about the paradigm shift.
Dr. Weitz: So, it’s for the chiropractic profession mostly?
Dr. Faye: Yeah and students I hope. Students I hope will read it and understand why they have to become evidence influenced and not listen to the bullshit, but the references … Have you heard of Davis law?
Dr. Weitz: No.
Dr. Faye: No. Davis’s law is a [inaudible 00:48:36] of the law that states that bones grow according to the stresses-
Dr. Weitz: Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
Dr. Faye: Right. So, soft tissues can change according to the stresses of movement.
Dr. Weitz: Yes.
Dr. Faye: I quote the literature that people have done those experiments. Drilled holes in rabbits knees and put some in a cast and some in a treadmill and some in a mobilized cast and the healing changes were dramatic and the motion of the continuous passive motion of cast caused a complete recovery of the highland cartilage in a joint. Those experiments and those facts are not mentioned in the modern chiropractic education. So, how can you expect a chiropractor to want to deal with developing increased ranges of motion in a joint that’s paining and degenerating and doing all kinds of pathological pathogenesis of the lack of motion that is reversible? They don’t understand it. So, it doesn’t give them the need for learning to do really specific manipulation into the directions of loss of motion.
That’s just one example. There’s so much old literature that was well done that isn’t unfortunately read today. Barry Wyke-
Dr. Weitz: Cool. cool.
Dr. Faye: Barry Wyke discovered that mechanicoreceptors override nociceptors. So, once the joint starts to move, it feels a whole lot less painful. He did all that work. You ask the modern chiropractor who Barry Wyke is-
Dr. Weitz: That was the famous white and [inaudible 00:50:48].
Dr. Faye: Yeah. No. Wyke. W-Y-K-E.
Dr. Weitz: Oh okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Faye: Barry Wyke. He was an English joint neurologist.
Dr. Weitz: Okay.
Dr. Faye: Amazing.
Dr. Weitz: Cool.
Dr. Faye: These were not old studies to be thrown away. They back up a lot of what we do. If you don’t know that, then you won’t think that manipulation is worth a damn because the modern research, these controlled studies do three adjustments on somebody that I would treat 30 times. How did [inaudible 00:51:30] migraine headaches relieved in three visits? It’s impossible.
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Faye: How do you get it if you don’t even know if chocolate, red wine and old cheese is one of the trigger factors?
Dr. Weitz: Right.
Dr. Faye: They don’t even ask anymore. They just think, “Oh, we can’t help migraines.” Well, we can help a lot of migraines. It’s just you have to know the references. So, this book is full of them.
Dr. Weitz: Awesome. Great. So, what’s the website they go to for that?
Dr. Faye: Www.chiropracticmentor.com.
Dr. Weitz: Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much Dr. Faye.
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