"I was motivated to look outside the medical system and found upper cervical chiropractic care," she explained. "After seeing an upper cervical specialist in my early 20s, both conditions were corrected and have never returned."

That experience led her to Palmer College after she received her B.A. degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She graduated from Palmer in 1996 and went on to receive postgraduate training in upper cervical analysis and adjusting from the International Upper Cervical Chiropractic Association. In addition, she interned with upper cervical specialists Drs. Amalu and Tiscareno.

Not content with taking care of patients, Dr. Elster got involved in chiropractic research because, as she stated, "Even though upper cervical care was well researched by B.J. Palmer in the 1930s and '40s, the information was never published and therefore remains virtually unknown to many chiropractors, not to mention the general public, and certainly medical doctors. My goal is to get this information to all three groups."

Elster's research is not of the garden-variety neck and back pain type that has dominated chiropractic research over the past several decades. Her work has focused on patients with Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson's disease and she has cared for quite a number of patients with these problems.

When asked how she got involved with these types of patients Elster replied, "Both are conditions that I felt would respond well to upper cervical care mainly because results were already achieved by B.J. Palmer with the same procedure, but also because I had already achieved similar positive results with other neurological conditions in my practice."

According to her, these other neurological conditions include Tourette's Syndrome, Trigeminal Neuralgia, Torticollis, Essential Tremor, Bipolar Disorder, ADD/ADHD, Seizure Disorders, Depression, Alzheimer's Disease and vertigo.

When asked why the upper cervical care helps people with these types of problems Elster replied, "because it addresses a cause of the condition -- the upper neck injury that is compromising neurological function.

She explained, "In all patients I have examined with Parkinson's and Multiple Sclerosis for example, I have found a history of an upper cervical injury. In fact, most patients could name specific head or neck traumas that occurred prior to the onset of their neurological symptoms.

"In addition," Elster continued, "medical researchers have already shown that there is a link between head and neck trauma and the onset of neurological disease. They just haven't found the missing link yet -- the upper cervical injury and resulting subluxation."

Elster's work is extremely important since several million people in the United States alone are affected by these types of disorders. Unfortunately, most of them end up severely disabled -- unable to work or take care of themselves. Elster wants to see this change.

At this point she has data on approximately 30 M.S. cases and 40 cases of Parkinson's. She has published some preliminary findings in the chiropractic popular press along with some case studies in peer reviewed journals, including one recently in the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research (JVSR).

Presently, she is working on organizing the data on all of these cases so she can submit it for publication.

"This is simply amazing when you think about it," stated JVSR Editor Dr. Matthew McCoy. "Here's this young chiropractor out in Colorado minding her own business, doing ground breaking subluxation-based chiropractic research without any funding, without any help from research organizations or state or national associations. Yet, we have groups and individuals in this profession setting our research agenda with millions of dollars from the government every year and what are they researching? Dr. Elster's work should serve as an inspiration to us all."

Elster agreed. "Hopefully my research will pave the way for others," she stated. "I looked at published papers describing other study designs, but basically I had to learn as I went since no published works existed in chiropractic for these types of conditions."

Elster's recently published paper, "Upper Cervical Management of a Multiple Sclerosis Patient," can be found in Vol. 4 No. 2 of JVSR now available online.