March 2006

Will you share the facts and tell the whole truth?

by Dr. Ben Lerner

In the past, according to medicine, if your head jutted out, you developed a humped back, and your hips rolled under ‑‑ you were just getting older or simply had bad posture. Today, medical science has uncovered a whole new meaning to losing or over‑accentuating your curves.

A shocking 2004 study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society revealed that mortality could be predicted by hyperkyphosis. An elite group of medical scientists ‑‑ Deborah M. Kado, MD, MS; Mei‑Hua Huang, DrPh; Arun S. Karlamangla, MD, PhD; Elizabeth Barrett‑Connor, MD; and Gail A. Greendale, MD ‑‑ found that as the curve in the middle back, the kyphosis, became greater than normal, death came sooner.

Now, another groundbreaking study published in the medical journal Spine (Volume 30 (21), November 1, 2005 pp. 2388‑2392) revealed work done by Kentaro Shimizu, MD; Masaya Nakamura, MD; Yuji Nishikawa, MD; Sadahisa Hijikata, MD; Kazuhiro Chiba, MD; and Yoshiaki Toyama, MD. This study once again shows the vital, urgent need for normal curves. They found that progressive kyphosis of the cervical spine (a loss or reversing of the neck's lordosis) resulted in destruction of nerve fibers due to chronic compression of the spinal cord. The damage is associated with both continuous mechanical compression and vascular changes in the spinal cord.

As these deadly degenerative changes occur, the next step many may or may not experience is symptoms of some kind. Rather than choosing correction of the kyphosis or hyperkyphosis, the vast majority will choose to medicate.

In what may as well have been a related article, researchers analyzed records of 58,432 men and women in the Danish National Patients Registry who had been discharged from hospital care between 1995 and 2002 after a first acute heart attack. They found that compared with people not taking NSAIDs, men and women taking more than 200 milligrams a day of Celebrex (celecoxib) had a 4.24 times higher chance of death; those taking more than 25 milligrams a day of Vioxx (rofecoxib) had a 5.03 times higher risk; those taking more than 100 milligrams a day of Cataflam and Voltaren (diclofenac) had a 3.76 times higher risk; and those taking other NSAIDs had a 1.22 times higher chance of dying. The risk of death was 1.96 times higher for people taking more than 1,200 milligrams a day of ibuprofen, such as Advil or Motrin.

Many in chiropractic today fear these truths saying that telling the truth is bad for the profession and it's scaring people. Yet, I say, how can telling the truth ever be wrong? My family, my patients, and I get adjusted, eat well and exercise because we know if we don't we could die earlier. We're not scared, we're informed. Thank God for those who told me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

(Dr. Ben Lerner and Dr. Greg Loman are co‑authors of "One Minute Wellness: The Health and Happiness System That Never Fails," the first book on chiropractic to appear on the New York Times Best Sellers list. They are founding partners of and lead Teach the World about chiropractic, a top practice management company .)