The Pain Model Versus the Brain Model “All progress starts with the truth!”
The Pain Model Versus the Brain Model “All progress starts with the truth!”
The 21st Century Chiropractor:
The Pain Model Versus the Brain Model
“All progress starts with the truth!”
By Clint Steele, DC, CSCS
I figure this is a good way to start. More than anything, I want this article to motivate and inspire chiropractors to stand up and change the direction in which this profession is headed, and the only way to do that is to start with the truth.
Warning: The truth stings a little, sometimes a lot, but we must face it if we want to become better. Right now, as a profession, we need to become better.
Here is the truth:
Most of your community thinks you are a back pain doctor. Some docs respond to that by stating, yes, patients may come in for back pain, but we do a great job of educating them so they “get it.” If you think you are the exception, then simply look at the last 10 patients referred to you. What were they referred for? Truth!
Most chiropractors make most of their income from back pain patients. Truth!
The average patient sees a chiropractor 10 times and then leaves. That’s a poor healthcare model from a chiropractic standpoint and a horrible business model. Truth!
In some regions, chiropractors can only see musculoskeletal issues and nothing else. Truth!
In some regions, chiropractors cannot care for kids. Truth!
More importantly, most people in your community are dying slow, painful deaths, often driving by your office on their way to their MD, the pharmacy, or the hospital because they don’t know the truth about the cause of their health issues. They settle for covering up symptoms with medications instead of coming to you because they think you are only good for back pain. Truth!
People are dying right now in your community when their lives could be saved if they knew the truth.
D. D. Palmer did not start this profession for us to be focused on back pain and known as back pain doctors. The truth is we are not back doctors; we are not pain doctors; we are not even musculoskeletal doctors. The truth is we are brain and nervous system doctors. We are experts on the one system that coordinates every function in the body.
Why is it so important to make this differentiation? Why does it really matter? Well, do you want more new patients and referrals? Do you want patients to stay longer? Do you want to make more money and be less dependent on insurance? Most importantly, do you want to see more miracles in your office and save more lives?
If you answered yes to those questions, then you will love this.
Introducing the next step in the evolution of chiropractic — what chiropractic was meant to be all along, what it should be now, and what it should be as we evolve in the 21st century. The ability to care for the cause of over 90% of all diseases, according to the NIH. The ability to assess and care for the brain and nervous system. More specifically, the ability to assess and care for the superpower of the brain and nervous system, also known as the ability to adapt to and recover from stress. D. D. Palmer called it the three Ts — thoughts, trauma, toxins — and stated that the inability of our nervous system to adapt was the cause of subluxation and disease.
The term invented in the late 1980s to explain this process, long after D. D. Palmer talked about it, is allostasis, and it takes homeostasis to a whole new level. Allostasis is the ability of the brain and nervous system to maintain homeostasis under stress and during recovery.
For example, homeostasis when the building is on fire should be very different than homeostasis when we are getting ready for bed. This is the foundation of health and disease, and as chiropractors, that is our expertise, but not when we are focused on back pain. For us to truly reach our mission as a profession, we must focus on how well the brain and nervous system actually adapt. (I know I keep saying “brain and nervous system,” and I will explain the reason for that in future articles).
Let’s start by presenting this in a very easy-to-understand way so that you “get it” and your public “gets it. I’ll start by first asking a question. What coordinates every function in your body? Of course, the answer is the brain, and it does this through the following simplified two-step process:
The brain must perceive the environment.
The brain uses that perception to determine how it’s going to change the physiologic function of the body.
For example, the fire alarm goes off in your building. Your brain perceives that fire alarm as stress. That stress leads the brain to coordinate the function of your body so you can escape the burning building — increasing your heart rate, breathing rate, muscle tension, changing neurotransmitter and hormone release, and more. We call this survival mode.
However, let’s say that it was a false alarm. You go back into the building, the stress is gone, and your brain perceives the environment as safe, leading to what should be a slower heart rate, breathing rate, lower muscle tension, change in neurotransmitter and hormone release, and more. We call this healing mode.
As you may know, your brain cannot be in healing mode and survival mode at the same time. Your brain also doesn’t know the difference between stress caused by a fire alarm and stress caused by a relationship, finances, fear, or worry. It’s all just stress to the brain.
Based on how your brain learns to deal with stress, starting while in your mom’s womb based on how she dealt with stress, you begin to create a neural pattern. Good or bad, that pattern becomes the “norm.” This happens 95% of the time at a subconscious level.
So, if your brain’s “norm” is stuck in survival mode, always thinking the building is on fire, how well can it coordinate the digestion of food? Sleep? Reproduction? What would happen to blood pressure? Inflammation? Pain? Anxiety?
This is the foundational cause of disease, and it all comes back to the brain and nervous system’s ability (or inability) to adapt to and recover from stress.
As doctors of the brain and nervous system, this is our gift to the world. We are here to save more lives by improving brain and nervous system function in the body. To do that properly, we need to measure it, care for it, and track it, all of which most of us are not doing.
I call it brain-based chiropractic, and in my opinion, it is the next step in the evolution of chiropractic and health in general. It’s what my articles will be about in upcoming issues. See you next month!
About the Author
In six months, Dr. Clint Steele went from selling Kirby vacuums to seeing over 500 PVW, starting with less than $1,000, by measuring, caring for, and tracking the adaptability of the brain and nervous system. He now trains practitioners worldwide to move from pain to brain. Learn more at www.brainbasedhs.com.
