Back Surgery?

For over thirteen years I have been a chiropractor. I love being a chiropractor so very much. It is so awesome to help people heal who could not find resolutions for their problems anywhere else. It is very gratifying to see that by correcting the spinal dysfunction, the nervous system starts to work again and their health improves. I love working outside the normal medical model and having multiple different tools for health care at my disposal. Yes it is true that not everybody has responded to the care I have delivered, but on the majority I have enjoyed helping people achieve better health. To the people I have not helped, "I am sorry that I could not help you. I am constantly studying to find resolutions for your various health problems and I am confident that in the future I will be able to help you."

Recently I was asked my professional opinion about surgery for a low back disc degeneration. I want to share what I shared with my client: I am biased about outcomes for surgery and chiropractic care. Just imagine for a moment, I see most of the surgical failures in my office. Would I see the surgical successes? Why would I ever see the successes from surgery? Those people would have no reason for coming to me and seeking my help for that same successful health care resolution. So when clients ask if I would recommend surgery, I am tainted by the countless cases over the thirteen years in practice of surgical failures. Like wise if the patient found resolution using physical therapy or any other medical approach, I would not see them in my office for those same health concerns. So I have been biased because of the medical failures I have seen over thirteen years. Now lets put the shoe on the other foot. Why would a surgeon see the chiropractic patient who had successful resolution to their health care concern? The surgeon's clientele are those people who have been unsuccessful at other resolutions. True I am talking in generalities, some people use medical intervention as the first step and some people use chiropractic care as the first step to help them with their health care concerns, but at least over sixty percent of my clientele had medical intervention failures. In short, if the patient has sought out resolution for difficult cases, the medical, chiropractic or any other practitioner has seen the patient who had failure with the other practitioners. So each profession will be biased by their past experience. If you have ever seen my right hand and the surgical failure you would know why I personally can not recommend surgery. I am personally biased especially when I experienced the same type of injury on my left hand, sought chiropractic therapy and found success with it.

S0 what is the resolution to the bias from each practitioner. We doctors need to:

• recognize that we are not the 'cure all' for everybody.
• learn and perform our healing art form very well
• keep an open mind to alternatives
• shelf our ego and place the over all health of our clientele above everything else
• continue to advance the science around our healing art
• inform our clientele about those things we know and not about our conjecture
• recognize that not everybody is the same and can not be treated the same

What Many People Don’t Know About Chiropractic And What We Can Do For YOU*

In just a moment I’m going to tell you some very interesting information about Chiropractic that most people do not know – but more importantly – what it can do for you and how it might even change your life.

This is really good stuff… especially if you have back pain now or have ever had back pain in the past. But first, there is something else you should know about. I think you’ll really like it.

Did you know that the use of Aspirin dates all the way back to around 400 B.C.? It’s true. The father of modern medicine, Hippocrates, who lived sometime between 460 B.C. and 377 B.C., left records of pain treatments. And these historical records included the use of a power from the bark of the willow tree to treat fever, headache and various pains.

It wasn’t until 1829 that scientist started figuring out what was going on. That’s when they discovered a compound called salicin in the willow plant was responsible for the pain relief.

In that same year, scientists were able to turn salicin into salicylic acid. The problem was that salicylic acid was very rough on the stomach and mouth… which limited its use. Then in 1853 a German scientist named Gerhardt buffered it. Although it worked, it was time consuming and Gerhardt stopped working on it because he didn’t think it was worth it.

OOOOPS!

Because in 1897 a German pharmacist working for a German pharmaceutical company Bayer, starts looking for a solution for his fathers rheumatism. His name is Felix Hoffmann and he “re-discovers” Gerhardt’s work and in 1899 patents a “new” pain reliever under the name aspirin.

As a quick and interesting side note: During that same month, Hoffmann synthesizes heroin by accident. His discovery of heroin obviously didn’t end up working out as well as aspirin! But one of the truly remarkable things about all this is:


Scientists did not have a clue how aspirin worked until 1971. In that year, John Vane theorized how it worked for which he was awarded a Nobel prize in 1982.

Today over 70 million pounds of aspirin are produced annually all over the world, making it the world's most widely used drug… and scientists still theorize about the exact mechanisms of aspirin.

So what’s all this have to do with
Chiropractic and your back pain?

Here’s what: Believe it or not – Chiropractic and aspirin have many things in common.

First -- they can both be traced WAY back in history.

In fact, Hippocrates, who used a form of aspirin back in 400 B.C., also used a form of spinal manipulation. And so did ancient Egyptians and many other cultures.

But it was not until 1895 that D.D. Palmer invented “Chiropractic.” Chiropractic was new and different because Palmer theorized the nervous system controlled every function of the body and Chiropractic adjustments (specific spinal manipulations) removed interference to blocked or pinched nerves. This, in turn, not only relieved pain… it helped the entire body function better and heal from all sorts of illnesses and diseases.

Just like the willow leaf and eventually aspirin, spinal manipulation got results and became very popular… but the mechanisms were not understood.

But here’s where Chiropractic & Aspirin differ –
in a very big way…

Doctors and scientists had no clue how aspirin worked – but it was hailed by the medical community as a wonder drug and mass-produced.

Doctors and scientists were not sure how Chiropractic worked – so it was branded unscientific and quackery.

Seems a little unfair – don’t you think?

Thank goodness in many areas, research has finally caught up with Chiropractic!

For example, Chiropractic’s ability to help relieve back pain is well researched. It is a safe, effective and cost-effective way to relieve back pain.


How Does Chiropractic Work?...FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK:




Many times when you have back pain it is caused by a spinal joint sprain – or “subluxation.” Ligaments hold two bones together to form a joint and a sprain occurs when a ligament is injured by over stretching it.

This can happen due to small micro traumas over several years or one acute event like a car accident, sports injury or slip and fall. When the ligament becomes stretched and injured joints do not function properly and delicate nerve fibers can be injured.

Over time, even if untreated, pain can go away even though the spinal joint is not functioning properly. This can lead to flare-ups in the future and degeneration as joint moves improperly and wears out. This is why doing almost nothing – like bending over to pick up a pencil – can cause severe back pain.

Chiropractic adjustments and treatments are designed to normalize spinal motion as much as possible. This allows the spinal joints to heal better.

Here’s a simple way to look at it:

If you broke your arm and didn’t get the bone set properly – it would heal out of place and crooked. The pain might go away in the short term – but there would most likely be big problems in the future. The best thing to do is put everything in place and then let it heal properly.

Chiropractors are experts at getting your spinal bones and joints “in place” and working properly so they can heal correctly.

Chiropractors are also experts at keeping spines functioning properly to minimize future problems – much like periodic Dental check-ups and cleaning prevent tooth decay and loss down the road.

So, if you have back pain, you might want to try something that has a history starting in 400 B.C. with the father of medicine – Hippocrates – and has been practiced, improved and proven to help back pain.

If you do, just give us a call at 480-844-7900 and we will help you in any way that we can; conservatively and affordably!

I hope you found this information interesting and helpful.

Sincerely,

Dr. G. Craig Godard

Diet Changes for Better Health

About two months ago my wife came to me and said she was fed up with a particular skin condition she had on her eye lids. At the same time she said I needed to sit down with her and our oldest three daughters and tell them what they need to do to have better health. We were looking for a significant change that would bring a significant result. We were fed up with the symptoms of poor eating, like skin conditions, inability to lose weight, foggy brain feelings, and overwhelming fatigue. So I laid out a diet regimen that was designed to change our lives. Over the next 44 days we engaged in a restrictive diet to retrain us on what our bodies needed.





We started out by examining what our current diet consisted of and we saw that even though we thought we were eating healthy we had a lot of "sticky" foods in our diet. What I mean by this is, if we were to put the foods we eat in a blender at any given time and blend it up we predicted that our end result would be a "gloopy" mass. That mass would be a "gloopy" mess in our intestines. Our normal gut bacteria would not be able to swim through that mass easily. The intestinal cells that the mass would smother would become unhealthy, and yeast & mold could live comfortably on that "gloop." So we embarked on a diet change to bring health back to our digestive tract.


After reading several books about physiology, diet, vegetables, fruits, supplements, and nutrition I gave my family the following outline:

1. First 24 hours we would fast from all food and drink. We started the fast at 7:00 pm and completed the fast at 7:00 pm the following night. [The design of this was to loose the old cell lining of the intestines and clear out the old food.]




2. For the next 8 hours we took in lots of fluid from lemon in water, "organic" beef broth, and "organic" chicken broth. We took vitamin supplements from "Biotics Research" called MCS-2, Beta-TCP, and Livotrit. And started herbal supplements from the same company of ADP and Dysbiocide. We also took in essential fatty acids in EFA Sirt Supreme. During this time we were busy prepping food for the following three days. We took all our vegetables and fruits and soaked them in a sink basin of tap water and a cap full of Clorox bleach. After soaking for about a minute, we rinsed off the vegetables well, dried them, and put them in zip lock baggies that we poked holes in to keep the moisture away from the produce.


3. For the next 72 hours our goal was to clean out the intestines with a high complex carbohydrate diet consisting of non starchy vegetables and fruits. Examples of starchy vegetables and fruits we stayed away from were: squash, peas, beans, peanuts, cashews, and potatoes to mention a few. We continued to take the supplements we mentioned before. We ate the vegetables and fruit plain or in salads, lightly steamed, or in soups. For protein intake we took a product called "Nutriclear" from "Biotics Research", and non starchy nuts like almonds. We did this to try and brush our intestines clean.
4. After the 72 hours we added in all the rest of the vegetables including the starchy vegetables and the rest of the fruits. We excluded breads, pastries, cheeses, red meat, and most animal fat. We avoided juices unless we made a smoothie now and then. We did use fish, a little chicken and a little turkey. We also included oatmeal and cracked wheat cereal. We continued to take the same supplements I listed in the first 72 hours. We did this diet for the next 40 days.
5. After the 40 days we included back into our diet the breads, white cheeses, some animal fat, and some red meat but the ratio in which we took those foods in was greatly reduced. We kept the blender analogy in mind when we ate any of the breads, white cheeses, some animal fat, and red meat. Our diet now consists mostly of vegetables, fruit, nuts, whole grains, beans, fish, and some poultry. We stopped taking most of the supplements and added in "Biodophilus FOS" or "Biodoph-7 plus." This was to help replace normal gut flora.

We experienced an increase in clarity, energy, and improved skin condition. I personally dropped 15 pounds, my oldest daughter lost 26 pounds. My second oldest daughter lost 10 pounds. My wife did not have much to lose but she lost 4 pounds and my youngest daughter had no weight to lose. My wife and youngest daughter's skin improved a lot. Our weight is staying off. I am 6 pounds from my overall goal and as I start to exercise more I am sure to reach my target. My oldest daughter was very good about exercise and that is why she lost the most out of all of us.

In following posts I will include some recipes that we used that were very tasty and good for us.

The following is a list of products we took from Biotics Research:

• Beta-TCP is a support formula to help normal cholesterol convert to bile acid that can be excreted from the body through the kidneys.
• MCS-2 is a unique formula of vitamins, minerals and amino acids, botanical components, and nutritive synergists to help phase I and phase II detoxification from the gut.
• Livotrit is a healthy formulation of herbs designed with Ayurvedic principles to support liver metabolism and detoxification.
• ADP is a unique designed nutritional that can deliver oil of oregano into the intestine because of delayed release technology and does best as an astringent towards yeast, molds, fungus and bacteria.
• Dysbiocide is a group of herbs that helps support normal gut health against parasite infestation.
• Nutriclear is a rice based, hypoallergenic clearing formula designed to support healthy GI function and normal detoxification pathways
• Biodophilus FOS is a pleasant tasting powder that supplies the probiotics Lactobacillus' acidophilus (DDS-I strain) and Bifidobacterium bifidum in a prebiotic base of fructooligosaccharides
• Biodoph-7 plus is a a preparation of seven different microorganisms in sufficient numbers, which alter the microbiota (typically by colonization) in the intestines, and by that, exert beneficial health effects in our bodies.
• Produce is never completely cleaned from all the handling it gets starting at harvest, through the store, and into your refrigerator so a thorough cleaning is recommended.

Common thoughts about force involved in Motor Vehicle Accidents

A while back I received a rude response to my, “What happens in a car accident,” article. I was really surprised by the comment of the reader so I decided to do a little experiment and also poll a greater population to get an understanding of general impressions of what happens when a car strikes an object. Before I get to the experiment results and the pole results I will quote a class on Motor Vehicle accident:
“The acceleration-deceleration forces which cause whiplash injury are sufficient to permanently disable an individual. Even in a low speed rear impact collision of 8 mph, the head moves roughly 18 inches, at a force as great as 7 G’s in less than a quarter of a second. To put this into perspective, the Discovery space shuttle is only built to withstand a maximum of 3 G’s.”
“Newton's first law states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
If an object is in motion with an eastward velocity of 5 meters per second, it will continue in this same state of motion (5 m/s, East). If in motion with a leftward velocity of 2 m/s, it will continue in this same state of motion (2 m/s, left). The state of motion of an object is maintained as long as the object is not acted upon by an unbalanced force. All objects resist changes in their state of motion.
Inertia (resisting changes in the state of motion) occurs in an automobile while it is braking to a stop. The force of the road on the locked wheels provides the unbalanced force to change the car's state of motion, however there is no unbalanced force to change the passenger’s own state of motion. Therefore, the passenger continues in motion, sliding forward along their seat. A person in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction ... unless acted upon by the unbalanced force of a seat belt. The seat belt provides the unbalanced force which brings the occupant of a vehicle from a state of motion to a state of rest. “
“Force is a quantity which is measured using a standard metric unit known as the Newton. One Newton is the amount of force required to give a 1-kg mass an acceleration of 1 m/s2. A Newton is abbreviated by an "N."
Force is a vector quantity. A vector quantity is a quantity which has both magnitude and direction. To describe the force acting upon an object, you must describe both its magnitude (size) and its direction. Thus, 10 Newtons is not a full description of the force acting upon an object. In contrast, 10 Newtons, downwards is a complete description of the force acting upon an object; both the magnitude (10 Newtons) and the direction (downwards) are given.”
“The mass of an object (measured in kg) will be the same no matter where in the universe that object is located. Mass is never altered by location, the pull of gravity, speed or even the existence of other forces. For example, a 2-kg object will have a mass of 2 kg whether it is located on Earth, or the moon.
The weight of an object (measured in Newtons) will vary according to where in the universe the object is. Weight depends upon which planet is exerting the force and the distance the object is from the planet. Weight, being equivalent to the force of gravity, is dependent upon the value of g (acceleration of gravity). On Earth's surface, g is 9.8 m/s2 (often approximated to 10 m/s2). On the moon's surface, g is 1.7 m/s2. The g value is inversely proportional to the distance from the center of the planet. So if g were measured at a distance of 400 kilometers above the earth's surface, you would find the value of g to be less than 9.8 m/s2.”2

“Newton's second law of motion pertains to the behavior of objects when all existing forces are not balanced. The second law states that the acceleration of an object is dependent upon two variables – the net force acting upon the object and the mass of the object. The acceleration of an object depends directly upon the net force acting upon the object, and inversely upon the mass of the object. As the net force increases, so will the object's acceleration. However, as the mass of the object increases, its acceleration will decrease.”

“A force is a push or a pull upon an object which results from its interaction with another object. According to Newton, whenever objects A and B interact with each other, they exert forces upon each other. When you sit in your chair, your body exerts a downward force on the chair and the chair exerts an upward force on your body. There are two forces resulting from this interaction — a force on the chair and a force on your body. These two forces are called action and reaction forces.
Newton's third law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The statement means that in every interaction, there is a pair of forces acting on the two interacting objects. The size of the force on the first object equals the size of the force on the second object. The direction of the force on the first object is opposite to the direction of the force on the second object. Forces always come in pairs – equal and opposite action-reaction force pairs. An example of this would be force generated by the wheels of a car. An automobile is equipped with wheels that spin backwards. As the wheels spin backwards, they push the road backwards. In turn, the road reacts by pushing the wheels forward. The size of the force on the road equals the size of the force on the wheels (or automobile); the direction of the force on the road (backwards) is opposite to the direction of the force on the wheels (forwards). For every action, there is an equal (in size) and opposite (in direction) reaction. Action-reaction force pairs make it possible for automobiles to move.”

Now the experiment I did was as follows: I took a 2x4 and a ¾” Plywood that measured 2 feet by 2 feet. I placed the board on a 30 degree angle and stood on it with my 220 pound body and then I bounced on the board. I then took and did the same thing to the piece of plywood. Then I took duplicate boards and leaned them at a 30 degree angle against the house and pulled my van up to the boards. When I put the van into drive the force of the van cracked the boards. My weight and bouncing alone was not sufficient to crack the boards before.
The poling of the people went as follows: I asked twenty four people one at a time to give me their opinion about two scenarios I would present. I asked twelve females and twelve males. Out of that population three were engineers, one was an ex law enforcement officer, one was a lawyer, the remaining of the group had at least one year of college. Out of that group the engineers and the ex law enforcement officer answered the same. The two scenarios were as follows:
Two identical individuals were standing beside each other on a road, one in the right lane and the other in the left lane. Ten feet from them was a Honda civic in the right lane and a 220 pound linebacker in the left lane. The Honda civic and the linebacker started towards the two individuals standing in the road. The Honda was traveling 5 miles per hour and the linebacker was traveling 14 miles per hour. Which individual sustained the most amount of damage if they were hit in the same place on their body? The engineers and officer familiar with physics answered that the person hit by the Honda civic would sustain more damage because the force was greater from the Honda civic. That might sound weird but just recently I have a patient who told me about getting hit over twenty years ago in a parking lot. He was a pedestrian and the car that hit him was traveling about 5 miles per hour in the parking lot. He can still recall the thud he felt and that he came right out of his shoes. He says he still hurts from that hit.
The second scenario was in relationship to momentum and again only the individuals familiar with physics came up with the same answer. The poling population would need to be expanded but the preliminary response shows me that the general population can pass some wrong judgments because the understanding of physics is less. Maybe that is the way several things are. We judge harder the things we do not fully understand, and the more knowledge we obtain might cause us to judge less harshly.

Where do we need to exert Energy?

We are in an energy crisis. I'm not talking about what you may think when I mention energy crisis. I'm talking about our personal energy crisis in our own bodies. What I mean is this: When we go through the process of thinking, our nerve cells in our brain form neurochemicals called neurotransmitters. These are formed from the nerve cells and passed to other nerve cells in order to pass information from one cell to the other. What I'm saying is that when we go through the process of thinking, every thought is converted to a chemical signal that passes from one nerve cell to other nerve cells. Every chemical formed has a molecular make-up, and a certain charge to it. When I say charge, I am talking about the positive or negative charges that come from the atoms that make the molecules that are the chemicals. When I ask the question of what else in our world has positive and negative charges, most people think of batteries and magnets. When we have thoughts, we create molecules that have positive and negative poles. In short we create magnets inside of us. If our thought process is really efficient, we can cause physical changes in our body. We can stimulate the production of chemicals for healing, for breathing faster or slower, for increasing or lowering our heart rate and for changing our response to the environment. We can cause our whole body to become a giant magnet. I do not assume to know how far away our body magnet can attract things but our own body's physiology will change. For example, if I thought about crime in the city and how much I wanted to stop crime, I would make lots of chemical neurotransmitters relating to crime. Even though I wanted to stop crime, I could be attracting more crime to me, because I spent a lot of time making crime neurochemicals. If I really wanted to stop crime I would need to think about safe practices and security, and a peacefull society. I would form safe practice and secure neurochemicals. This would attract more safe and secure things toward me. I know this sounds juvenile, however this is something worth our time. If I really want to change health care than I must spend my energy thinking about an ideal health care system. I can't spend so much of my energy fighting against a health care system I do not want, because most likely I will get it. I must put forth a quality plan and put my energy behind it. If I want a different candidate for President, Governor, or Mayer I need to support the different candidate instead of fighting against the candidate I don't want. There is something very interesting about the human body. This is that the human body does not contain nerves that register negative signals. In other words: we do not have a "Not" nerve. We feel cold because there is no heat signals, and we see black because there are no color or light signals. Notice what happens when we tell ourselves or others "not" to do something. Isn't it the first response to do what we are "not" supposed to do. We have better effects when we have ourselves or others "do" something other than what we do not want to do. We have so much potential for good in our world but often times resort to making time for the bad. I like the Beatles song -"Imagine," I think we should imagine a world like we want and not one that we do not want.

Sports for Children

(Re-write from article on Dr. Godard's older web site)
Recently my wife and I had another little baby. Combined with seeing all the young people who go through the doors of our clinic, I am often reminded of the special needs of young children. The physical needs of our young people are quite different than our own. First of all, their body proportions are different from ours. Compared to an adult, a young person's head is large relative to the size of his body. Relative to the rest of the body measurements, the shoulder girdle is smaller, the hips are thin and narrow, and the abdominal cavity is larger. Inside the body, the nervous system is still maturing. The bone structure by weight is about one-quarter cartilage to three-quarters hard bone, which is much lighter and less dense than adult bone structure. When a young person exercises, there are different dynamics at work on his body than there would be for an adult. The weight bearing is slightly forward as compared to an adult. To compensate for that, the child has the tendency to arch the low back more. If we had children perform the same exercises as adults do, we would damage their low backs, shins, knees, and necks. The limberness in a child is proportional to the amount of calcium deposited in his or her bones, muscles, and connective tissues. On average, bones do not completely harden until around twenty-five years of age. It is a mistake to subject young people to weight-lifting exercises requiring power-lifting techniques much before the age of seventeen. The extra weight on the growth plates cause the plates to die, preventing the bone from achieving its potential height. Some exercises better suited for young people are those involving the pushing and pulling of their own weight. For example: push-ups, pull-ups, dips, one-leg lunges, squats without weight, leg press with body-weight, and running stairs. If the child has scoliosis, a modified weight lifting routine can be started to help the spinal muscles pull evenly.
Certain sports have been shown to be harder on young children. Soccer and basketball tend to stress young legs, specifically the tendon connection just below the knee. A child unconditioned to large amounts of activity starting soccer or basketball at ten to twelve years of age can develop knee pain that will last even at rest. Smaller children starting an intense soccer program at five to eight years old can damage the leg's growth centers. The trick is not to be a fanatic about sports for these young people. They should be learning the fundamentals of the sport and mild competition. Some recommended sports for young kids are swimming, football, and playing in the playground. Believe it or not, for a five to eight year-olds, football is very safe due to the amount of padding and the low demand for constant running. When the child's physical structure is in line, he or she will perform at higher levels. I have evaluated several young people's physical alignment and helped with sports performance through chiropractic adjustments. Above all else, if the child has fun at the sport and is learning its fundamentals, then the child will have a great future in that sport they choose.