Part 37

The internal chemistry of the body varies so greatly under changing conditions, the operation of any two different organisms is so hard to compare accurately, that it is impossible to set down any rule for diet which will apply properly to all patients or to all with the same disease or habit of body. In fact, only experiment with an individual can determine the exactly proper diet for him.

Through lack of judgment or of observation of the effects of certain foods upon us we often eat that which our bodies cannot properly digest and assimilate. Sometimes through accident or negligence we partake of food which is proper in kind for us but improper in quality, perhaps partially decomposed. Improper food, when taken into the body, tends to exert a deleterious effect upon health. This fact should not lead us to confine ourselves to reasoning superficially that improper foods cause disease or that dietary measures will cure disease.

Some Chiropractors have held that the hunger of individuals for certain foods is a safe guide to a proper diet. This is manifestly untrue in some cases; the voracious appetite of the convalescent typhoid patient is an example. But it would probably be true if all men were normal. Close observation of a few exceptionally well-developed and normal individuals has disclosed an interesting fact. If a man has no subluxation in that portion of the spine which controls the stomach, the ingestion of decomposing food, even though the alteration be so slight as to escape notice on casual examination, induces immediate vomiting followed by no untoward consequences. Only occasionally does one find persons without subluxations in some way affecting the stomach; in such cases the body promptly rejects and expels injurious material.

This carries us to the rather surprising conclusion that the normal person is not susceptible to the influence of bad food. In the majority of individuals, some degree of abnormality existing, improper food has a decidedly bad effect. Passing through the alimentary canal it is improperly digested; toxins are developed; these chemically affect the entire body, perhaps leading only to a congestion and inflammation of some part of the lining of the alimentary tract, perhaps producing a general fever, malaise, diarrhea, and the other effects of a general poisoning.

It has been found that proper adjustment is followed by quick relief in such cases, the commonest effect being the rapid expulsion of the deleterious matter by vomiting and diarrhea with breaking of the fever and lessening of all symptoms.

It has also been observed that during the suffering from dietetic error the subluxation controlling the stomach or some part of the small intestines is often found increased in degree with tension of the adjacent muscles. With adjustment and relief of the other symptoms the muscular tension tends to disappear. This motor reaction from the irritation of food poison undoubtedly serves to increase subluxation already existing, thus intensifying effects. But for its primary effect food poison requires a previous subluxation lowering the natural protective power of the body. Food poisoning is often a secondary cause of disease.

When it is found in any specific case that certain foods exert a bad influence upon the progress of the case, that the symptoms are aggravated by the taking of these foods, they must be abandoned. Yet no rigid diet need be prescribed in any case. Every patient will require a different diet, nor is it possible to understand the intimate chemical relations within the body sufficiently to fix a proper diet except by experiment.

A word here about fasting. If improper food were a primary cause of disease, fasting would be an effective, though somewhat radical, removal of the cause of disease and a logical procedure. Since improper food is not a primary cause of disease and since nature requires food for the repair work made possible through adjustments, it would seem unwise for Chiropractors to prescribe fasting. Also it is well to remember that fasting and starvation are synonymous and their symptoms identical.

POISONS

Any substance taken into the body and not usable as food may be considered poison. Most drugs administered as medicine or used habitually are either directly poisonous and commonly so considered or are poisonous in the sense that they do not build but rather tend to injure the body. Injurious substances accidentally taken into the body; certain products included in the preparation of otherwise nutritious foods, alcohol, tobacco, etc., affect the body in varying degrees but in accordance with the same laws. Poisons may be internally generated through the action of pathogenic germs or through the failure of the body to digest food and to prevent injurious chemical changes in it. It has even been said by some that abnormal mental states so affect metabolism as to cause the formation of certain auto-toxins which injuriously affect the entire body.

However poison may make its appearance in the body its presence is associated with certain bad effects. Poison may be corrosive, destroying tissue wherever it touches; it may be stimulating, affecting the nerves so as to increase their activity, following which waste of energy there is a weakening reaction; it may be narcotic, lowering some physiologic process below normal.

If a man without subluxation--and therefore normal--have poison introduced into his body one of two effects will follow. Either the poison will be sufficient to produce death in a short time, and will do so, or the poison will be ejected from the body and the patient recover naturally and without treatment, and recover fully.

This is the statement of the ideal, not the real. The fact is that no person has yet been found without subluxation in some part of the spinal column. Occasional cases have been reported but always by Chiropractors whose statements are open to question on account of imperfect training in vertebral palpation or a known habit of unconsidered statement. And in the weakened body, whose natural protective power has been lowered, the effect is different.

The body fails to throw off all the poison normally and some of it remains in the circulation and tends to cause progressively increasing damage. In addition to the direct effect of the poison upon the tissues, the irritation of sensory nerves gives rise to a motor reaction which increases subluxation generally throughout the spine but especially in the segment in which the sensory irritation is greatest. If the poison be taken into the stomach the vertebrae affecting that organ are most affected in the resulting motor disturbances. When vaccine virus is introduced into the arm the greatest influence is upon the last two Cervicals and first Dorsal, causing increased weakening of the nerves to the arm. If the vaccination does not “take” it is because the body is so normal as to be able to take up and rapidly excrete the poison or to neutralize it with an internally generated antitoxin.

This tendency of poisons to increase subluxations already existing has caused many to conclude that new subluxations could be produced by the motor reactions from poison. The laws governing reflex action make this impossible. If a mild stimulus be applied in the segment occupied by a given, and normally aligned, vertebra, the resulting contraction will tend to appear on the same side as the irritation and would--if sufficient to subluxate the vertebra--draw it toward the irritated side. If a stronger stimulus were applied the resulting reaction would appear on both sides and with sufficient intensity on the opposite side to the irritation so that the difference between the contractions on the two sides would never be sufficient to overcome the fixity and inertia of the vertebra. If this bit of theorizing be doubted, let me add that if poisons could cause subluxation they would undoubtedly cause drawing of the vertebra toward the irritated side--which is not the way we find them in poisoning cases. Almost without variation, the subluxation is away from the affected side. Such a subluxation produces most impingement on the side of the irritation; the only kind which could follow poisons would produce its effects on the opposite side.

In acute poisoning cases which may possibly proceed to a rapidly fatal termination, while immediate adjustment may be sufficient to cause the expulsion of the poison and the recovery of the patient it is probably wisest to administer an antidote or to call a physician with a stomach pump. Just so, the pulmotor should be summoned for gas asphyxiation; but at least one case was recently encountered in which an adjustment started the heart and artificial respiration movements restored consciousness before the pulmotor could arrive. There are few, if any, acute poisoning cases in which an adjustment will not aid. Sometimes it should be assisted by other measures not strictly within the province of Chiropractic.

Chronic poisoning, such as lead poisoning from paint work, yields well to adjustments providing the secondary cause, the persistent inhalation of lead fumes, be discontinued.

Poisons may wound or injure the body whether or not it be normal; in such case they might properly be classed with trauma. But no poison causes disease except through the medium of vertebral subluxation previously produced. Some subluxation which has never been sufficient to produce active disease may be so increased by the action of poisons as to be of serious effect even though the poison has long since been eradicated from the body--for the subluxation is permanent until affected by force outside itself. In considering the etiology of any disease the possibility of its being augmented by medicines, drug habits, or dietetic errors should be weighed with other evidence.

EXPOSURE

By this term is especially meant exposure to sudden temperature changes. The body may sustain a very high or a very low outside temperature providing the change is gradual enough so that the heat-regulating mechanism may adapt itself properly to protect the body and maintain an even temperature within. A sudden change from a very warm room to a very cold atmosphere; a quick transportation from cold air to a superheated apartment; or a sudden draft of air whose temperature is sharply at variance with surrounding air and therefore with the condition of the body surface may have a very bad effect.

The skin and mucous membranes of the body have become accustomed to a certain temperature; the change irritates them. And the immediate result is a motor reaction increasing subluxation in the same body segment in which the irritation is greatest and probably producing first an irritation of the nerves at the spine and then an inflammation of the exposed surface. Thus a “cold” is produced. One who has no subluxation affecting the respiratory tract--a rare degree of normality--may escape coryza, bronchitis, or pneumonia, the most common effects, but may suffer a congestion of the stomach walls or of other parts of the body. It is said that the cold “settled on the stomach.” The fact is that the motor reaction takes advantage of the weak parts of the spine and affects them most, like the pernicious habit of spine-stretching which used to prevail among Chiropractors. This explains why “cold in the head” is so very frequent. The fourth Cervical vertebra is situated at the middle point of the neck and is very freely movable and easily subluxated and, in fact, more often displaced than other Cervicals.

Noxious or poisonous vapors may have an effect identical with that of sudden temperature change. Sleeping in an improperly ventilated room often appears to cause “cold.” Careful study of the part of the body exposed to draft, and of spino-organic connection, will show that in most instances the effect of such exposure is first felt in the same body segment.

It is a well-known fact that not all people are “subject to colds.” One may be “subject to lung colds,” another to “cold in the head.” The susceptibility is entirely governed by the condition of the spine, the person having no middle Cervical subluxation being immune from coryza even though subjected to the same exposure which will produce it in others. The pollen of plants produces hay fever in the susceptible in much the same manner that draft produces coryza, both acting as secondary causes.

BODILY EXCESSES

In this division of secondary causes may be mentioned overwork, continuous loss of sleep, overeating, venereal excesses, etc.

They act in this manner. Wasting and overusing the bodily resources they lower the general vitality. Now, though there be subluxations at various points in the spine there is still transmitted through each impinged nerve a certain amount of Vital Force which to a certain extent maintains the functions of the body and keeps it in a state of activity sufficient for ordinary demands. When the entire stock of vitality is lowered through excess the amount of energy passing through each nerve in the body is lessened, but the effect of such lessening is felt most where there is subluxation. At the high tide of vitality the subluxations are not sufficient, perhaps, to produce serious disease. At low ebb, every organ whose nerve is interfered with suffers keenly. Under such conditions the body is much more subject to adverse influences, to shocks and jars, to contagion or infection, to the action of cold or exposure. Thus bodily excess acts as a secondary cause of disease.

ABNORMAL MENTAL STATES

There are many who believe that fear, worry, hate, grief, etc., are in themselves sufficient to produce disease in a normal organism. Shock following the demise of a loved one or some deep disgrace is occasionally alleged as a cause of death or of a rapid decline in health which terminates fatally.