People make mistakes, but as Chiropractors, our goal is not to make those mistakes. Why? Because a mistake can be life-threatening. In this episode, Dr. Frederick Schurger and Dr. Beth Bagley share some experiences of seeing the wrong adjustments made and how they were corrected. They dive deep into the use of technology, explaining how X-rays can be an important tool in Chiropractic. Listen for more stories of anomalies done in Chiropractic and learn from them today.
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The Wrong Adjustment!!!
Dr. Bagley, how are you?
Dr. Schurger, I am great.
We are back for another round.
We had a holiday in between.
We did. It is right after Thanksgiving. I had a great Thanksgiving. I had a lot of pie, turkey, and brisket because I decided I didn’t want more turkey.
I had a lot of turkeys. I’m turkey out for now, and that’s okay.
Once a year, I do all the turkey. I deep fry it. After that, I’m done for another year.
It has been busy at our office here in St. Louis. We have had a lot of new patients. We have some awesome news. Our intern, Dr. Shilo, is going to be graduating. She’s accepted a position at Precision Chiropractic.
That’s good stuff. The only thing that would be better is if she wanted to come to Springfield, Illinois. We will find the doctor that wants to come in here and practice here. That would be grand. That’s fantastic. That’s great news. I’ve got a funny story that will involve her in a little bit. We will get back to that. I was down for a seminar. We sat down and saw your cone beam CT installed, which is fantastic.
It’s an unbelievable technology. This technology, first of all, revolutionizes chiropractic practices. People say, “X-rays shouldn’t be taken. Imaging shouldn’t be taken. Chiropractors don’t need to do that.” It’s the anomalies that I’m seeing where someone cannot get traditional chiropractic because of anomalies in the upper cervical spine. This is not just essential. It is life-threatening if they don’t get this imaging.
X-ray is a fantastic technology. It has been around for over 100 years now. It has revolutionized healthcare on so many levels. That’s exactly what imaging is supposed to be for. That way, we can understand what’s going on in the body because we don’t have zippers and Velcro undoing. Most of everything is supposed to stay inside at all times.
X-ray is a fantastic technology. It has been around for over a hundred years and has revolutionized healthcare on so many levels. Click To TweetWhen you need a medical intervention that needs to go inside, they want to know exactly where they’re going and not have to do a whole lot of work because they understand that surgeries that involve a lot of work going through a lot of tissue in the early days didn’t turn out well. The same thing holds true for us. We need to be able to know exactly how to do the least invasive correction to get people back into the best possible health. I’ve got a great story that addresses this but why don’t we talk about your anomalies, and then we will come into my story? I have two parts to this story that really fun.
Do you want me to talk about the one that I sent you a picture of?
That’s a great one to talk about.
The top bone of the neck is underneath the skull. A bone called the mastoid was connected to this little tip of this bone called the atlas bone. That connection there is articulated, which means there was a joint there. This person had a joint between the atlas on the transfer process, which is the little side where it should only articulate between the skull on the bottom where I’ve got my fingers shoved in. If you’re reading and not looking at this, it would be lovely if you could see this. It’s an extra joint this person had, which changes the way that the atlas functions. This person did fabulous with their first adjustment. It’s very exciting.
These joints are important because traditionally, the atlas only has two joints on the top of it that the skull sits on. You’re like, “Where does my atlas live?” You take your pointer fingers, go right behind your ear, and pull down. You’re on the mastoid bone as you pull down behind your ear until you pull toward your jaw. You should feel this little divot, drop, or depression. That’s where your atlas lives. Is everyone’s atlas easily accessible? No. If you move backward from that little divot of my atlas, I have the mastoid process that you were describing. A part of the skull is sitting right there.
Can people adjust my atlas from that spot? Absolutely, but for some people, that mastoid is huge. More importantly, there are two parts to this that are important. One, somebody who doesn’t have X-rays could say, “I can get your atlas.” They get on the side of the atlas that is pushing into that mastoid. That could cause a number of different weird things to happen, including migraines, more neck pain, more back pain, and all sorts of wrong healing because as powerful as these adjustments are for healing people, they can also be detrimental.
This is a great jumping–off spot into my story. Several years ago, I got to hear one of the founders of the chiropractic colleges. The college that I went to in Davenport, Iowa was founded by DD and BJ Palmer. One of his students, a man by the name of Sid Williams, ended up practicing in Atlanta and wanted to have another school. He wanted to have a school down there, so he created the school that is now called Life University. It was Life College at that time.
Sid was having a rough time. Sid had some health issues and some ups and downs. He happened to be visiting a good friend of his down in Texas. I am blanking on Dr. Pruitt’s first name. There was Mary Ann Pruitt. She was on BJ’s knee when she was a baby. That’s how ingrained in chiropractic she was. She was a firecracker. I did get to meet her once. That was an amazing experience. It was her father Sterling Pruitt. That’s his name. We need to use Sterling as a name for kids more often.
That’s a great name.
If you’re going to be amazing, you should be Sterling. Sid is down there visiting. Sterling takes new pictures of him because Sid is not doing so well. Sid’s wife was also a chiropractor. Sterling’s wife was a chiropractor too for the record. Sid’s wife, Nell, wasn’t getting Sid cleared. He was having a lot of problems. Sid is down at Dr. Sterling’s office. He gets new X-rays. Sterling says, “Here’s the adjustment.” He adjusts him a little differently. I want to say it was on the left. This will come back in a little bit.
Sid is like, “We will see it.” The graph changed, and all the things that they were looking at seemed to be going in the right direction except Sid’s health was not improving. He was tired all the time. He was lethargic with aches and pains. I don’t remember all the symptoms. I remember he was not doing well for about 3 or 4 weeks. He was down in Texas. They had gone back to Atlanta, having trouble. He was still talking with Sterling on a regular basis but as the story goes, Sterling looks up at the X-rays because he’s got this gnawing sensation that he’s missing something.
You have to remember that back in the day, not even the 3D X-rays that we’re doing with cone beams now or the digital X-rays, they were using plain films. There were film quality issues. The technology had not advanced to this technology that we have even with something called high–frequency X-rays. They’re gorgeous compared to some of those older ones.
He’s like, “I miss something. I’m looking at something.” Some structure wasn’t the way that it was supposed to be. He’s studying the films, and he figures it out. Sterling calls up Nell because Sid is not practicing. Sid has this giant practice at the time down in Atlanta. He’s not able to see patients because he’s that sick. Sterling calls up Nell and says, “You have to set him up and hit him on the other side,” which is not a great way to describe what we do.
“A very precise adjustment on the other side was necessary but you’ve got to set him up on the right side.” He had the X-ray backward and he misread the film. The left was on the wrong side. He thought the left side was the side that needed to be adjusted, and he needed to adjust to the right side. This caused all sorts of problems as unfortunately Dr. Sid discovered.
Let’s talk about my story. I was down. I was out. My number four was not doing right. Shilo is soon to be Dr. Shilo. She’s getting her technique figured out. Under your watchful tutelage, she’s allowed to adjust. I told her, “This is the way we’re going to get me adjusted. I need this bone moved from forward to backward.” We call that an ALS on number four. For me, that thing locks up like nothing. It has been a problem on and off for several years now. It was a problem that weekend. We’re describing the adjustment. I watch her practice it before I get in there.
I let her get in there right on top of it, and she does it wonderfully. Sunday comes around. As I’m back home, I’m like, “Something is wrong.” I finally look at the images and the notes that I had for my X-ray. I realized I used the wrong date. I used one from earlier in the year. It shifted in August from going forward to going backward. She did it so well. It locked me up something fierce. I finally got it adjusted after Thanksgiving. I’m attributing my very sore knee that did pop when I was up in a tree hunting over the weekend to my hubris and not double–checking things the way that I should have.
We can make mistakes but the goal is to not make those.
We can make mistakes, but not making those mistakes is our goal. Click To TweetThe goal is not to make those and to also understand that without this technology and the ability to dial this stuff in for each and every patient who wants to come into our office, who wants to get better, and who is asking the question, “Why am I not responding? I went to this other guy for six months and I didn’t get anything. How did you turn me around in a day?” I had a patient come in. He told me about two chiropractors that he had gone to locally that he said hurt him.
It can happen.
He’s a big guy. These other people did their thing. He says, “I feel worse.” I adjust him, and he is like, “I can reach overhead now. I can move it better. It doesn’t feel like it’s hanging there.” In any case, that’s my fun story.
Mistakes can be made. The goal is not to make mistakes. I do agree that the cone beam has put some hectic stuff into my practice. I need to learn how to manage the software quickly. I’m getting better at it. There is a learning curve to the software but once you see it, you see it, you can see misalignment. People say, “You can’t see a misalignment on an X-ray or a 3D image.” You can. It’s unbelievably clear. That doesn’t necessarily mean that needs to be adjusted right at that moment but that is what we call a listing when something is out of alignment. We know exactly how to get it back into place when neurological signals come up.
I had a patient come in who has been a patient for a year. He came in. He read this online. I know the internet is full of trash and horribleness but so many people find us through the internet because they’re looking for answers to something that their only answer is a pill or intense therapy, which is still necessary for a lot of people. This young man had severe panic attacks at least once a week to the point where he said he almost went to the hospital because he felt like his body was burning. He had his wife look up and said, “Is that a sign of a panic attack?” She goes, “It is.”
There are tingling sensations throughout the whole body. It’s so horrible when people are having panic attacks. They feel like they’re dying. He was having those weekly if not more. He got his first Blair Upper Cervical adjustment. He came in here for a checkup to see if he didn’t need an adjustment. He told us he has not had one single panic attack since his first upper cervical adjustment, which is incredible. What does that do for a person having those episodes? That could stop you from going out, having fun, and making friends. This young man got married. Would he have gotten married and all of those things?
As a chiropractor, it warms my heart to know that all of the work that you and I put into learning this very advanced technique and figuring out all of these amazing structures that are dysfunctional and how we can get things back in place. How much impact that has, not just on neck pain and back pain? Do patients have neck pain and back pain? Absolutely, but this is bigger than that. It’s the function of the entire body because the brainstem connects our brain to our body.
It’s interesting. Patients are like, “I need to get in for a checkup. I want to make sure I’m doing well.” He remembers how bad he was at one point in time. That’s going to be something that’s going to stick with him for life because he’s like, “I never want to be back at that point.” I had another patient who calls me up. It was about 7:30 or 8:00 when I finally get back. I finally get a chance to sit down and call her.
She’s like, “Dr. Schurger, why are you calling so late?” I have to call sometime. She took a break, “I feel so good. I’m going to do this other therapy for some low back stuff.” I’m like, “Give me a call if you need me.” She took a break here. She didn’t even do therapy because she was like, “I feel so good. I don’t even need that therapy.” She took a break from everything. She’s been doing great.
Since she’s older, she gets around with a cane. Prior to recent times, she would always go down to Florida to winter with her husband until her husband passed. When her husband passed, she decided to stay up here closer to her family instead of making the trip back and forth because it was a second marriage type of thing. She’s up here. We have been taking care of her pretty consistently. She’s like, “I feel good. I don’t think I need to do this anymore.” I’m like, “That’s fine when you’re having problems.”
We’re not going to force you.
At the beginning of November 2022, she has this bad dizzy set in. This was not a symptom she had beforehand but it’s something we see commonly in our office. She goes to the ENT and rules out an ear infection. There was some stuff and some wax buildup but nothing that was causing her to have dizzy spells. After they took the wax buildup out, she was still having dizzy spells.
She comes in. Her son has to bring her in. She’s able to walk but she’s not able to drive. She feels unsteady. She’s able to do things only slower than normal, but at what point in time does somebody who’s like, “I was doing fine,” and then slowly starts declining again become more severe with more problems as far as their symptoms? We will see. Does she need something more? I don’t know yet but we got her adjusted. She cleared out. We’re going to check on her and make sure everything is good. My gut says she forgot how bad she was doing.
It’s so common. I’ve made that mistake myself where you forget how far you’ve come in your health and what you’re doing right, so then you stop doing the right thing. Slowly, health starts diminishing. You don’t put two and two together until you’re pretty far apart there. I’ve done that a few times in my chiropractic care through the years. Being a single doctor in the office in the past, it was hard to get adjusted. It was hard to find a doctor that could adjust me.
Now, I’ve got a nice team of doctors or little fledgling chiropractors coming up. You’re not that far. There’s one in Edwardsville, Dr. Thad Vuagniaux, who I could go to. I do have the ability to get adjusted now but there have been times when I was like, “I didn’t make time. I’m too busy to take care of myself until it smacks me in the face.” You have to take care of yourself.
One of the reasons we’re doing this show is so we can get the word out that this is an answer to a lot of people’s issues. If there’s a structural shift in the top of the neck, they don’t function well. One of the things that I hope this show reaches is more than one person that needs the care to research it. I don’t care what city, town, or even country you’re in. Research Blair Upper Cervical technique because it has saved my life.
I concur. It’s one of those things. We’re coming into the holidays. For people who don’t understand what getting their neck corrected is, let’s use a better analogy. How many people have been doing well on their diets right up to Thanksgiving? “It’s Thanksgiving. You should have some pie and some cookies. You should eat until you have to unbutton that top button.”
I get it. I respect it. You only do that once a year until the next week when you have a Christmas party and somebody brings in Christmas cookies. If you go to church, there might be an advent potluck coming up. How many of those do people have? I realized that the biggest problem we have in our health, as good as some of the churches are, is you show up at a church potluck, and there will be a dearth of salad. It’s not there, not that I’m a big salad fan anymore.
I am. I love it.
You can have all of the salad. You’re not going to find brisket. You’re not going to find any good proteins that are going to help.
You haven’t been to my church because we have a potluck every Sunday. We have a meal after church if people can make it. There almost always is a wonderful salad and a wonderful meat choice. My church is better than your church.
I’ll give you that but I’m going to say that the vast majority of them are going to have too many side dishes and desserts.
They do have that. There are too many desserts and side dishes but I can make good choices. That’s a point to make out. If you’re going out to eat, you can choose to not partake in the French fries. You can have steamed veggies or something. There’s a choice you can make. Do you always make that choice? No.
I heard a funny aside about potatoes being satiating. The funny thing is potatoes are supposed to be highly satiated in the one study that they did. They’re supposed to fill you up but they weren’t French fries. They weren’t hash browns. They were probably boiled or baked potatoes without any butter or sour cream.
Gross. Nobody is going to eat that.
It gets worse. You have your meal of potatoes. Two hours later, you are asked, “Would you like more potatoes?” “I don’t want more potatoes because I’ve had potatoes.”
They’re full. You served them gross potatoes.
They’re not being offered meat and other foods.
That is a terrible study.
This is how all the food studies are. They’re all horrible like this.
One day you hear one thing, and the other day, you hear the other. Honestly, you can’t trust any of that food study science because Big Potato paid for that.
That was the joke. I’m a big fan of eating red meat.
I know you are. You love your meat and your brisket.
Especially with cranberry.
It’s what we had here.
That was so good.
There’s a restaurant across the street called Dalie’s. It’s a barbecue restaurant.
Tell them we’re going to give them the Rogan effect. They will be so full. We will never be able to get in.
It was a vinegar one.
There were a couple. It’s good brisket.
You’re in the cranberry mood. It was raspberry.
That’s because I was thinking about using cranberry and making one from the brisket I had. I ate all the brisket.
My mouth is watering. I’m hungry.
It is dinnertime.
Speaking of healthy food, do you know what I ate? It was Dr. Shilo’s birthday and I bought a big pan of brownies from Sam’s Club.
She’s young. That sounds like fun.
I’m not going to kid you. They’re each this big. I grabbed one so that it looked like they were starting to be eaten, so other people would grab them. I put it on my desk. Throughout the whole day, I took little bites of it. I talked about it with my patients, “We need to have stable blood sugar. I keep mine at 160.” For people who don’t know, you want your blood sugar to be at 80.
Eighty would be much better. That’s usually where mine lives all the time.
You stabilize it. I stabilize it high.
That is good too.
I was eating little pieces of brownie all day. I was so busy. I didn’t eat any lunch. All I’ve eaten is a brownie.
That’s high–quality food.
I’m the worst chiropractor ever.
You’ve had a busy day.
I was so busy.
We will talk about black bean brownies so you have good brownies that have protein in them another day.
I didn’t put any marijuana in my brownies, so it was fine.
That’s a good place for us to wrap.
We should end it on pot brownies.
One of my good friends said when he turns 100, he’s going to have a pot brownie party. I’m invited.
Let’s do it. I’ll be there. Let’s have a pot brownie party. I’ve never done that.
In any case, I haven’t either. I stay away from that stuff.
We will have to do that on the show sometime.
Definitely not. Off the show, we will talk about some other crazy stuff that we shouldn’t also do because nobody would understand it. They’re like, “What are you talking about, Doc?”
We’re wild and crazy in a super dorky way.
We are a little bit wild and crazy. Usually, it involves brisket.
Pot brisket.
I’m glad that’s not a thing.
I’m going to make it a thing. I’m making a restaurant.
The one guy that I was buying my pork from locally was getting into growing hemp. He was a big proponent over here in Illinois.
It’s a huge deal.
It’s good stuff.
Hemp is amazing.
I’m torn on it.
To make paper is what I’m trying to say. I’m not talking about hemp for consumption.
For paper and clothes, it’s fantastic.
It’s amazing. When they talk about grain, renewable, and all that stuff, you cut it down, and then it grows again.
It wants to keep on growing.
It’s unbelievable.
He was talking about doing this. My brain was like, “Are you going to feed that?” If you take an area for pigs, they will take everything down to bare Earth. His pork was the best. He would recycle them and move them around. His bacon was amazing. His hams were delicious. I’m like, “Are we now going to have hemp bacon?”
It’s THC-infused bacon. Hemp does not have that much THC in it.
It doesn’t but it does have CBD. That’s another story. I’m torn on the CBD. Let’s end on this. You will like this. There are a number of studies on endocannabinoids in the osteopathic literature. The endocannabinoid system is a natural system that loves all these cannabinoids that are calming for our nervous system. They are fantastic.
For someone who doesn’t know what that means, it’s the molecule that is part of the marijuana plant that if people consume it, that’s the cannabinoid. That molecule interacts. We have named it the same thing because they interact together but that system is part of us as humans.
It’s a natural part. It’s interesting. You have an exosystem that’s an external system but as an endosystem, that’s an internal system that is self-regulating. This is curious because we see the same thing as your patient with anxiety. A lot of people with anxiety will take some CBD or THC for that matter, and that helps calm them down and bring them back to where they’re supposed to be but what the osteopaths figured out from osteopathic manipulative therapies is they can do therapy. It’s a much broader spinal manipulation. I do use manipulation because they do.
It’s not specific either.
They are able to upregulate the endocannabinoid system.
Are you saying we’re getting people high?
I’m not saying that. I’m saying that our systems are able to modulate that endocannabinoid system to relax the nervous system. If that’s already existing, what we do to adjust people to get their bodies to work better is upregulate that endocannabinoid system so their nervous system is able to relax. I can’t speak for other people but every time I’ve tried a CBD product, I say, “Is this going to help relax me?” If anyone has met me, they’re like, “Are you a type–A personality?” I’m like, “What do you mean? I don’t know what you mean. Let me get some more coffee. Let’s talk about this for the next six hours.” Of course, I’m a type–A personality. I’m like, “I could use something to help me relax.” I try it but it does nothing.
To adjust people to get their bodies to work better is upgrading and upregulating that endocannabinoid system, so their body and nervous system can relax. Click To TweetHere’s one story I had when I took some CBD oil, and it did not go well for me. Do you remember floating?
I love floating. I haven’t done it in quite a while but I love it.
The place I was floating at was like, “We’ve got a free sample of CBD oil to take before.” They were trying to sell it. I was like, “I’ll try it.” I take the CBD oil and then go into the float. About twenty minutes into the float, my brain started doing all these weird things. I could not calm or relax. I had to get up and out, and I had to leave.
That’s miserable.
I’m going to go ahead and say a lot of things. My body reacts differently than other people to certain drugs.
This gets me back to my problem with CBD. I’ve got several product companies that are making CBD products. I don’t think the quality is there. There are some extraction issues. They’re putting in oil. Oils inherently have the ability to go rancid quickly. How do you know if you have a rancid oil that you’re dealing with? Sometimes oils are rancid even before you consume them. You have all of these problems with any plant seed oil being rancid.
Oftentimes a lot of the seed oils are deodorized so you can’t smell the rancidity that would prevent you from eating it in the first place. What I’m suggesting with upper cervical and the Blair work and the chiropractic work that we do is we’re already upregulating the endocannabinoid system to a level that adding something external won’t change our perception of it unless it’s not a good product and it freaks you out. Here’s the other problem. There’s a little bit of THC in some of those.
That might have been it. There might have been enough because I’m not used to that.
As sensitive as you are, that could completely freak you out.
I said to two people, “I’m very sensitive.” I am and so are a lot of my patients. There are lots of different things I’m sensitive to. That could be because I don’t do that.
I see a lot of patients like this. Their reaction to either a drug or sometimes a supplement is paradoxical to what everything else is. You fall into that category. My wife falls into that category with a couple of others and a few of my other patients. It’s like, “You wanted to take what medication? You know better than that.” I had one gal. She get Botox for migraines, not for flattening stuff because she was still pretty young. She got Botox to help with migraines.
That’s miserable because that lasts for six months.
For her, it did not last that long. It did not linger that long but they did enough that it was bad. The moral of the story is to get your head on straight and do chiropractic first. If that’s still not taking care of things, then we can start examining medications through a medical doctor.
We should be the first line of defense on this, not the last thing. Often, we’re the last ones because we fix the problem.
That’s often the case.
I would like to catch these people before they have been dealing with misery for 15 to 20 years.
I was going to say the same. That’s a good place for us to wrap. Make sure you subscribe to all of the stuff. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app. We will have a YouTube channel. If you’re not already watching this on YouTube, subscribe and hit the bell.
All of the things. If you like what we’re doing, that’s the best way to support us.
Get it out there. Feel free to share these shows if you’re like, “This is interesting except for this one part where he’s going off on CBD. They’re going to do a pot brownie party. We should invite them over.”
We could do that. That will be next time.
Make sure you’re sharing that. If we’re going to do something, we’re going to have cigars and whiskey. That’s just me.
I would never do that. I would rather do a pot brownie than cigars and whiskey but I’ll do wine.
Maybe that will just be me doing it. Thank you so much. We will see you. If you have any questions, reach out to us. I’m at KeystoneChiroSPI.com.
I’m at PrecisionChiropracticSTL.com. We will see you next time.
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