Our Healthcare Science-Based Philosophy

We believe in transparency. No one person or entity should hold the keys to your kingdom. The generic phrase “your health is your wealth” is overwhelmingly true. The amount of time, energy, work relationships, family relationships, friend relationships, and money that is directly and indirectly affected by your overall “health” is staggering. Our current health level as a country has already negatively impacted us as whole, noted in GDP expenditures. To achieve our goal of healthcare becoming deflationary, a level of simplicity and transparency is needed – but by choice. Because of this, here are the keys to how we unlock your health freedom.

At this point in time, we believe the best base code can be divided into 6-categories. These 6-categories of pain, which can be read in our brief overview, can be utilized by all within healthcare as the base code.

Our assessment protocols, by far and large, establish the powerful outcomes of what we do! Without the assessment, we are lost in the ocean, in a canoe without a paddle. We better hope shore is close and tides are in our favor. Otherwise, we are in real trouble. However, if we can MacGyver a paddle, understand the mathematics of the stress/strain of which this paddle can handle, and the current or tide flow, then the probability of reaching the shore may exponentially improve.

Through this analogy we can gather there is always a way to get things done, whatever it may be; however, understanding the moving variables and leveraging knowledge surrounding a situation can drastically help solve any problem. With this, the base root of all understanding is mathematics.

Mathematics is the fundamental language for all. Mathematics can manifest reproducible, non-biased outcomes if applied consistently. If not, the scientific method will scrutinize the mathematics until a reproducible outcome is achieved.

A current problem of healthcare is its components are working in factions and not through a cohesive mathematical framework or flow. Collectively, healthcare does not understand how to use the paddle, or the oceanic currents because its knowledge is fractioned into parts. Currently, healthcare has no base code or framework to evolve from. This creates chaos.

For healthcare, this problem starts with the lack of a pain auditing assessment as the base code. Without assessing and categorizing your pain and applying it appropriately into a science-based system dedicated to categorization of pain, then healthcare is not really listening to you. It then becomes the specialist only applying interventions unique to the specialist – which is a constant problem within our healthcare industry. This is a contributing factor to our healthcare costs as a nation. This lack of a cohesive pain categorization protocol within healthcare specialties has consistently been noted as a problem within the entirety of healthcare. Different clinicians then come to different conclusions based on different testing protocols. There is no cohesive understanding amongst healthcare providers with assessing and diagnostic testing. The research concludes healthcare testing is based on the type of healthcare provider providing the testing, not what is statistically a correct course of action based on a pain classification system.^{6 7 8 9}

If you are on this page and this far along in the reading, then you are in the process of seeking help and wanting to find non-fluff answers. For many individuals, this reason for searching is in hope of understanding, reducing, and ultimately eliminating pain or the fear(s) of future problems and/or pain.

By categorizing your pain through a science-based categorization system, we can help you find the fastest outcomes, respecting your pocketbook, and in a timely manner. We are traffic controllers in directing you to the correct provider, only then may actual treatment or help may manifest.

This order of events in powerful in results –

Categorization of pain => Appropriate healthcare provider => Pillar of Health => Treatment

ICT MJC chiropractors work through your expectations, categorization of pain(s), and select the appropriate healthcare provider. After this, we move onto identifying the pain generator and problem generator. These are two different things. We focus on the current demand to the tissue causing symptoms and understanding the functional gap between your current demand and your wants.

Almost all tissue in the body needs to be stressed – in various ways. It is important to note, stress is not necessarily negative. This is a societal construct on the word. Stress is simply stress. There is positive stress and negative stress which can manifest as chemical, physical, emotional, spiritual, etc. in nature. The word or idea of what stress is has become hijacked.

As we go through our assessment protocol, we then apply stressors into 8 Pillars of Health. Through this process we can categorize pain into multiple pillars and address each pillar accordingly. This is how we get to understanding your pain, the appropriate specialist, the appropriate technique,

These 8 Pillars of Health – Nutrition, Movement, Sleep, Breath, Spirit, Mind, Relationship, Purpose –allow us to appropriately identify which avenues of health we need to address before others. Without categorizing with this system care often becomes convoluted with limited results.

Think of these Pillars of Health as gas tanks and our programming as the miles per gallon. We want to have large gas tanks, be energy efficient (MPG), and optimize the recycling of the energy source. By doing this, you can go the distance. By viewing your health and our system within these parameters, together we can tackle “qual-gevity” – quality + longevity. We offer many Programs to help get you to this goal – to live a long of quality years.

When Causes are Symptoms of Another Cause

We often find to truly address the Movement Pillar; we must address the Nutritional Pillar. Again, there are many reasons behind this but simply if your nutrition is poor, then tissue (muscle, ligaments, tendons, bones, etc.) cannot heal quickly, which leads to movement pain.

You may be experiencing movement pain (effect) with movement (cause) but the tissue producing that pain may not have adequate nutrition. The lack of good nutrition, or chemistry, within the area lowers the capacity of the surrounding tissue to handle physical stress. As a result, the true cause of the shoulder pain is lack of good chemistry allowing tissue damage to occur and pain originating in the tissue. This is an example of a tissue producing pain with movement without being purely a movement-based problem – it is chemical.

As stated earlier, almost all tissue requires stress to help facilitate healing. The adage, “get some bed rest,” is dead. Healing requires stress based on timeframes; there are almost no exceptions. Even with the best intervention used at the appropriate time, different tissues respond differently. This is important to understand for recovery expectations with any healthcare provider.

Pain associated with physically overstressed tissue is often due to a lack of adequate nutrition. This inadequate nutrition must be improved to allow your physical body to manage the demand being physically applied to it.

If this last step of remodeling tissue is not desired, please expressly verbalize this to us. We want you to feel empowered and in charge of your overall treatment wants, goals, desires, etc. If elimination of short-term pain is the only desired goal, we will accommodate this. However, we will highlight the reoccurrence of pain may be sooner than desired.

¹ Kendrick D, Fielding K, Bentley E, Kerslake R, Miller P, Pringle M. Radiography of the lumbar spine in primary care patients with low back pain: Randomised controlled trial. BMJ. 2001; 322:400-405. doi:10.1136/bmj.322.7283.400.

² Jarvik JG, Hollingworth W, Martin B, et al. Rapid magnetic resonance imaging vs radiographs for patients with low back pain: A randomized controlled trial. JAMA. 2003;289(21):2810-2818. doi:10.1001/jama.289.21.2810.

³ Dagenais S, Caro J, Haldeman S. A systematic review of low back pain cost of illness studies in the United States and internationally. Spine J. 2008;8(1):8-20. doi:10.1016/j.spinee.2007.10.005.

⁴ Chou R, Qaseem A, Owens DK, Shelkelle P. Diagnostic imaging for low back pain: Advice for high-value health care from the American College of Physicians. Ann Intern Med. 2011;154(3):181-189. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-154-3-201102010-00008.

⁵ Chou R, Fu R, Carrino JA, Deyo RA. Imaging strategies for low-back pain: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet. 2009;373(9662):463-472. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(09)60172-0.

⁶ Cushnaghan J, Cooper C, Dieppe P, Kirwan J, McAlindon T, McCrae F. Clinical assessment of osteoarthritis of the knee. Ann Rheum Dis. 1990;49(10):768-770. doi: 10.1136/ard.49.10.768.

⁷ Liesdek C, Van der Windt D, Koes B, Bouter L. Soft-tissue disorders of the shoulder:. Physiotherapy. 1997;83(1):12-17. doi: 10.1016/S0031-9406(05)66103-2.

⁸ Cherkin Dc, Deyo RA, Wheller K, Ciol MA. Physician variation in diagnostic testing for low back pain: Who you see is what you get. Arthritis Rheum. 1994;37(1):15-22. doi:10.1002/art.1780370104.

⁹ Spitzer EA. Scientific approach to the assessment and management of activity-related spinal disorders: A monograph for clinicians. Report of the Quebec Task Force on Spinal Disorders. Spine. 1987;12 (7 suppl):S1-S59.