Pathological Paths

Osteopaths, Naturopaths vs Psychopaths, Sociopaths - and Chiropractors

Fatigue

Every now and then I get a spanking new patient coming in with a list of investigation requests. Now is a middle-aged woman. She is quite blunt in telling me straight off that she only sees me to get a few tests done for her own doctor. Why? Because her doctor cannot refer her herself. Medicare would not pay her back the rebate for the tests.

Fair enough. Sometimes struck off doctors still have a lot to offer to their loyal patients.

It is when I see what the requests are that it really kills me. The most irritating is the serum level of some inert metal that I cannot find on my periodic table of known elements. Should I be rude enough to ask if the patient had been away from earth and somehow inhaled this toxic unknown element from the moon?

Seeing my grimace, the patient then reveals her secret. It's her naturopathic doctor who has heard of this metal and attended a course in Congo on the effect this 205th element on the poor client's "recurrent fatigue". And there are at least 2 websites on this subject. One from Romania, the other from Iceland. How could I be so ignorant!???

Don't get me wrong. I do believe in naturopathy. Lots of my patients are on herbs and other natural therapeutic products. For example, I do believe in Vitamin C, Zinc and Garlic as supplementary medicines for cold and flu.

But I get really weary of the invention of odd and baseless causes for common problems.

Most people are tired. Everyone is tired at one time or another. Tiredness is not likely to be caused by the overloading or lacking of some weird element. I think the most common causes are deficiency in Vitamin R (rest) and in Vitamin S (sleep). Vitamin M (money) sometimes helps.

Back pain

Likewise, most people have back pain. Unless you are some kind of robot, you must have had some back pain once in your life. It is simply because man has not evolved well. His head is too heavy for his tiny neck and his hips cannot sustain his weight well. He decided to walk on two legs long before his spine had evolved to accommodate such change. So he wobbles a lot, then sometimes he waddles (during pregnant periods in women and during beer drinking years in men).

Not only we are designed poorly; we also do crazy things to our body.

We fashioned our hooves ala Prada-style. And thanks to the computer mouse we no longer use our shoulders and arms. We only use our right index finger and our right wrist. A farmer's back pain does not last long because he knows he must use the correct muscles. In contrast, an accountant is a totally different animal; designed to climb trees but instead he sits dead still for 10 hours, cranks his neck and stares at the monitor, and only moves the mouse in right hand back and forth repeatedly every 10 seconds. At home he slouches uncomfortably on the sofa, stares at the TV while his thumb frantically harrasses the remote control.

I believe human will evolve into a cyclop with one finger attached to a large remote.

So instead of moving about like you are supposed to (ie, be the homo-sapien that you are) and retraining your muscles to regain your painless posture, you hobble a long way to get a quick fix from some "back guy". This guy has such healing power your best friend (or neighbour) cannot even describe.

Again, I have nothing against genuine chiropractors and osteopaths. It's the psychopaths disguised as healers that really get me. They have most odd methods of practice.

What with the pencil lines being ruler-ed onto the spine Xray films!??

Yes, thanks to the pencil markings, I can see you have a half a degree tilt to the left. So what! If that's how you already are for the last 40 years, why fix it now? Your back pain started last week, but your spine has been like that for half a century! God (or mother nature to atheists) did not create us with a ruler! So don't use rulers and protractors to measure our spine!

And Xrays are not that helpful in managing simple back pain, and sometimes dangerous when not interpreted correctly. A doctor friend of mine was silly enough to have ordered a spine series for his grand-mother. The old Chinese lady had some minor backache but still was quite well and was able to walk to the shops everyday. When she asked him about the mild compression fracture seen in one of her vertebrae, he foolishly described her osteoporosis as "rotten bone" in Chinese. The lady was so frightened she decided to lie in bed all the time. She fixated to the false idea that standing and walking would in further damage her back. My friend tried really hard to get his grandma off the bed but all his effort proved useless. Soon immobility took hold, she shrivelled away and died.

It's a different story if you are a pre-teen with scoliosis; I would immediately refer you to the spine specialist.