Beating Addictions

What is the big killer in the U.S.? AIDS? Cancer? Heart Disease? Guess again - when you add up all of the accidents, suicides, overdoses and violent deaths due to drugs and alcohol, then drugs and alcohol addiction is the number one killer by far!

A few years ago, Dr. J.M. Holder researched effects of auricular therapy (a form of acupuncture stimulation to the ear - a technique we have used here at Keefe Clinic since 1980). You may have read about that study in the papers then - it indicated that auricular therapy was the most effective therapy for drug addictions of the 178 government-approved therapies at that time! This study was released in the early 1990's and has started to revolutionize drug addiction programs across the country.

This study was headed by Dr. J.M. Holder, D.C., M.D., Ph.D. He practices chiropractic, teaches at a medical school, and conducts research. He was the first American physician to win the Albert Schweitzer Prize in Medicine, and is in line to receive more awards due to his most recent research.

As he studied the effects of auricular therapy on drug addictions and the physical causes behind the addictive personality, he found that by stimulating these acupuncture points in the ear, he could enhance what is known as an "award cascade" effect from the limbic system. This re-balances an addict's chemistry. It can change the addiction from an overwhelming compulsion to a manageable situation which the patient can then eliminate. Certainly, many drug addicts would give anything to rid themselves of their habits - but that over-whelming compulsion to use the drug is more than they can overcome. Thus, this help is a wonderful asset to the addict on a physiological level.

Now to his next study: Dr. Holder reasoned that the effects demonstrateded in the first study described above dealing with problems with the limbic system could be tied in to the effects that subluxations have on the nervous system. He knew that the limbic system is not just a compartment hidden in the center of the brain, but it also extends down the "dorsal horn" of the spinal column. He decided to test to see what Chiropractic adjustment intervention could do with this particular system of the nervous system.

In 1994, the Holder Research Institute established that only vertebrates have an opiate reception site, brain reward system. This means that the vertebral subluxation complex is the hallmark of insult to any vertebrate's ability to express the state of well-being to its fullest potential. If messages from the brain are interrupted from their expression to itself and the rest of the body by vertebral subluxations, the vertebrate necessarily will not have the fullest quality of life. What is called the "brain reward cascade" is a scientific model that has the vertebral motor unit as its cornmon denominator which provides an understanding to the neurophysiologi-cal mechanism on how the meso-Limbic system expresses a state of well-being. Therefore, a subluxation-free spine is mandatory to express one's greatest potential.

Dr. Holder went before the Research Committee at the Miami medical college where he teaches to present his research ideas. They approved his study, and conducted it at the largest addiction hospital in Miami, Florida. This study divided addicts into three groups: group one receive regular counseling therapy that is common to all addiction centers. Group two received that therapy plus Chiropractic adjustments, and Group three received standard addiction therapy plus "sham" Chiropractic treatments. That means that these patients were really not adjusted.

At the end of that study, the results were astonishing, even to Dr. Holder. After compiling all the data, he found that the combination of Chiropractic adjustments with counseling therapy approach to addiction and compulsive disorders produced far better results than any other test results for any other government-approved technique now available. His conclusion: for the 180 different addiction disorder techniques that have been tested, Chiropractic now proves to be the most effective, even more effective than the use of auricular therapy found previously so helpful.

This means that: Chiropractic care, coupled with proper nutrition, electro-stimulation of points in the ear, and counseling is the best help currently available for individuals who have addictive-compulsive disorders.