A Los Gatos chiropractor opines on miraculous cures, meds, skeptics, and more.
By Matt Stroud
Daniel David Palmer, a beekeeper, schoolteacher, and grocery store owner, “discovered” chiropractic in the mid-1880s. The story sounds like a fairy tale or biblical parable: While working as a magnetic healer, Palmer met a deaf janitor with a big lump in his back. At the time, Palmer guessed that the lump was the source of the deaf man’s hearing problems. So he vowed to help. Reportedly, Palmer “manipulated” the janitor’s back (or neck, depending on what you read), using methods that would later become fundamental chiropractic principles. The janitor’s hearing was miraculously restored.
Fast-forward 120 years, and meet Dr. Patrick McCauley. He’s a 40-year-old certified chiropractor who’s been working at Vik Chiropractic in Los Gatos for 15 years. Three years ago, McCauley graduated from Palmer West - one of D.D. Palmer’s chiropractic institutions, located in San Jose - and assumed the role of head chiropractor and owner. We sat down with him to talk about miraculous cures, medical trash talk, and more.
The Wave: It’s common to hear stories about, for example, people who once had crossed eyes, but then straightened them with a chiropractor’s help. Is this possible? Can a back cracking really align crossed eyes?
Patrick McCauley: Well, yeah. You’ve read about the first adjustment, right?
TW: I have - D.D. Palmer cured a janitor’s deafness by massaging his neck.
PM: Right. I’ve had patients who’ve had headaches for 20 years, and in three months, the headaches are gone.
TW: How does that happen?
PM: Neurological responses. Our main focus is to remove the pressure from your nervous system, because your nervous system controls and coordinates everything in your body through the spinal cord. We’re trying to get someone to restore their biomechanical structure - if we know that we have them close to ideal structure, then we know there are no interferences with the nervous system. And once there is no more interference, your body can handle anything. You know what proprioceptive nerve cells are, right?
TW: Nope.
PM: That’s how you know where your hand is when your eyes are closed. So, when you adjust those joints, you ignite receptors, and [those receptors] communicate with the brain. And that’s how your brain gets fed - it’s the neuroreceptors, the neural synapses that happen in the brain. I deal with people who’ve been in serious car accidents, and who were in comas, and who lost all kinds of memory and things like that. We’re doing systemic adjustments to ignite that side of their brains.
TW: What are the limits of chiropractic?
PM: If you’re hit by a bus, don’t come to my office - go to the emergency room. There is a place for every healing art. Personally, I’m against medicine, and I’m against drugs. So I don’t like when people have a cold and go to the M.D. You’ve got all these commercials that say “reduce your fevers,” “stop the vomiting,” “stop the headache” or whatever. I tend to let [the body] work its way through problems. The key is that you have to keep yourself healthy.
TW: Have you always had this philosophy?
PM: Yeah, when I was a kid, I never took medicine. I never took drugs. Commercials show little kids taking Robitussin, and it just kills me. What’s wrong with a kid having a cold; what’s wrong with a little fever? Let him work it through. I’m not trying to medical bash, I just... there are different ways to fix different ailments, I think.
TW: It’s interesting you bring that up. It seems there’s some head-on competition between mainstream medicine and chiropractic philosophy.
PM: There is. There definitely is.
TW: How have you interacted with medical doctors? Have you been attacked?
PM: I don’t get attacked, no. I just hear patients telling me, “My M.D. doesn’t want me seeing a chiropractor.” And what bothers me about that is that M.D. has no idea what we do. It’s just a personal vendetta. TW: A vendetta? Have you spoken to M.D.s about this?
PM: I have a few M.D. patients. And they refer a lot of patients to me. I mean, when an M.D. has a patient who comes in for headaches all the time, a lot of them know medicine isn’t good. So they don’t like to [prescribe] it. I have one M.D. who comes in all the time who says, “I gotta look my patient in the face and say, you know, we gotta do lab tests in three months to make sure your liver’s not dying from this drug.” And he doesn’t like doing that. But doesn’t know what else to do. So he sends them to me. TW: What would you do to straighten crossed eyes?
PM: We look at the structure of the spine. So my first guess is, let’s see how he’s set up. So we’ll take films to find out how his body’s functioning. And based on these films, we’ll get an idea of where his stresses are, where things aren’t moving correctly, and then we’ll make adjustments to that structure to correct it. If areas are misaligned, we know the nervous system is being interfered with.
TW: How long would you need to treat someone under those circumstances?
PM: That depends on how drastic his structure is. Based on his film, we set up a specific program. And, about three months down the line, we’ll take a follow-up film and see what changed.
TW: What are some of your more astounding healings?
PM: I’ve had a few people who come in the day before they’re supposed to get lower back surgery, and I’ll say “What do you have to lose? If you’re thinking about surgery, might as well try chiropractic for a couple months, see what we can do.” We’ve been able to prevent surgery before. I had one patient who had brain tumors, had them removed, and then had headaches his whole life, for 30 years. We got rid of his headaches. We had an 80-year-old patient who had asthma her whole life. And then no more asthma. I’ve seen other practices where an autistic child comes in who can’t even walk. With a series of adjustments, the kid’s walking out of the clinic. TW: There are skeptics.
PM: Of course.
TW: The skeptics say that it’s pseudoscientific, that it’s anti-science. How do you respond to that?
PM: Well, what you’re comparing it to is the M.D. profession, where they do double-blind studies, right? That’s the old standard of everything. People don’t realize the double-blind study is flawed.
TW: How’s that?
PM: For example, if you have three plants in a row, and they’re wilting, and they were all deficient in water, and you gave them water, and one of them didn’t get better, one of them got better, and one of them died, well, then it just says water’s no good for the plants – it doesn’t really say what else is wrong. Maybe they’re nutritionally deficient; maybe they’re not getting enough sun.
TW: What do you think chiropractic needs for mainstream acceptance?
PM: I think it’s mainstream right now. It’s already been accepted. We’ve got baby boomers who are not just going to the M.D. and saying, “Give me this drug,” but they’re also going, “What else can I do to stay healthy?” And that’s great. But it’s an uphill battle for us, really - we’re dealing with multi-billion dollar industries that put a commercial on every 10 minutes telling you how great prescription drugs are. So that’s the big competition - the big money. We can’t compete with that. So we just look at our results and plug away. That’s all we can do.
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