Click Here to Return to Articles and Information
Like all other medical students I was taught the standard answers to patients who reported they had been cured at the hands of chiropractors. These responses included “You’re lucky” – or the ever popular “spontaneous remission.” Indeed, to this day I am frustrated at the ability of chiropractors to achieve “spontaneous remission” in patients with heart disease, arthritis, cancer and other serious chronic ailments. It seems that we MDs do not get our fair share. Why must I advise patients: If you want a spontaneous remission, see a chiropractor. Robert Mendelsohn, MD
Boosting Your Immunity Through CHIROPRACTIC
In 1975, Ronald Pero, Ph.D., chief of cancer prevention research at New York’s Preventive Medicine Institute and professor in Environmental Health at New York University, began developing scientifically valid ways to estimate individual susceptibility to various chronic diseases.
Dr. Pero and his colleagues found strong evidence that an individual’s susceptibility to cancer could be determined by measuring the presence of various DNA-repairing enzymes following exposure to carcinogenic or “mutagenic” chemicals. Lack of those enzymes, Dr. Pero said, “definitely limits not only your lifespan, but also your ability to resist serious disease consequences.”
Dr. Pero was also fascinated by the relationship of various hormones with cancer-inducing agents. Since the nervous system regulates hormone balances, he postulated that the nervous system also influences susceptibility to cancer. Along these lines, it is well documented that various kinds of spinal cord injury are associated with a high risk of developing cancer, particularly lymphomas and lymphatic leukemias.
In 1986, Ronald Pero, Ph D., collaborated with Joseph Flesia, D.C., chairman of the board of directors for the Chiropractic Basic Science Research Foundation, Inc., and they began a research project. Using Dr. Pero’s tests to gauge resistance to hazardous environmental chemicals, they hypothesized that people with cancer would have a suppressed immune response to such a toxic burden. While healthy people should have a relatively enhanced response to any stress or toxic burden. This connection ultimately led Dr. Pero to consider Chiropractic as a potential alternative for reducing the risk of immune breakdown and disease.
Measuring 107 individuals who had received long-term Chiropractic care, Pero’s team turned up some surprising findings. All of the chiropractic patients/test subjects were considered “genetically normal” – that is, they had no obvious genetic reasons for increased or decreased resistance to disease. The chiropractic test subjects were average people presumably with a wide variety of ancestoral health history, some had a parent or grandparent with cancer or other serious illness, while others did not. Therefore, any difference in resistance to disease, had to be accounted for by environmental factors or therapeutic actions. The only common thread for the chiropractic group was the chiropractic care. The chiropractic patients had a 200 percent greater immune competence than people who had not received chiropractic care, and a 400 percent greater immune competence than people with cancer or other serious diseases. Surprisingly, despite the wide range of ages and family histories in this study, the immune competence of the chiropractic group did not show any decline with age – it was uniform for the entire group. Dr. Pero concluded, “Chiropractic may optimize whatever genetic abilities you have so that you can fully resist serious disease. I am very excited to see that without chemical intervention this group of patients under chiropractic care did show a very improved response.” Ultimately, this study led Dr. Pero to add “lack of chiropractic care” to his list of possible causes of cancer.
Dr. Ronald Pero has published over 160 papers in peer-reviewed journals.