Submitted by Nancy M. Potts

I wish to share with each of you a non-traditional use of a chiropractor in addres-sing-life for healing what could be a life long and life-threatening condition and what "standard" medical treating professionals regarded could only be corrected with life-long use of prescription medication and monitoring of the condition. In fact, many medical professionals would regard the true story I am sharing with you as not being possible to accomplish with chiropractic intervention. Yet, I am living proof of physical healing to the contrary.

At the time of my writing this article, I am a 75 year old woman. Most of us think of going to the chiropractor for a problem with pain associated with the back. Certainly, as a result of a "chance meeting" on that fateful day and this one manipulation of my neck, my life changed for the better. Further, that one manipulation has held for about another 25 years at the point of this writing and I have never required an additional manipulation.

From birth I was always extremely tired. I could not remember being otherwise. Going through school was difficult for me not from a scholastic viewpoint but from physical problems manifesting as being exceptionally tired. I remember going home from school and taking naps. In fact, I continued taking these naps even in high school -- a point in time far beyond which one expected having to do this.

After I married in 1950, I began to actively pursue my problem. Previously my mother and her doctor had tried unsuccessfully to pinpoint the difficulty. Finally a doctor I visited after my marriage diagnosed my problem as an inactive thyroid, different than the more common thyroid gland irregularities in other people, i.e. underactive or overactive gland function. I had visited many famous hospitals, famous and not so well known M.D.'s etc. in an effort to correct this extreme fatigue. Each and every M.D. insisted I must never stop taking the prescribed pills even though taking the medication seemed to be accomplishing nothing. It seemed I was destined to continue as I had the first 50 years of life in a constant struggle to keep alert.

Then, perhaps coincidentally, as a result of my knee acting up, I went to see a local chiropractor. As I was leaving this chiropractor's office, he advised my neck was out of line and this misalignment needed correction. He proceeded to discuss the alignment of my neck which was resulting in pressure on the thyroid gland. He thought possibly his working on this area of my neck would bring it around to normal and take the pressure off the gland. He explained, however, he did not know if after 50 some years of inactivity the gland would still operate efficiently. He went on to advise also I "might find I did not need the thyroid pills anymore". Both my husband and I laughed about this. After all, multiple medical doctors, including at many famous facilities, had consistently said I must take the pills forever. To the contrary, this relatively unknown local chiropractor said I might not need them after having treated my neck as a result of a visit for my knee.

As life worked out, I started employment in a local branch of a bank at about the same time.

After a couple of months of employment, I began to "feel very jittery", which was both very unnatural and personally unnerving to me.

In one of those moments of insight, having remembered what the chiropractor had said, I then decided to cut the thyroid dosage from two pills daily to one per day. Cutting suddenly drastically to one-half the dosage of medication intended to stimulate thyroid activity took care of the jitters for about one month.....after which the "jittery" feeling began again.

Not knowing what else to do as I was concerned about cutting the medication any further due to the dire warnings from previous doctors, I set up an appointment with my regular medical doctor asking for a thyroid test (by this time in my life, I must have had what seemed like 500 such tests and they all showed zero or total inactivity).

To the testing doctor's surprise, this standard thyroid test showed perfectly normal activity. Routine thyroid tests continue to remain normal to date, about 25 years later. I have never required another chiropractic manipulation for my thyroid. Contrary to the myriad of all these prescribing and testing M.D.'s, I remain to date off the "necessary" life-sustaining pills.

Additionally, my belief system of intervention which all these doctors had insisted upon has been changed forever also.

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