Bill Kopatich talks with Dr. Ray Drury, a Charlotte, NC Upper Cervical Chiropractor, about a little known secret in Health Care. Dr. Drury has been practicing and teaching Upper Cervical Chiropractic Care, a specific form of chiropractic care, for over twenty years and has helped patients from all over the world suffering from a variety of conditions. Dr. Drury has recently written a book, The Best Kept Secret in Health Care, No Drugs or Surgery Required, which was published by Two Harbors Press.
Bill: Dr. Drury, thanks so much for taking your time today to talk about your approach to health care that is not widely known. I found your book very compelling and informative on Upper Cervical care, which you practice. Can you summarize how Upper Cervical chiropractic care differs from general chiropractic care?
Dr. Drury: Upper Cervical and general chiropractic care share a mutual history and they are both based on whether or not the bones in the spine are properly aligned to allow the messages from the brain to reach the body efficiently to maintain health. General chiropractic corrects misalignment in the full spine while Upper Cervical focuses only on the upper two cervical vertebrae in the neck, the atlas and the axis.
Your brain is designed to be level and has its own reflex called the righting reflex to make sure the head always stays level or parallel to the ground. If one of the two upper bones in the spine is misaligned, then those other things going on below there are compensations, and the body has to make those compensations, bend, and twist, and curve the spine in an attempt to level the head, all which can lead to multiple health issues.
With Upper Cervical we use data from precise X-ray analysis that is accurate down to one-quarter of a degree and other very specialized instruments to determine the exact correction that is needed for precise alignment of the upper two bones in the spine. The very specific correction performed with Upper Cervical allows for the correction to hold for long-term results.
Bill: Do doctors that specialize in Upper Cervical generally first go to a general chiropractic school and then get the Upper Cervical specialist training or is there some other route?
Dr. Drury: That’s the only route. The doctors first go through chiropractic school. Then they will do a post-doctorate program, which is typically no less than 100 hours of very specialized training. We have to go through the general chiropractic college to get the DC degree to be able to practice chiropractic. Many Upper Cervical specialists discover the Upper Cervical field while still in chiropractic school; others decide to practice Upper Cervical well after they have started practicing general chiropractic.
I teach doctors to perform Upper Cervical care, so I have had some chiropractors that are 50 years or older come and take my course. Some of them have been practicing general chiropractic for 30 years. I actually have a doctor here right now from Sweden who’s training with me here in Charlotte for two weeks so that he can go back to Sweden and do Upper Cervical work.
Bill: As an Upper Cervical chiropractor do you also practice general chiropractic care?
Dr. Drury: My answer to that would be no. Obviously, I went through general chiropractic college, so I know how to do everything that anybody else that comes out of chiropractic school learns how to do, but we’ve found that doing less actually achieves more. My focus is on proper correction of the upper two bones in the neck because that is the gateway of the nervous system, delivering critical healing messages from the brain to the rest of the body.
Bill: From my reading of your book, it appears that Upper Cervical chiropractors as well as general chiropractors don’t claim to cure anything or to treat particular conditions or diseases, yet there are many thousands of success stories of treatment with Upper Cervical Care. How do you explain the difference?
Dr. Drury: Upper Cervical chiropractors are trained to find and correct misalignment in the upper cervical spine, the top two bones. When the misalignment is corrected, the nervous system is allowed to flow unimpeded from the brain to the rest of the body, which in turn, allows the body to heal itself. I don’t treat specific conditions. I find the interference to patients’ normal healing potential, remove it, and then allow the body to heal itself.
We all have everything we need within our bodies to be 100% healthy. We all have what chiropractors call Innate Intelligence, that intelligence that took our bodies from two cells and turned us into the incredible beings that we are. That Innate Intelligence is the energy that travels through the nervous system.
If you cut your finger, you don’t have to put anything on it. You don’t have to rub it. You don’t have to shoot it with anything. You just keep it clean and it heals. That is an intelligence that we were born with that controls our body 100% of the time and helps us fight off bacteria, and infections, and viruses, and diseases, and all these things. If that process though gets interfered with, then that’s when sickness and disease can come in.
As Upper Cervical doctors, we don’t fix anything. We just remove the interference to the normal function of the body. As we say, we move the bones. The Innate Intelligence does the healing. No man in the history of mankind has ever healed anything, but we go in and remove any interference to the healing potential already within us.
Bill: How many doctors have been trained and are practicing Upper Cervical care?
Dr. Drury: Right now there are probably about 1200 in the world, probably about 800 or 900 in the United States. Not all of these doctors are strictly practicing Upper Cervical as in my practice.
Bill: How do you educate your patients and what type of follow up treatment is recommended for Upper Cervical care?
