We have a lot of arthritic patients. I asked my husband, who was a chiropractor before he developed early dementia, if he had noticed that our practice was getting older, and he said “Have you noticed that we are?” We tend to see people our own age and a few family members.
Arthritic conditions, mobility, and capacity-affecting conditions are the most common things we see, and I think it's the best thing we offer.
Structure and function are interlinked always. If people are not able to move well, they don't sleep well. They don't eat well. They become socially isolated, and they may become depressed. The body-mind connection cannot be overstated. Eventually, you end up with chronic illness.
I work as a CPP medical member. I do hearings once a month. I'm about to go into them in the next three days. We see so many fibromyalgia people who are unable to find answers psychologically or from the rheumatologist. The only thing we can offer to date is some management. Early prevention includes what we can offer physically and the use of and referral to all those specialists to prevent some of the early psychological components of fibromyalgia.
You also mentioned examples of good collaborative centres. The one most commonly known is the family health unit at St. Mike's, which has a chiropractic physiotherapy clinic that's working very successfully. There are models in Calgary. There are excellent models in northern Europe, where chiropractors attend university with the medics and split off in fourth year. They're in the hospitals. They're in the state-run clinics. There is just no barrier. We've a lot of lessons to learn from across the water.