User:Stefaan Vossen

Stefaan Vossen, Chiropractor, born April 10th 1977 in Ghent, Belgium. Currently residing in England with partner Angela and their four children, Megan, Aidan, Mia and Matilda. Raised in then Zaire, now Congo in the province of Mbuji Mayi [1] until 1983 when he moved to Belgium with his family. Born to a nurse and a GP in a family of academics and healthcare professionals he trained to become a chiropractor at the UK-based Anglo-European Chiropractic College. His professional choices were guided and inspired by Geert and his brother Jean-Pierre Meersseman[2], his uncles, both chiropractors in Italy. There are a total of fourteen chiropractors in the extended family of whom all four brothers of his mother, one of which has risen to notable fame amongst other as the head of the medical department of AC Milan football club. The single most important person to his work ethos is his father Alois Vossen, a GP in practice in the village of Assent, Belgium, graduated in 1972 from the University of Ghent, specialising in tropical diseases. His parents, Alois Vossen and Trees Meersseman married on 1 September 1972. His brother Karl, a computer engineer was born in 1974 and his sister, a chiropractor was born in 1987. Stefaan Vossen practiced in Rugby, Warwickshire, UK from 2003 until 2009 and currently practices at his own clinic at the Old Post Office [3] in Warwick, Warwickshire which opened in April 2009. This practice is the first chiropractic practice in the world which is able to offer its patients an insurance-backed, subjective result-based money-back guarantee. The Patient Care Insurance (PCI) was designed in collaboration with Medicalassure, a UK based insurance broker who are pioneering healthcare insurance. He launched and developed a community-based network where chiropractors are getting together to improve the understanding and appreciation of chiropractic care, called The Chiropractic Network.

"At present chiropractors are used as miracle workers with sceptics crying foul-play and inadequacy when there is lack of delivery, but if you think about it that is really quite non-sensical really. In the same way as dentists were used 50 years ago, for extraction rather than prevention, the impact chiropractors can make today is severly restricted by the complete lack of public appreciation that spines are complex structures which require some looking after if you want them to last for a long time. Some of that is education and lifestyle, some of that is simple appreciation for the biomechanical stresses that we are subjected to on a daily basis and some of that is about acknowledging that due to their complexity, backs often go wrong. The real problem is that few people appreciate these facts and that, together with a dose of professional pride makes for confusing situations. Chiropractic care is not "spinal manipulation", that is just one tool out of a very large bag which goes under the name chiropractic care. Chiropractic care is care and advice given by chiropractors and that may be that a patient should have surgery or should do more exercise, but it is still a chiropractor's care... The differentiating fact is the relationship the healthcare provider has with health. For chiropractors it comes for within. This is not just some airy-fairy statement, it is a hughe truth without which no phycisian could help their patients."

A sturdy proponent of education over argumentation he has argued successfully for many years that the debate surrounding the chiropractic profession is one rooted in misinformation rather than poor opinion:

"Many of our critics are well-informed and bright people who have something very valid to say, the unfortunate thing is that due to the fact that they don't know what chiropractic care stands for today, they argue a moot point rooted in historic error; a little like discrediting modern medicine because its father, Galen, had some rather colourful theories and interesting uses for bloodletting."

This point that is often argued in both the press and on internet sites worldwide revolves around the writings of DD and his son BJ Palmer, credited with "discovering" and "developing" the chiropractic profession respectively.

The "discovery" was the idea based on reported observations that by manipulating the spine by use of short-lever methods it was possible to free nerve flow and reinstate the inborn ability to heal, thereby restoring health. These "nerve flow" blockages were termed "subluxations" and were deemed to be physical and observable either through palpation (the skill of feeling misalignment or movement restriction by hand), X-ray or a "nervoscope". The latter was a device which would measure electric surface tension of the skin on either side of the spine and by comparing the two sides locate areas of asymmetry, indicating the possible but theoretical presence of a "subluxation". The Palmers, like many predecessors in healthcare were basing a substantial amount of their theory in philosophical premises largely rooted in Eastern healthcare philosophies. Many similarities are present between the chiropractic and osteopathic philosophy. The main differentiator is that the original theories discussed the merits of improving nerve flow and blood/lymphatic flow in order to promote a return to health respectively.

"Based on what we know today about the human body and neurology in particular, a more discreet approach to the value of chiropractic is warranted in so far that rather than proposing that all disease is rooted in vertebral subluxation it would be more suitable to state that anomalous and dysfunctional movement patterns cause anomalous levels of tissue degeneration. Sometimes, in particular when the level of tissue damage is greater than the level of tissue repair, one must concede that this can cause” dis-ease” and pain. This also means that as much as looking at any mechanisms which increase tissue damage, one must look with equal fervour at those factors that reduce or increase tissue repair."

According to Stefaan Vossen it is equally important to understand that "subluxations" are not to be seen as passive entities. These disturbances may have aspects of them rooted in injury and trauma but are most likely to be active compensatory processes initiated by the physical need to establish an energy efficient configuration. Effectively this means that as far as the brain is concerned, and based on the proprioceptive and nociceptive input it receives from the state the body is in at a given time, the solution it offers is to behave and respond in a certain way in order to minimise unnecessary energy expenditure. Normally it will first and foremost attempt to solve any incongruence, rather than sacrifice tissue, but if muscle spasm, inflammation and any other such attempts to rectify an imbalance fail (either because the imbalance has other secondary or even tertiary contributory factors which perpetuate it) then the brain will choose to sacrifice tissue in reverse order of importance. In addition to this, the process of sacrificing tissue, also known as "compensation", is seen by him to be an active process, which when a certain mass of tissue has been damaged to such a degree that it no-longer can fulfil its compensatory function, other tissues will be relied upon to perpetuate the compensatory mechanism

."This is why, as a rule the most malleable tissues like myofascial tissue, are the first to be affected by such dysfunctions, and only later ligamentous and cartilagenous tissues, and ultimately discal and neurologcal tissues. This is why discal injuries in the absence of a history of spinal dysfunction are exceedingly rare."

Finally the role of spinal manipulation in this is not to "put a vertebra back into line" but rather to trigger spinal cord reflexes by rapid stretching of the joint capsule and surrounding ligaments. This elicits powerful signals to the spinal cord and brain, effectively "resetting" the parameters of what the brain "thinks" is going on in that part of the body. Sustained and repeated "resetting may alter movement patterns and successful treatment very much depends on whether any factors which may perpetuate poor, dysfunctional movement patterns have been addressed at the same time. This is why he sees it to be important to accurately evaluate and treat for the presence of any gait, orthognastic or ocular imbalances.

"These all influence the way the brain perceives the body and its environment, and therefore alters the way the body responds to its environment."

Many additional problems such as memory, pain perception, lifestyle factors, chemical (nutritional, toxicological and endocrine) end emotional factors add to this already potentially fairly elusive picture. Much overlap and interaction may exist between these different fields and this makes being able to predict outcome so very difficult at times.

"Ultimately we should strive to develop and bring together the technology and treatment protocols to asses and address all contributory factors, and then, and only then will we have true healthcare as opposed to sickness care. This is what I believe chiropractic philosophy originally aimed towards, but unfortunately failed to deliver so far, leaving much confusion in its wake."

He acknowledges that this is by no means the sole remit of chiropractors:

"It's about building a team, in which every party knows their role and their field of expertise and are called upon whenever appropriate and financially relevant. It is also obvious to me that acupuncture, trigger-point therapy, massage and in fact all forms of therapy which have the ability to alter the brain's perception of the body whether they be physical, chemical or mental, all have the potential of altering the way it perceives the body and the way it responds to the environment. When these therapies are successful it is only so because the stimulus they offer is powerful enough to replace the dysfunctional movement pattern for a more productive one, effectively helping the brain cross a bridge it couldn't or wouldn't cross by itself.

This team approach is one which he is currently developing in his practice in the centre of Warwick, Warwickshire, where he hasbuilt one of the UK's largest chiropractic practices. Much of the time he is not practicing he is involved in research and education. He has lectured publicly and privately to improve the general understanding of the uses and applications of chiropractic care. He has worked for numerous football, cricket, golf, athletic squads. He is the medical director of Shakespear promotions boxing stable and is in the process of reviewing treatment protocols with one of the largest and most complex RCT's ever done in the back pain field.