Dr. Joel Bohemier at AUREA: We Are Not One-Dimensional Beings

Dr. Joel Bohemier began his AUREA I talk in a forest, not a hospital. His brother-in-law, a cinematographer, had made a documentary called What Plants Talk About, about a researcher who wanted to know how small plants on the floor of a Pacific Northwest forest were thriving with almost no sun. The Douglas firs above them grow to 300 feet, live for a thousand years and block the light.

She traced carbon through the trees and found the firs were sending it underground, through the mycelium, to their young and to unrelated species up to almost a mile away. To Bohemier, a chiropractor, that was the lesson for medicine: a system built only on competition misses how life actually keeps itself well. He said it "kind of flies in the face of survival of the fittest, natural selection, as Charles Darwin taught us."

Where he says healthcare split in two

To see where healthcare should go, Bohemier went back to where he traces the problem: the Renaissance. In his telling, the church took the spiritual part of the body and the men of science took the physical part, and the two were never brought back together.

"In that separation grew the biggest dysfunction to the human that I think we know today, because we've never coalesced the two and brought them back together."

He then walked through the history as he sees it: the Flexner Report of 1910, backed by the Carnegie Foundation and the Rockefellers, which he called the hard push toward "quote-unquote scientific medicine"; and the long fight between the American Medical Association and his own profession, which he said took chiropractors until 1990 to win in court. That is his account of the record, given from the stage.

His sharpest line was about what medicine has become. "Western medicine has become the largest religion on the planet today," he said, pointing to how other religions went along with the rules of the last few years.

Why he says we are not one-dimensional beings

Better technology will not fix this, in his view. Not more data, and not AI that cuts down on mistakes. The flaw is in the underlying idea.

"There's a fatal flaw in the absolute underlying philosophy of our healthcare system, and that fatal flaw is that it is one-dimensional, and we are not one-dimensional beings. We are three-dimensional beings."

He gave examples. Someone who develops rheumatoid arthritis after a childhood trauma gets an injection. Someone with high blood pressure gets a pill, and nobody looks for the cause underneath. He said many people are so used to this that the moment a symptom shows up, they reach for something to take, instead of asking "what is this symptom instructing me?"

His proposal is that the new healthcare treat each person as three-dimensional: mind, body and spirit.

What childhood trauma looks like in the brain

He showed the room SPECT brain scans. One was of an adult who had an emotional trauma as a child, with no physical injury. At forty, he said, the scan showed reduced blood flow in parts of the brain, similar to a brain injury from a blow to the head. In his account, left alone, that can move toward neurodegenerative disease.

He also explained his own field differently from how most people see it. Chiropractors, he said, are not mainly about back and neck pain. They focus on the nerve system, which ties the body to the outside world.

"When we give an adjustment, the purpose of that adjustment is to connect the physical being with the spiritual being, and that happens through the nerve system."

The hopeful part came with the second scan, the same person about a year later. His point was that a brain can physically change when the whole person is cared for: when the childhood trauma is healed and the nervous system is integrated. He closed with the first step he gives anyone: look at the connection between your physical body, your emotional body, your mind and your spiritual self.

This is Dr. Bohemier's view from his practice, not medical advice. Talk to your own doctor before changing any treatment.

Watch the full talk above.

Frequently asked questions

What does Dr. Bohemier mean by three-dimensional healthcare?

Care that treats a person as mind, body and spirit at once. He argues that today's system treats only the physical dimension, so it gives a medication for a symptom instead of looking for the cause, which may be emotional, such as a childhood trauma.

What do the Douglas firs have to do with health?

In the documentary he described, a researcher found that large Douglas firs send carbon through underground fungal networks to young trees and even to unrelated species nearby. He uses it as a picture of a living system that supports itself through connection, not only competition, and says healthcare could learn from it.

What does he say a chiropractic adjustment is for?

He says chiropractors focus mainly on the nerve system, not back pain, and that the purpose of an adjustment is to connect the physical being with the spiritual being through the nerve system. That is his professional view, offered from the stage.