Current Trends and the Future of Chiropractic Research In conversation with Dr. Brian Budgell feature I f 1975 marked chiropractic’s annus mirabilis and propelled at least the beginnings of chiropractic research into the mod-ern era – as I contend in my cover article – then, in the opinion of Dr. Brian Budgell, director of the neurophysiology lab at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CMCC), “research to answer chiropractic questions has now evolved to the same calibre as any other research in the biomedical fields.” Dr. Budgell specializes in neurophysiology research at CMCC and is currently investigating the effects of somatic stimulation on spinal cord blood flow. A 1986 CMCC graduate, he recently joined the department after a lengthy period of research in Japan dedicated principally to the study of somatoautonomic reflexes. Dr. Brian Budgell He is involved in several international collaborations and brings a global, multidisciplinary perspective to spotting current trends in chiropractic research. Dr. Budgell shares his thoughts with Canadian Chiropractor on how chiropractic research is meeting the needs of the profession and where it may be headed in the years to come. Steve Zoltai is the collections de-velopment librarian and archivist for CMCC and is a member of the Canadian Chiropractic Historical association. He was previously the assistant executive director of the Health Sciences Information Con-sortium of Toronto. He has worked for several public and private libraries and with the University of Toronto archives. Steve comes by his interest in things historical honestly – he worked as a field archeologist for the Province of Manitoba. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Steve Zoltai CORE CHIROPRACTIC PRINCIPLES From Dr. Budgell’s vantage point, “a lot of today’s chiropractic research is published in the same journals that biomedical research is published in, but is not accessed by the chiropractic profes-sion and therefore the quality and quantity of the research remains largely unappreciated.” In particular, he recognizes a growing movement among chiropractic researchers toward investi-gating core chiropractic questions. “If you looked back to the 1980s it would have been difficult for researchers to have a focus as they would still have been in a developmental stage enhancing their technical abilities – so you would not have seen a trend. Now, however, we are in an age where you can look at any number of researchers who are chiropractors and their research is no longer scattered. There’s a program there. They are pursuing a question and often, though it’s not explicitly expressed, they are really investigating core principles.” Dr. Budgell cites contemporary research referencing the phenomena that occurs when “you pinch a nerve and block the flow of information to the organs and therefore interfere with the behaviour of the organism, or that a bone out of place could change the behaviour of the spinal cord” as an example of his point. “These are core principles though they are not cast that way when people are proposing and publishing their research. Generally, biologically oriented research is wrapped in the mecha-nistic model of biomedicine without necessarily explicitly proposing the investigation of core principles. An example of this type of research is Geoffrey Bove’s work with the phenomenon surrounding pinched nerves, some of which has been done at Harvard Medical School and is now being continued at the University of New England. When it was published in the Journal of Physiology, it did not reference chiropractic but had clear relevance to the profession.” Bove, himself, is a 1988 CMCC graduate and is the first doctor of chiropractic to attain fac-ulty status at the prestigious Harvard Medical School. Dr. Budgell cites perhaps an even more fundamental example: “Philip Bolton’s work inves-tigating HIO – (Hole in One) – upper cervical manipulation to determine how it produces its observed physiological effects. The idea that the two upper vertebrae are absolutely essential to human health is a central chiropractic principle which harkens back to D.D. and B.J. Palm-er’s basic tenants of chiropractic. Though Bolton would not make that overt connection, any Continued on Page 61 www.canadianchiropractor.ca 40 • CaNaDIaN CHIROPRaCTOR | DECEMBER 2010
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