Source: Dynamic Chiropractic

Retired Brigadier General Rebecca Halstead was interviewed several times this past Memorial Day. During one interview, she commented on a recent Johns Hopkins study that revealed musculoskeletal and connective-tissue injuries, not combat injuries, are the top reasons for medical evacuations from Iraq. Halstead then shared the following:

“Think about the conditions that our soldiers are living and performing in. I just recently visited the Connecticut VA center, and I was speaking to a young sergeant who had redeployed from Iraq … He spent two years getting physical therapy for a herniated disc, and finally he was able to get to a chiropractor within the VA system, and I happened to be at the VA center the day he was being helped [by the chiropractor], and he said, ‘Ma’am, think about it; if when we came in off our patrols – if we could see a chiropractor down range, can you imagine how much better we would feel on a daily basis?'”

Gen. Halstead also mentioned that chiropractic has been approved as a military benefit for 10 years, but isn’t fully resourced yet; and then made perhaps her most powerful observation regarding the value of chiropractic care, particularly as it relates to our nation’s armed forces:

“I happen to be a firm believer … that we could exponentially improve our readiness if we sustained and maintained the human piece of equipment the way we [do] our vehicles and everything else. And a part of that, I really believe, would be chiropractic care that keeps you from breaking [rather than fixing things after they’ve been damaged].”