Introducing Dr. Mark Force and his practice here in Ashland, Oregon. For the past 40 years, Dr. Force has worked in supporting his clients to get the most out of their lives. And while many people believe chiropractic care to be only about bones, Dr. Force shows us that the work is truly about the nervous system. In today’s interview we go into more depth and discuss the big idea that illness is a result from the breakdown of the central nervous system.
Dr. Force, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today and congratulations on the great contribution you have made to our community.
Thanks, Shields. It’s been really gratifying to live in Ashland the last nine years and I’m really enjoying my practice. The beauty of the work that I do is the learning is never ending. The beauty of daily practice is to see people heal physically, biochemically, mentally, and even spiritually.
There is our mission statement above a huge picture of a lotus when entering the office. It’s there so that everyone will see it and be clear about what the mission is from doing the work that we do together.
It says, “The lotus represents each of us. Each petal represents an aspect of our original and innate nature. As we heal from our injuries; physical, chemical and mental; the petals open and we show our deepest and truest nature, the jewel in the lotus. This is our work.”
I love seeing this as I walk into the office each day. It’s a reminder and call to action about how each person should be treated. I want people to be free of their limitations and be able to be true to their nature, to be self-determined and to fully realize the potential of who they are innately. I want people to be able to live their lives large.
The work I do has been welcomed in the community and I’m grateful for that.
Dr. Force, a huge topic that relates to your daily work is the breakdown of the central nervous system from stress. Please say more about this.
Chronic stress breaks our systems down. It doesn’t matter whether that stress is physical, chemical, or mental or a combination of these things. Our body has to adapt and much of this is mediated by the central nervous system – brain and spinal cord. Most importantly, a part of the brain called the limbic system is called to action when we are under stress. The limbic system is where all the input from the body is processed, distributed to the hemisphere of the brain, and where our thalamus, hypothalamus, pituitary, and autonomic nervous system respond to help our bodies adapt and the challenges we need to meet in our lives.
Those systems break down if they are constantly under load from too much physical, chemical or mental stress over too long a period of time. Our systems are not designed to be constantly responding to stress. The nervous system becomes overstimulated, inflamed, and can break down adversely affecting our body functions. When we are in this pattern it is common to have a number of health problems which seem to evade a diagnosis and for which treatment is really just relief because it doesn’t address the source, which is the chronic stress and the breakdown of our systems adapting to it.
It is common to have multiple symptoms – problems with sleep, fatigue, foggy headedness, poor memory, no drive, digestive problems, systemic inflammation with sore joints and muscles and aches and pains all over that go on and on and don’t heal. The list can be very long.
What’s missing is making the connection of all of these signs and symptoms to the systems breaking down from too much stress. Where much of this mediated is in the limbic system of the brain and the diagnosis associated with this is central sensitization syndrome. There’s been a lot of research on this pathophysiology and it is being more and more recognized in recent years.
Most people have heard of the vagus nerve and how getting it to work better will make you healthier. The vagus nerve is part of this system but the model expands on it and more addresses people healing from stress-caused illness.
What is hypervigilance? How do we know if we might have it and how does it affect our health?
Hypervigilance is a conditioned state that causes one to be in a constant state of fight-or-flight. It occurs from people growing up in very stressful environments or from experiencing events that made them feel threatened. You can also come from too much physical stress over too long a period of time or from environments or diets that cause chemical stress on the system. Peeling away these stressors and convincing a person’s system that it’s no longer threatened, that it can relax, rest, and recover is the key to their systems functioning as designed and their healing.
Dr. Force, why is it that people get treated for all sorts of ailments but very rarely are things addressed at this level?
The most missing element in healthcare is a differential diagnosis. Sometimes a diagnosis is easy. An infection for which testing shows the cause. Sometimes a person has broken a bone or worn down a joint to where it can’t heal and needs to be replaced. These diagnoses are pretty straightforward.
Other times, it can be more complicated. I’ll tell a story. A good number of years ago I saw a woman with a chronic frozen shoulder which had been treated for a number of years without success. During her history it became clear that she likely had a gallbladder disorder and that the shoulder problem was caused by reflex pain from her gallbladder. Physical exam and laboratory findings confirmed her gallbladder problem and I recommended care for it which consisted primarily of self-care. After six weeks, re-examination and bloodwork showed that there was no change in her gallbladder or her frozen shoulder. Further examinations and consultations with the patient revealed unhealed emotional stress from her husband having had an affair a number of years ago that was not resolved between them. Referring her for counseling and doing neurological reflex work for the emotional stress resulted in healing of the gallbladder and the frozen shoulder, confirmed from physical exam and laboratory findings.
This is how stress can cause illness and reflects how a deeper diagnosis can solve a problem.
What type of transformation are you witnessing when you see people address their health care at the level of the nervous system?
Their body changes, their chemistry changes, their psyche changes. They become free and it’s beautiful.
Integration of the nervous system is incredibly important to healing. Even when patients need nutrition, exercise, self-care, emotional care, I always start with integrating a nervous system as a foundation for all of the rest. Typically people have injuries that have compromised their nervous system and it is adapting as best it can but is in a state of neurological disorganization. This state results in dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system and prevents their system from functioning properly internally.
As we accumulate injuries the feedback to the central nervous system becomes confused and represents a tremendous amount of work for the central nervous system to process. The result is inflammation in the central nervous system and breakdown of control body functions. What restores organization of the nervous system is treatment with chiropractic care to spine and extremities, osteopathic physical medicine including craniosacral therapies, and non-needle treatment of the acupuncture system. When discovered and resolved, the nervous system becomes organized, relaxes, and neurological control of body systems recovers.
Dr. Force, you witness change on a daily basis with your patients. What are some of your favorite moments you share in working together?
It’s beautiful to see people realize that they are healing, that their life is getting bigger, and that they’ll be able to pick up some dreams they put aside because of the limitations they’ve had in their health.
It’s common for people to say that they want to be free of pain of some kind or free of some physical limitation. I asked people why they want to be better; what they want to do with being free of pain or physical limitation. That way I can get clear about what they really want and have a definite goal. I remember treating a guy who wanted to be able to whitewater raft again; he wanted to row a boat on the river. So that was our goal – the measurable marker for success. Commonly, a goal for older folks is to be able to travel or be able to play with their grandkids without limitations. It’s beautiful when people succeed at these benchmarks.
Dr. Force, a big idea that you like to share with your patients is that one’s health care is more dependent on what you do than on what one’s doctors does. Please say more.
Healthcare is extremely important and can be an essential catalyst for people to be healthy. And, ultimately, it is what people do for themselves on a daily basis taking care of their health that makes the biggest difference. Ultimately, self-care trumps healthcare in terms of how healthy a person truly is over time. We see this evidenced in the “Blue Zones” of the world, where people tend to live well and healthy late into their lives. These areas show common themes where people eat fresh, locally grown, unrefined food, exercise regularly and reasonably and have deep and constant relationships with family and friends, relax daily, etc. They are practicing reasonable self-care and they thrive and typically need little healthcare because of it.
I think this is a really important idea to put out into the world. So many times we are letting go of our power and thus the responsibility to our own health.
We are responsible for our own health. We need to switch our focus here to where we look at doctors as subcontractors and we are the contractors for our own health. We need to be in charge. We may need help and we may need guidance, but ultimately our health is up to us. Healthcare alone will never be enough to be healthy
Dr. Force, you are extremely proud to have three amazing daughters, two of whom are here in the Rogue Valley running their own practices. Please introduce us to them.
I do have three remarkable daughters. Yes, two of them have chosen to be chiropractic physicians. I didn’t push them to it, they made their own choices, and they are remarkably good at the work. It’s beautiful to see. Dr. Hannah Conry has a practice in Medford, Thriving Family Chiropractic, and Dr. Tenaya Force practices at Southern Oregon Chiropractic in Ashland.
You also have a very active lifestyle and enjoy living to the fullest. What are some of the favorite moments you like to spend now with your daughters and grandchildren?
We have always done a lot of camping, backpacking, whitewater rafting, and traveling. We are private whitewater rafters and have done private trips on rivers around the American West, including the Grand Canyon, Rogue River, Salmon River in Idaho. I ski and do mountaineering with my family, including grandkids. In August, I’ll be on a backpacking trip with my grandsons in the Wind River range in Wyoming. I also do rock and ice climbing and mountaineering. We enjoy the outdoors together.
Dr. Force, please tell us about your webinar on limbic stress that is available to be viewed online and any additional resources that are available to our readers.
On my website, drforce.com, you can view a webinar on limbic stress which covers the model of chronic and complex illness arising from chronic stress. It can be viewed for free and the link is on my resource page. A few years back I traveled around the country teaching doctors about the model of limbic stress and chronic and complex illness and it was well received.
Dr. Force, please give us a brief interview of the services you are currently providing and who should come to see you.
My specialty is applied kinesiology and I am a diplomate and instructor for the International College of Applied Kinesiology. When done fully, applied kinesiology integrates conventional medicine’s diagnostic tools including imaging and laboratory testing with chiropractic, osteopathic physical medicine including craniosacral therapy, naturopathy including clinical nutrition, and Chinese medicine including acupuncture. I am a fellow with the International Academy of Medical Acupuncture and practiced acupuncture for 30 years in Arizona. My license doesn’t allow me to do acupuncture in Oregon, so I use non-needle treatment instead for balancing acupuncture meridians.
What are some red flags that often come to your attention when working with patients?
People believing that treatment alone will solve all of their health problems is the most common red flag. To be healthy we have to take responsibility for ourselves physically and emotionally
What is the best advice or wisdom to which you like to refer?
Perfection is an idea; in abstraction. Perfection is not real. Work to achieve good and then work on making it better. Health is like anything else in life; it’s all based on cause-and-effect. What you do is what you get. Everything in life is an experiment. Keep experimenting and observing and adjusting accordingly. When you’re getting what you want, keep doing it. Don’t worry about perfection, no one has it and neither will you.
Dr. Force, do you have any last thoughts or comments you would like to share with our readers today?
I think I’ve talked too much already!
Thank you again for taking the time to speak with us here in the LocalsGuide.
Thanks Shields for letting me share. I hope it serves.
Learn More:
The Elements of Health
525 A Street, Ashland
drforce.com
541-633-4633
