Carl H. Jelstrup is a legend in the Puget Sound area of Washington.
He is a Norwegian by birth, a chiropractor by training, a cranial-sacral
specialist and electro-medicine practitioner by choice, Carl is
most of all an iconoclast and an independent thinker. Still competitively
skiing in his late 60’s, Carl, who nevertheless says ski
machines is ‘bad exercise’ is considered by many to
be a ‘genius’ when it comes to intractable head and
neck problems. These conditions he manages to fix in days,
not weeks or months, thereby earning the enthusiasm of his patients,
their families and sometimes the envy, or the celebration of his
peers.
In this interview Carl talks about some of the things he is interested
in. The conversation ranges from:
1. Biophonics – a diagnostic tool he’s integrated into
his
practice in collaboration with a physicist Bob
Shane
and his colleague Jeanne Kreider.
2. What it was like to return to the Norway of his birth and
find that many of his childhood friends had since
died
from poor health.
3. Carl’s great clinical success treating whiplash quickly.
4. The connection between dental health and overall body
wellness.
5. The usually intractable nature of anxiety and how a single,
low cost supplement seems to be able to alleviate
it.
6. Training under B.J. Palmer – the founder of modern
chiropractic.
7. The joys of having a cash practice with no advertising
8. Health ‘victims’ vs. health ‘warriors’.
9. and what is going on within five miles of his practice,
which is so great he never wants to go back to
Norway
for good.
10.The Bellevue Wellness Center.
Carl H. Jelstrup, DC (Jelstrup):
‘I work in a field I think I can term ‘electro- medicine’.
I consider the body a well-integrated bioelectric system. I and everyone
else in the chiropractic, osteopathic, medical, and dental fields,
in the first quarter of physics and physiology, years ago, have written
papers on subject. We discovered the whole body was run on
bioelectric principles.
To our understanding that was the very core of how human beings functioned. We
were very excited about this….. and then the quarter was over – so
we threw the whole thing out! (Laughter) Next quarter was Anatomy
101, and the stuff about bioelectric properties was totally forgotten.
When we graduated, it was stuck so far deep into our subconscious
as to never emerge again.
At this time, we started to split up and go into different directions.
In the health care system today, one major direction is called emergency
medicine. This is basically what the medical system is all about.
All the big television programs, ER- Chicago Hospital – all
glamorize this: people coming in, it is high drama, and very exciting
to watch – if you have nothing else to do. And it is good.
Emergency medicine is a real service to people who are in a state
of medical emergency of any kind. They are saving lives. They are
helping people to pick up the pieces again, giving them a chance
to begin again. American emergency medical system – they know
what they are doing, and I have nothing but respect for them.
Then you have the other system, where I belong. We may call
this the field of preventive care. In the medical field, you have
the ‘general practitioner’ (though this is a rapidly
vanishing breed), and then you have the osteopathic physician, the
chiropractor and the dentist who, instead of practicing regular dentistry,
is practicing biocompatible dentistry. Then there is the naturopath.
Then, lo and behold, here in the State of Washington, there is a
new breed of people coming - the massage therapists. They have a
good, basic education, a hard year of training, and then they have
the right to touch people. With the exception of what the dentist
does, the naturopaths, the chiropractors, the massage therapists,
and whoever else is out there – all have one thing in common.
We all have the permission to touch people, to deal with their specific
problems
Now, speaking for myself and the Bellevue Wellness
Center where I work, I base my practice on the concept of an equilateral
triangle. The baseline of the triangle deals with the ‘structure’.
One of the sides deals with the ‘emotions’, and the other
side deals with ‘genetic/chemical stress’. As we
have worked with the concept of this triangle, we realized each side
of the triangle had an effect upon each other. I always write ‘structure’ on
the bottom on the bottom of the triangle, because it is my foundation. It
is the very foundation of my thinking. Out from this concept
I have, over the years, developed some knowledge and come to certain
conclusions in my work, the primary one being is that structure controls
function.
I can give you an example of this. If you are dealing with somebody
in deep distress – there has been a recent death, the woman
is left with no one to help her, she has two children, the house
rent is due and her husband has died. In grief like this, you do
not see the structural expression of ‘openness’ –(he
gestures with arms outstretched,) – it goes into a compressed
form that sinks down (gesturing a crumpled, slumped, shoulders moving
towards each other position). As it sinks down, it creates actually
cardiac compression in the process of sinking down, and gravitational
pressure. So you can study people from a structural point of view
and just by observing them; you can get a pretty good insight into
what has happened. You can study their cranial form, their
facial features, the curvature of their spine, their gait pattern,
the way their feet contact the ground, pretty soon, you get a good
idea as to the health of the individual.
Now, structure is tied into a system in the body, besides muscles
and ligaments and articulations – there is a system in the
body that protects the nervous system. This is considered to be at
the core of structural observations, and this system is called the
meningeal system. The meningeal system is the wrapping around
the brain and the spinal cord and it is tied down in the area of
the sacrum down to the coccyx, in the area called phylum terminalis. These
are the big guy wires down at the bottom. Over the years, we have
taken x-rays that show structural distortions, but we could not always
see the whole story. X-rays at best are limited. The x-rays
do tell you the function of the body in certain planes like the horizontal – frontal
and lateral plane which is also called the sagittal plane. I feel
this plane to be the most important one in determining menigeal stress
in the spine which shows the core stress of the system.
This understanding was developed by a Swedish researcher Dr.Alf
Breig. He wrote the book called Adverse Mechanical Tension of
the Central Nervous System. This is ground breaking work
on the body’s reaction to stress.
People say, “Big deal – so we have a wrapping around
our brain and spinal cord. So,what else is new? What does that do?
What does this mean?” Well, sometimes you get interference
in this system, just like if you were to hold the two ends of a pen,
where one end represents the head, and the other end represents the
tail. Regardless of where there is tension on the pen, or a causative
factor for the tension, it will affect the totality of the structure – the
pen as a whole will rotate, will be affected by that tension. This
is core observation. Out of these observations, we have learned when
there is structural tension in certain parts of the body; it leads
to any different conditions.
I will give you a few examples of this: If you have a spine,
where you have a situation called “pottenger saucer,” in
the upper dorsal area (this simply means a compression or flattening
out of the spine that sets up an irritation of the menigeal system
in that area.) This irritation can be tested by simple applied
kinesiological testing, or the area can be palpated and it will illicit
pain responses. It can also be tested by a system we have developed
in our clinic, called ‘biophonics’ which I will touch
upon later. There are many ways to test it, but the most obvious
one is if you touch it, the patient hurts. Pretty cut and dry.
If you have some pressure in this area, there are two things that
will automatically happen to a person. You will have interference
into the pericardial area, and this will in turn stress the
heart, and thus deplete the person’s energy. There is
no way around this, absolutely no way around it. Furthermore, there
is generally a tendency to have gastrointestinal problems, because
of stress in the upper G.I. tract. This is just one example,
of many examples I could give. By studying the meningeal system you
can literally read out what is going on with the patient.
If you have the opposite condition in the upper dorsal area, this
is called a ‘dowager’s hump ‘, which we often
get as we get older. Once this happens, it sets into motion
a whole series of events which affects the whole physiological and
biochemical behavior of that individual.
It does not matter what else you are doing to overcome this – it
does not matter what vitamins you take, what supplements etc. once
you have compromised the meningeal system you feel pain and there
is no way around it.
There are however, specific ways to test and monitor this system. Simple
tests any doctor can do. You can put the patient on a relatively
firm table, not a soft cushioned table but a firm one. Check
the leg length and rotate the feet medially. Whenever there is
a meningeal stress you will always have a short and tight leg compared
to the opposite leg. This is one of the many ways you can
look into the system. And this is a 10 out of a 10 when it comes
to results.This is what many health care professionals have not really
quite caught on to.
In the field of nutrition we think, “Well, if you eat well…” This
is fine, but if you eat well, and the pressures in the meningeal system
were to be removed, well then you are doing something right. There
is nobody measuring this, there is really no way of knowing if this
is happening or not. If you are doing homeopathy, naturopathy, chiropractic,
or osteopathy, if you do not monitor what is happening to the meningeal
system, you have no idea where that system is going.
You can verify this meningeal stress simply by observing structure
and comparing it to a normal system - strictly by observation. If
you have pronation in the feet, you will always get pelvic stress;
you will always get meningeal stress. You will always set up stress
patterns which sooner or later will begin a break down effect upon
that body sometimes decades later.
If you have a crossbite – which is at the other end of the
feet – if you have a Class II overbite - if you are missing
molar teeth completely on one side, just to mention a few examples,
you will create a torque in the cranium that will translate into
the neck, which will translate into the meningeal system, that will
set up a torque that will begin a gradual breakdown of that person,
and there is absolutely no way around it.
I met in the clinic today a sweet lady from New Zealand. They gave
up on her in New Zealand. She was a bright lady, and she came into
the clinic about two weeks ago, completely out of her mind in stress,
pain and anxiety. Why? Because her bite was completely deranged because
some dentist somewhere had done something terribly wrong, and made
what was bad in her mouth much worse. Since they could not
see the meningeal system, and did not understand what she was saying,
they dismissed her as being maybe a bit disturbed.
When she came to my clinic, the immediate thing I saw in her
was a major adverse mechanical tension. Now what does that
do? It depends on how much reserve energy one has in the bank. It
depends on your body type: are you a Kapha type, a Pitta or a Vata
type? It depends on your genetics. How strong are you to take
this onslaught of stress?
This lady was a combination of Pitta and Vata. These people are very
sensitive. Their nervous systems are simply sensitive. She was beside
herself with pain and stress. Because you cannot see it on x-ray,
you cannot see it on MRI – the only way you can see it is by
observation of the patient, and by going through specific means of
testing. If you do not do testing, you cannot see it. You
may come to the wrong conclusion that this person is a fruitcake,
and all she was doing is crying for help-and you have no idea how
to help them or where to begin.
Besides creating local adverse reactions, going back to the meningeal
system, that affects local vertemeers, local sections of the body,
you also send signals to the adrenals. Anyone who has read the work
of Dr. Hans Selye knows when you have ongoing stressors, the adrenals
will flip in and out of alarm reactions. Usually they will
flip from alarm to exhaustion, then maybe back for a short time to
adaptation if the person can rest (i.e. sleep, eat well, etc.).As
the person begins living his stressful life again, the adrenals kick
right back into alarm. There is not a pill, there is not a counselor,
there is not a priest, and there is not a piece of nutrition that
can help them. In the case, with the lady from New Zealand,
there was a major derangement of her jaw. Now this hits the
adrenals. Not only does it hit the TMJ mecnahism (Temporal
Maniduliar Joint) but it hits other parts of the body and the brain.
There is an area in neurophysiology called the homunculus, which
represents among many things TMJ stress. If I am not mistaken; about
85% of the central nervous system is hooked up to this TMJ nervous
system area. This creates an onslaught of stress on the adrenals
that causes panic in the body. You can feed the body protomorphogens
or adrenal extracts – like, if you have a flood, trying to
put up a few sandbags here and there. IT is not going to stop the
flood. This is why I put such an emphasis on structure. Regardless
of whom you are, whether you are a dentist, a chiropractor, a naturopath
or an M.D., you have to get to respect what structure is telling
you. There is a great difference between a person who is genuinely
happy and raises his arms to the sky for joy and opens his chest
to a person who is compressed in sorrow. This is the simplest way
you can point to structure.
WHIPLASH
These are the first things I start to look into with a patient. What
does the structure tell me? I look at the cranium, the bite, the gait,
the feet, the ankles and the spine in general – because this
will tell me how to proceed with a person, and you do not have to be
a chiropractor to do this. The interesting thing in chiropractic,
is, they try to monopolize the spine, to build a profession on that – the
problem is, they forgot the skull. A few chiropractors out in the field
said ‘Wait a minute! We have got a skull too.” They built
up a following over the years, like Dr. Major DeJarnette, the father
of SOT (Sacral-Occipitial Technique), William Sutherland, who was the
teacher of Major DeJarnette, figured out the cranium. It was
interesting Dr. DeJarnette, for whom I have great respect, gave away
the SOT organizations as he got older, but he kept back the cranial
knowledge, because he wanted to keep the nuggets a little longer for
himself. He was right – you can read out, in the cranium, just
about any condition in the body, by studying cranial movement. It is
a very important observation – feeling for cranial movement;
studying it; and working with it.
As an example, there is a well know phenomenon called whiplash.
Whiplash is, as I see it – based on my clinical practice – primarily
a cranial condition, secondarily a cervical condition. If you do not
deal with the primary condition you are never going to correct the
problem. This is one of the reasons why there is such a long treatment
protocol for whiplash. Chiropractors claim about nine months;
M.D.s from nine months to three years; and usually, if the case does
not get better, they send the case to a psychiatrist who, based on
his knowledge will usually find something wrong, and then every one
is happy, except the patient. Now he has a stamp on him, too. What
we found out in the clinic when we started to seriously research whiplash – which
was about 20 years ago – the sphendo-basiliar mechanism is intimately
connected to the meningeal system, through a series of attachments
which affects, not only the brain but also the entire neck, and thereby
the rest of the spine.
It is a bit like when you have a fire in the apartment building
- you are living on the third floor, and the fire is on the second
floor. You call the fire department, and they can reach up to the
second floor and hose the whole fire; but there is still some smoldering
and burning on the third floor. If you are on the first floor,
you feel pretty happy, there is water coming through the ceiling
but at least there is no fire. This tends to be the standard
care on whiplash. There are many systems out there, and they are
good systems, but meanwhile the fire keeps smoldering on the third
floor.
The patient comes to a state where he says ‘Doctor, I really
do not feel better’, or ‘Doctor, I am getting a little
better but I have still got some pain and I still have that tension – I
don’t understand.’ The regular physician or the doctor
says, ‘Mrs. Jones this will take about six months to go away,
so you have just begun your healing.’ From a medical
perspective, the MD will diagnose, usually by observation, not by
testing. Also by listening to the patient, or observing how he or
she behaves in the chair; asking the patient to turn their head up
and down, left and right. The MD will come to the conclusion this
may be a cervical whiplash so the doctor writes this down and prescribes
promptly 20 to 30 physiotherapy treatments. Now the patient
goes to the physiotherapist, who is taking the order from somebody
else. Now he suggests the patient exercise their arm, neck; this
and that, or gives something cold or something hot or something cold
and hot! They want to use some electrical therapy and some other
therapies without really testing what is going on in the meningeal
system – which is the culprit in the first place.
Now – granted sometimes there can be some more serious whiplash
cases. You may have a dislocation. You really got hit hard in the
auto accident – but this is an emergency medicine case. The
average whiplash case, I would say 95% of the cases – number
one, you get the shift in the spheno-basiliar mechanism which adversely
affects the whole meningeal system. (The spheno-basilir mechanism
is the connection between the basiliar process of the occiput and
the sphenoid bone. ‘This is one floor higher than the atlanto-axial
articulation, which is the first vertebra.’)
I have someone take a specific x-ray for me who takes a three dimensional
x-ray at this point in the body, to find out how the stress factors
are working in the neck and based on this we make the proper
cervical correction. Very often, this is not enough. You have to
go one step higher. To get at this you have to do what we call an
intra-oral cranial correction.
In a nutshell the correction of whiplash is about reprogramming
destructive stress signals imbedded in the brain. This process takes
a few days not months. The correction is very specific requiring
detailed testing.
I had a wonderful man in from Trondheim, Norway. He is a bus driver,
a solid, big, easygoing guy who was in the clinic two weeks ago.
His bus had been hit by a train that went about 40mph and pushed
him in the bus 200 yards down the street. He was very uncomfortable
when he walked out of that bus, especially because of the sheer compression
involved – the train was halfway into the bus. He was
beaten up pretty badly, and for five years he tried to get healthy
in Norway and was not able too. In ten days we changed his condition
here in Bellevue.
DENTAL DILEMMAS
He had two friends with him when he came here; a man and his wife.
The one had a whiplash. The other one was foggy and only 60 years old.
His thinking was unclear. Observing this we opened his mouth and found
he had a lower partial where the metal across the midline was hitting
the area associated with the part of his brain that dealt with cognitive
awareness. His cognitive awareness was starting to deteriorate. For
this reason, he was hiding behind his wife who was making all the decisions.
We also checkout out his wife and found she had gone for ten years
having pain in her colon. I checked out her mouth and found out 15
years ago they did an extraction of a molar tooth. The whole
tissue and the bone were affected. I sent her to surgery here. Two
days later, she was not even supposed to see me – she came
in to tell me the pain in her colon had disappeared. She went nuts
from excitement! Her friends went nuts from excitement! Then, I got
a call from Sweden, someone else who wanted to come and see me as
a result of this event. This is how these things spread! So
one was a dental case, one was an oral surgery and the third one
was a whiplash. You could have done all the electro-acupuncture
according to the Voll work. All the acupuncture; all the medicines
could have been tried but nothing would have worked, because in the
two cases, we removed core causes. In the third case - the
whiplash was corrected.
These people were here for ten days, they stayed in Motel 6 – which
from where they were coming from was a royal palace and they had
a blast. This is where it is at. This is what I want to bring
to people; to be able to observe these conditions and not be intimidated
with them.
One has to relearn simplicity. You have to learn to pick it up. Biophonics
helps you to pick it up. With the splint, I picked up the brain stress
patterns. With the cavitations, we picked up high readings from the
tissue. With the whiplash, we picked up the sphenoid. So the
principle of biophonics helped us to detect what
was wrong.
The bus driver went back home to Norway. After he returned home
I received a call from someone in Northern Norway who knew him. He
called me needing some help. I mentioned to him to go to Oslo,
jump on a plane, come here, and we will fix it. (Laughter)
Now, there is one thing that needs to be mentioned regarding the
whiplash conditions. There is often a little nasty secondary event
that can happen in the more serious cases and this is a reversal
of the cervical curve. Again, the x-ray reveals a double insult to
the meningeal system. Again, we are setting the stage for stress
in the whole organism. To deal with this we have to deal with cervical
procedures we have found to be very good. There is a certain
methodology of using home traction, combined with home training.
This works, provided you first have cleared the cranial mechanism.
It took us ten days to get this man out of the fog. He was in the
fog, mentally, when he came in, he was clear when he left. His brain
started to function again more optimally. We had figured out
the whole modality for him to gradually re-establish a better cervical
curve, he had gone from a normal cervical curve to what we call a
military spine (the ramrod straight version). Sometimes people go
in reverse curve as well! There are still ways and means to deal
with this though. This is another long story. I just
wanted to point out – if you have a fire on the third floor,
do not just hose down the first and second floors – you have
to go all the way. There are very precise means to test for this. If
you do not get the fire out, it is going to gradually adversely affect
you, all depending on your genetic makeup. Whatever is the weakest
link is going to get hit first.
So this is the menigeal system. This is the first observations we
do in the clinic because it is core. It is the A-B-C’s. It
has vast effects on the whole individual. Once we are through with
the observations, I usually open the patient’s mouth and see
what I can find in there. I look for adverse metal reactions which
can have far reaching effects on the body – again, back to
the adrenals – toxic effects. I look for missing teeth; I look
for cavitations which are basically breakdowns of part of the jawbone
from old extractions. There is something rotten in there, so to speak,
which has to be dealt with.
We have found out through the excellent work of Louisa Williams,ND
and Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt MD., PHD, with their work in mapping
out the relationship between the teeth and the organs. I found
out their work to be 100% correct. I use their charts to map out
the effects. Just today I had a very strong, healthy, Kapha type
lady from Montana come in. She oozed of good looks, She was very
sick. She complained of fibromylagia, which I consider wastepaper
basket diagnosis of symptoms from the 90’s. When you have fibromyalgia,
it does not just walk in on you.
There are a series of symptoms which come from a major stressor which
has hit your system. Your body is starting to react in an adverse
manner. The medical professions conveniently name this syndrome ‘fibromyalgia’ so
you can then join the fibromyalia club. Doctors will frolic and give
lectures to get more patients to give fibromyaliga pills and medicines
too. In reality, with all these people there is usually an
underlying factor. It will be in either the structure or toxic chemistry
or combined with some serious emotional breakdown. This is
where you look. So we are back to the triangle.
With fibromyalgia as she described, I said,”lets take a look
at it.” She had a very fine spine, a very good gait pattern.
Everything was fine – until I got into her mouth. There, lo
and behold was a serious disturbance in tooth #30. This tooth is
connected to the lungs and intestines, according to Williams and
Klinhardt. By testing the corresponding muscles into the lungs and
intestines doing therapy localization plus palpation, we established
indeed, there was a major disturbance in those two areas. She said
she was short of breath, and she had problems in her colon. This
confirmed the situation. But it went back to the tooth.
In this case we were dealing with a possible combination of a dying
nerve, faulty crown materials and some other decaying things that
were hitting the circuitry which had been there for the last ten
years. This was gradually creating a breakdown not only in her intestines,
but also in other parts of her body. This was setting up a defense
state we might call fibromyaglia. For me, a disease is a state of
defense, not just a random occurrence.
To treat her, I called a great dentist who proceeded to clean up
the decay in her mouth I expect the fibromyalgia will
gradually start to clear as well from her body, given good nutrition.
Though our findings did not relate directly to her meningeal system
there was stress affecting it. However because of her complaints
of her condition, we had to look elsewhere.
I look into teeth to a large extent. Very often, I look for problems
with old extractions – things which are supposed to be fine
and are not. There are specific tests where you can access this information.
Interviewer: When you are testing
are you using the biophonic instrument in your office?
Jelstrup: I usually cross-reference
the information I get. My primary testing is through biophonics,
and biophonics is nothing more then a simple device which helps me
to enhance my palpatory skills. Based upon a concept which was developed
about 25 years ago, by I believe the department of medical engineering
in Colorado, they found the body would exhibit stress in the microwave
range. If your joints were stressed, they would exhibit microwave
radiation from those points. They determined the radiation to be
in the gigahertz range, and we human beings can sense this, if we
use a simple biofeedback device. You have your hands and your head
that sense it through working with a simple biofeedback device. This
system we call Biophonics.
Interviewer: Why ‘the phonics?
Where is the sound coming from?
Jelstrup: The sound is in the friction
plate, touched by the hands. When we elicit friction, we can start
to approach making observations, make certain conclusions. This is
one testing system. We immediately correlate this with the
appropriate muscle testing, or palpation for pain, or leg checks.
There are other means of structural observations. We use biophonics
as a rapid way of accessing information on, shall we say, an elementary
level. We correlate two or three systems of analysis before we arrive
at a conclusion.
Interviewer: How long have you
been using this system of observation?
Jelstrup: I have been doing it now
for the last 25 years.
Interviewer: So you are pretty
pleased with it?
Jelstrup: I am extremely pleased with the
system. As a matter of fact, my colleague Jeanne Kreider teaches
this work nationally and internationally. It is good work and it
is wide open to whoever wants to learn it.
If you are interested in learning this work go to Jeanne Kreider’s
web site at www.echolight.net.
Interviewer: Now how does bio-phonics
relate to CRA (contact reflex analysis*) which I also understand
you and Jeanne Kreider use at the Bellevue Wellness Center
Jelstrup: CRA is another system of analysis,
developed by Dr. Versandal. He is a chiropractor who observed that
when one is in distress; there is a pattern of radiation emitted
from the body. You can learn to detect this. You can use applied
kinesiological testing procedures to access these points, and to
read out what the body is saying. I find it a very good analytical
system and am using it to quite an extent in the clinic as part of
my overall observation. It is not the complete technique we do.
You can access – instead of using applied kinesiological testing,
you can use bio-phonics to access these points, which I may call
the Versandal points. Versandal spent 40+ years mapping out this
system, He got some of his information, I believe, from Dr. Riddler
who was a naturopath, as well as from many other chiropractors making
similar observations. He put the information together into a system
called CRA* and I have nothing but praise for his work. I have great
respect for this man. It is a technique but you can take this system
and integrate it with other systems. It all depends on how deep you
want to go in your observation of the body
There is no doubt in my mind you can get some of the deepest and
most profound information from the human being by simple testing
methods which only cost a few dollars. It is all in how you are trained
to access the body which I will touch on a little bit later in this
conversation.
Continued
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