EPISODE SUMMARY
Guest: Debby Blair Clanton
Debby’s father is Dr. William G. Blair, the founder of the Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic Technique. He had a clinic on Avenue Q. He was a very scientific guy and figured out all kinds of stuff, researcher.
She was very proud of her dad growing up in an age where chiropractors were often considered quacks.Well, her father was very loving. He loved her a lot. In many ways, their personalities were very similar, and their mutual stubbornness often caused them to clash.
When Dr. Blair was doing all of his research, Debby was his model. She would sit through the seminars and run the tape recorder.
Her own health journey: Debby was very healthy growing up until after a car accident, she was having trouble walking straight. She was veering from side to side a little bit on the sidewalk. Yes, it was scary. A doctor thought she had a brain tumor. She went through a lot of tests. She was having balance problems, and by the end of the day, she sounded drunk even though she hadn't been drinking. As she got tired, the symptoms became worse and worse.
Keep listening to hear several fascinating memories Debby is sharing towards the end of the show.
To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com
ruth@blairclinic.com
https://www.facebook.com/rutelin
TRANSCRIPT
I was proud of him. I don't want you to think I wasn't proud of him at all. I was. Growing up, chiropractors were not really considered doctors even, but I was always proud and tried to explain to people what he did and so I was very healthy.
Welcome, welcome, welcome to What Pain in the Neck, the podcast. I am Ruth Elder and I'm sitting here with Debby Clanton. Would you know? Debby, why don't you tell our listeners what you were born as, what your maiden name was?
Well, my maiden name was Blair and so everyone that knew me growing up, I was Debbie Blair.
Debbie Blair. I feel like it's safe to say that you have had a lifetime of chiropractic.
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes.
From the moment I was born.
Tell us who your father is.
My father was Dr. Blair, W.G. Blair. He had a clinic on Avenue Q. He was a very scientific guy and figured out all kinds of stuff, researcher.
Researcher, big-time researcher. When I first was introduced to chiropractic, I worked as an assistant for your dad's best friend.
Dr. Muncy.
Dr. Muncy. He looked at your dad as his mentor and lifelong teacher. What I would hear the most often about your dad, what he would say the most often, is he was way ahead of his time.
Definitely.
Definitely. I just realized recently, to collect data for research, you need at least 25 examples. Your dad would have 3,000.
Oh, easy, yes. [chuckles]
It was before computers.
Oh yes, it was. He would love the kind of equipment that's available today. He would be right there using every bit of it.
I think what's really neat about that is the more modern research and modern equipment is being used, it is confirming a lot of the findings that your dad found in the '50s. Back then, you were just a child. You were probably born-- What year were you born and do you mind telling us?
1951.
1951. Your dad was maybe a year and a half into being a chiropractor when you were born?
Maybe. I'm not real sure. I wasn't there. [chuckles]
You weren't there. [laughs] Based on what I can figure out, he opened the Blair Clinic in 1949.
I know that he had a clinic when I was born because I disrupted him because I lived in the back of the clinic.
Oh, so you would cry and--
Yes. I was too loud.
Do you remember any of that?
I don't remember it. I don't remember them talking about they had to move. We moved to a house that was right next door to the clinic.
Okay, so that he could concentrate on seeing patients.
Right.
Interesting. That is actually one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you because you have this amazing perspective that no one else can share with us, right?
Yes. I don't know if I ever told anyone that.
Okay.
[laughter]
I'm sure there's a lot of things I can tell you.
Okay. We started by talking about his research. Why don't we start by talking about some of your memories of growing up with your dad being so devoted to chiropractic and what are some things that you remember?
Well, he was very loving. He loved me a lot. We were really close when I was young so there were times that I would go with him places. One time he took me up to the clinic. I was about, at that time, about four years old. He was going to study, do some research. This was on a weekend, Saturday or Sunday. He got so busy with his research and he figured out something special and he left and ran home, and he got home and mother said, "Well, where's Debbie?"
[laughs] He forgot you.
He left me at the clinic.
Oh, my goodness.
I had gone back into one of the rooms where the patients rest and had fallen asleep.
Oh. [chuckles]
He had to come back and get me. By the time he got back, I was head woke up and I was crying at the front door.
Oh, my goodness.
Oh, he felt so bad.
The parent's worst nightmare.
I got a fantastic root beer float out of that.
[laughs] Okay.
He loved root beer floats and so did I. [laughs]
Okay, fun, fun, fun. When you said resting room, with the Blair technique, not everyone who listens to this will know anything about it.
That's true.
If you have an adjustment, what your dad figured out, is how to help more people more of the time with a lot less adjusting. The goal is to not adjust. You feel like, as a chiropractor, if you do your job right, you hardly ever have to adjust, but if you do have to make an adjustment, the patient always takes a nap afterwards.
Right. It helps you hold the adjustment better.
What are some other memories and stories that you can remember that you want to share?
He was very knowledgeable about a lot of things. I got to the point where if I needed an answer to something-- I remember one time I was doing definitions and I was supposed to define the word digestion. It was for school. I went and asked my mother if she could help explain that and she said, "Why don't you go ask your father of that one?" I went, "I don't want to know that much about it."
[laughter]
He could really explain things and he would go into such detail because he was so specific on everything he did.
Your dad, what kinds of things did he require of you? Did you feel like there were expectations that were laid on you or that sort of thing?
He was really serious about my education. He expected me to make good grades. Mostly back when I went to school, there was always a grade for citizenship and then you had your grades for math or arithmetic, geography, history, whatever. He wanted me to make as many As and Bs as I could, but if I made a C in citizenship, I was in trouble.
Well, did you?
Big time. One time I almost did in a fifth grade and the teacher gave me the option of getting a C in citizenship or taking licks. She never expected a girl to say, "I want the licks."
What is licks?
Oh, that's where they paddle you back when corporal punishment was allowed in school.
Oh, okay. Well, I haven't grown up with that, so I wouldn't know that.
I would rather have had that from my teacher than to go face my dad with a C in citizenship.
Oh, wow.
She didn't give me the licks and I didn't get the C, either one.
[laughter]
Okay.
I won that battle. [laughs]
Just being faced with a choice was punishment enough.
Yes. [laughs] She didn't have the heart to give a girl paddling.
Hey, Debbie, do you feel like your dad wanted you to be a chiropractor?
Oh, he would have loved for me to have been a chiropractor. He really would have. I had the math ability most likely. I don't know. I just wasn't interested in it. We didn't get along well enough for us to work together, I didn't think, because we were so much alike. He would have loved for me to be a chiropractor.
We were talking a little bit about this ahead of this interview. We just had lunch together. Do you want to share a little bit more about that?
About us not always getting along? [laughs] No. [laughs] Yes.
What was it about it that made you--
We actually are a lot alike. I had pretty much the same personality and way of thinking as he did, and because of that we just clashed. We just totally clashed. He used to say, "I would argue with a fence post." [laughs] I don't think we would have ever worked well together at all.
Yet I also have heard stories from you about you doing a bunch of help in the clinic doing work-
Oh, I did.
-for the clinic in your younger years. Do you want to share some about that? Well, when he was doing all of his research, I was his model.
Okay.
I would go and he would get me down there one of two ways. Either he would pay me or if I'd done something that I shouldn't have done, that would be my punishment to have to sit in an X-ray chair and let him practice his X-ray techniques and finding the best X-ray for him. I did that a lot. I was his model just almost entirely.
Okay. Did he take actual X-rays or was it just the setup?
I think it was mostly the setup, but no, he did take some X-rays. I know because he would, with the lead apron on me and him moving, there was a place in the X-ray room where he would go to stay away from the X-rays himself like they do even today.
Yes. What other things would you help him with?
When I was, I would say maybe sixth, seventh grade, maybe even to high school sometimes, when he was teaching seminars by then, and we would go and I would be his secretary. It's what he called me. It made me feel important.
Okay. [laughs]
Basically, I would sit through the seminars and run the tape recorder. That was my job to tape his seminars. I knew when to turn it off and when to turn it back on.
Yes. You also told me stories of stuffing envelopes and invitations.
Yes. To get to those seminars, oh, yes, the first mail-out, I don't even know where got the list of chiropractors really, but he had a long list probably from different organizations would be my guess. We had letters to invite people to the seminar and stacked all over and we had a used a chain gang or whatever, you go from one thing to the next thing. We had fold the letter, stuffed the letter, closed the envelope, put the stamp on. We did that, I don't know, it felt several days.
Yes. Wow.
It was a big, big mail-out.
Yes, okay. Hard work.
Yes. Sand got real dry. [laughs]
[chuckles] Yes. We've talked some about your dad. What about your mom? How did she fit in the picture here?
[laughs] My mother was so sweet and, I guess you could say it was an old-fashioned time because this was a long time ago and she pretty much did whatever he needed her to do. That was just the way women were back then. She tried to protect us sometimes from his strictness, but she was so sweet that if we did something and he was at work, she would say, "Just wait till your father gets home." Then she would tell him, and then I'd be in big trouble. She was protective and if it wasn't all that bad, sometimes she wouldn't tell him if we were real good for the rest of the day. She was not only a sweetheart, but a protector sometimes standing in between.
Okay. What I really want to know, when you were saying strict and you were saying bad, seriously, how bad could it be?
I was not a-- because of our personalities, we clashed and, when I say bad, it was just I did something I wasn't supposed to do. It could be anything. Sometimes if I talk back to my mother, that would be bad. He was just super strict and he wanted me home on time always. Sometimes I was, and sometimes I wasn't. It was almost like if he was going to be real serious and tell me to do something, that's going to be real serious if you not do it. I was stubborn.
Yes. You feel like that's probably why, you were telling me earlier, that maybe that's why you didn't want to be a chiropractor.
Yes.
You were also telling me something else about growing up being a chiropractor. I've grown up, well, not grown up, I was already an adult when I was introduced to upper cervical chiropractic. Your dad has always been like a hero because of what he did. I've always, I just mentioned, I heard he was ahead of his time and he helped a lot of people and he's come up with all these great science to take chiropractic to the next level. He had a busy practice. Also, for me, I was super, super sick. I basically didn't have a normal life because I was mostly invalid due to pain and suffering. Then because of the work that your dad did, I got my life back. I always had this view of Dr. Blair as a hero.
I was proud of him. I don't want you to think I wasn't proud of him at all. I was. Growing up, chiropractors were not really considered doctors even, but I was always proud and tried to explain to people what he did. I was very healthy because I've been with chiropractic my whole life.
You were healthy. Okay, so let's go there. Talk about that, your health growing up.
I hardly ever missed school. If I did get sick, I stayed home, was not allowed to watch television.
Okay. [laughs]
You had to have a fever, and we didn't go to get medicine. I just ran its course. Only if my fever got super high, would we ever call an MD. I don't remember ever really going to an MD at all, my whole life.
If you got sick, what happened? You said you would stay home?
Yes, I'd stay home, rest, drink fluids, everything the doctors tell you to do. Maybe twice I got sick enough, we had a doctor at church, he could write a prescription and that was the only time I ever took-- Oh, no aspirin, no Tylenol.
Yes, but lots of chiropractic care I would assume.
Oh, yes, definitely.
What did that look like?
We went to the clinic. I had to go clinic once a week. Usually, on Thursdays, because that was his late night. He'd want us there at that time, and so I'd get checked and adjusted if need be, but I hardly ever needed one because I'd grown up with my muscles keeping my bones in the right place.
Yes. You were mostly healthy and that continued through most of your life. Why don't you take us through--
Yes, except for that one- there was one period of time, I'm not real sure how old I was, I'm saying early 20s maybe. I was finishing up college, my teaching degree. I was walking to class from the parking lot and realized I was having trouble walking straight. I was veering from side to side a little bit on the sidewalk. After a couple of days of that going on, I talked to my dad about it. They put me through- of course, he adjusted me immediately, re-X-rayed, adjusted me, everything.
Had something happened?
Oh, I'd had a car accident about a year before.
Okay. Did he X-ray you after the accident?
No, he had not X-rayed me after the accident. He kept on with what had been my, the way I had been, my readings.
Okay, so he re-X-rayed you based on you having trouble?
Yes. After I started having trouble and I was in adjustment from what he could tell with his readings, he didn't understand that. We did go to a doctor and the first doctor said, "Oh, I think she's got a brain tumor."
Oh, wow. How scary.
Yes, it was scary. He didn't believe it. I went through all those tests. They really-- Man, brain stem tests and EEGs and, I don't know. There's just one test after another. They couldn't find anything wrong with me. I was still having these balance problems and by the end of the day, I sounded drunk even though I hadn't been drinking. I got tired. As I got tired, the symptoms became worse and worse.
You would be slurring your words or something like that?
Yes, totally slurring.
What happened?
Anyway, they hadn't figured it out, but Dad, while this was going on, he just re-X-rayed me and realized that I had some changes.
Did you?
He changed something in there and he adjusted me, kept me in adjustment. Although I even held that one pretty well, I guess my muscles needed-- When he did something, I knew they better.
Yes. Actually, that is really interesting with the Blair adjustment. It's not even about pushing the bone into where the doctor thinks it needs to be, it's about realizing that the body knows best, so the way doctors, Dr. Blair, your father described it is locked in place, so what you need to do is unlock it and your body puts it where it needs to be.
Yes, exactly. That's what was going on with me. We went to one of the neurologist appointments, and my dad went with me to all of them.
Oh, that's good.
Yes. He was not leaving this to chance with anyone else.
When he went with you to the appointment, do you remember, did he ask difficult questions? What was that like, do you remember?
Yes, he discussed everything with the doctor, everything that the doctor thought might need to be done, and he discussed it with him and made suggestions sometimes. Will this show that or this or-- He want to be sure that we were getting everything that we could with all the different tests. Finally, I got better. I just was getting slowly getting better, and finally, the doctor just said, "I can't find anything wrong with her. Whatever you're doing is working. What I'm doing is not, but if she relapses, I want you to bring her in, and I'm going to give her a spinal tap. That's the last thing I can do."
Of course, spinal taps were not fun at all, especially back then, and probably, still are. I don't know. I've never had one. He said, "If the spinal taps, he said, "I feel sure would show us that she has multiple sclerosis," but my dad got rid of it.
Your neurologist was pretty sure that's what it was.
He felt sure I had multiple sclerosis, but we never did a spinal tap, so I can't say that's what I had, but I can say I didn't have anything else.
Yes, and you definitely had some scary symptoms?
Oh, yes I had all the symptoms.
Yes. Wow. That's an amazing story. After that, what has your health history, your family because you had a daughter too, right?
I have a daughter growing up, we went to get checked all the time. That was just part of our life. She stayed checked and was in adjustment all the time until he retired. He even had stuff at the house, so he would check us at the house.
Yes, we do that.
[laughter]
It's one of the perks, I guess.
Yes, it is. Then, of course, when-- This is sad, in a way, I guess. My adjustment was so specific, and a bad adjustment, he was afraid, might throw me back into the MS symptoms. He was really worried about that, so he didn't want anyone else and told me not to let anyone else adjust me that wasn't a good Blair-certified doctor. At that time they didn't have a certification, but he was talking about Dr. Muncy, who is a good friend, Sterling Pruitt, I think, was still alive then, are some of the doctors-
Yes, it's interesting since he's the doctor, and he says that you said the adjustment is so specific, and that actually is one thing that he discovered. Every person needs their own specific adjustment that's different from anybody else's. He figured out the method to figure out what it is you need, what it is I need, what it is my kid needs, but then he had that coupled with that fatherly worry of, "If this is not right, you'red going to go that scary place."
I could backslide big time.
I feel like that's true for a lot of us that needs specific care, is don't gamble with it.
Right. I went for a while without any chiropractic care because I didn't really have a doctor that I knew could do it.
Okay. What was that like?
I held my adjustment, I guess. I did not have any issues luckily, luckily, yes.
That's what I was hoping you would say. That's actually something that I have seen through the years too, with you growing up with it. You even said, when he had to re-X-ray it and you got a different kind of adjustment, your body just accepted it, and that's the way it's supposed to work, so that's a really beautiful story.
This podcast is called What Pain In The Neck? What's so special with the neck?
Those bones, the vertebrae on your neck that are holding your head up, really are controlling-- The brain controls everything and the nerves go through the specific place in your neck. If it's not in alignment and any of those nerves get pinched, anything can happen. You can develop anything, just depending on what nerves being pinched. It can be digestive problems, migraines, multiple sclerosis, your feet hurting could even be caused by a nerve. It just depends on what nerve happens to be getting pinched. I don't want to go pinched is the right word or just maybe just say not in a place where the nerves can flow through correctly, because you don't feel the pinch.
At least it's not always anyways. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't.
Sometimes, yes. A lot of times you don't feel it. You feel what it's doing to you.
Most of the time, that's true.
You feel the symptoms, but you don't really realize it your neck has anything to do with it.
What is something that you wish everybody would just understand about this?
Growing up, chiropractic was not very well accepted. Most people call chiropractors quacks, and that to some degree, I think some people deep down, it's better a whole lot better now than it used to be, but there's still a few people out there that just like, "No, chiropractic can't do that. It can't fix this or that or whatever." I just wish they'd realize that it is specific and it will work.
It works a lot of times when medical stuff will not work, and they really need to not wait till it's the last thing. They've tried everything else and that'd be the last thing they do. I wish they would just give the chiropractor a shot at it. If they're not already under care, go to a chiropractor, a Blair-specific chiropractor. I'm not saying go to just anyone. If you go in and they're just popping around on you forget it, just forget it. That's not a good chiropractor. There are still some chiropractors that probably are, in some ways, a bit of a quack, at least in my dad's eyes.
Okay. [chuckles] To find a Blair upper cervical chiropractor, you can go to blairchiropractic.com.
Yes, I think that's what they're listed in.
Yes, blairchiropractic.com. There's a button there that says find a doctor. If you can't find one near you, you can go to the show note and contact me, Ruth, because I know some people that might be good that are not listed on that website.
Really good. Do you know anyone in the Dallas-Fort Worth area because I think the doctor up there is retired?
No, I know someone I can send you to if you want--
[laughs] I've got friends that-- No, not for me, not for me, but for me to be able to-- I'm going to Gordon. I'm making the drive![laughs]
You're coming to Lubbock. Okay.
Yes.
Fair enough. We'll do that but, yes, I can direct you to someone in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. We'll talk about that.
Okay.
Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you want to say?
This is still on the same what we were just talking about. When I went to my 50th-year reunion, all these kids I went to school with knew my father was a chiropractor. I knew how I felt about people putting him down and all that kind of thing. I've talked about how strict he was, but a bunch of them came up to me and said, "I went to a chiropractor and it turned out he did your father's work and I want you to know he cured my migraines." I had two different people, and they did not live in Lubbock.
Oh, okay.
They had moved away. One of them was from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and the other one, I think, was maybe from California. I thought that was really interesting, and they were excited that they had actually known me.
That's good. That's neat.
It really was pretty neat.
I actually would like to read something that your dad wrote probably the year you were born. I'm holding a yellowed brochure written in old font, and at the best, I can tell it was published in 1951.
I couldn't read then.
No.
[laughter]
It's said, these are Dr. Blair's words, "There are millions of sick people in our nation who are investing their every effort and dollar in the search for health. The majority of them fail to find what they are looking for and either succumb to their malady or become angry and resentful towards doctor. It is these persons for whom we are preparing this booklet. It is our contention that sick people need friends, people who know what it is like to be sick and who have an interest in seeing sick people get well."
Then he concludes, "We should like to emphasis that the name of your condition is not as important as its cause." You may have had extensive clinic tests made your case revealing the name or names of your condition, yet you are still sick. Whether or not you got the diagnosis of MS, you were sick, you would have been sick if you had been diagnosed with MS, and you were sick, but he found the cause.
Yes, he found the cause and fixed me whatever it was.
These tests actually have revealed only the effects of the real cause of your trouble. To treat the effects without removing the cause is to waste time and money. It can only result in failure. Correct cause and without the help of anyone, nature will restore your body back to health just as she created you originally. I think that that is what your dad's legacy is, is finding a way to find the cause of a lot of suffering.
Exactly, yes. I agree with that entirely.
Do you have any comments to any of that? I sprung this on you.
Yes, you did. One thing I do have a comment on that it brings to mind is the fact that the way he proved it, he had these thoughts in correcting the cause, but one of the things he did to actually prove what he was saying was right was in the Smithsonian. I was with him when he found a skeleton of a soldier who had a really bad, what they call subluxation, the bones were out of place. He used that soldier and managed to go back and take pictures and all of it and he made a booklet that actually it proves that those bones will move.
He wrote a book on that and we actually have a whole stack of them. If somebody is listening and they would like to see that book, contact me and I'll get you out a copy.
Although you do need to be pretty smart to read it. [laughs]
Actually, of all the things that I have read, I found it really interesting.
Yes, good because it's very detailed.
It has good pictures and so I found it relatively easy to understand. Of course, I've been immersed in this field for a while.
You're familiar a bit with it.
At this point, I'm interjecting quickly post-production because as we were coming to a close of the interview, Debby remembered two more interesting stories that she wanted to share. I decided to tack them on at the end, consider it your bonus, and enjoy.
When I went to my 20th-year reunion, I had some of my ex-boyfriends come up to me and they said, "Well, is your dad still sending people away? I was so scared of him." When they came to pick me up for a date, he grilled them.
Oh, that's what he meant by sending them away.
Yes, they were scared to death he was going to send them away, and they always hated to come. They wanted to pick me up before he got home from work, which was often late from doing his research. They really wanted to make sure they picked me up before he got home because they were going to get grilled. They had to be perfect, too.
Okay. [laughs]
One time when I was in high school, I was in health class, I believe it was my junior year, sitting there in health class, the teacher said, "Do I have anybody who's related to a chiropractor in the class?" I did not raise my hand because I wanted to hear what he had to say. There were a couple of students in there that knew me and knew my dad was a chiropractor. One in particular, he turned around and looked at me and winked.
Anyway, so the teacher went into talking about how no bones can be moved in the entire spinal cord and that chiropractors are all quacks, said that they're not real, they can't do anything to help you. I raised my hand, and I argued with him. I told him all these things that I knew from my dad about how they can move and use my hands to show how they could pinch the nerves and told him about the upper cervical neck bones and he couldn't respond to me. I won.
You knew more about it than he did clearly.
I did. I definitely knew more about it and he skipped over. He just said, "Okay," and then went on. I went home and told my dad about it.
Oh, how did that go over?
[laughter]
He went up to school.
Did he really?
I didn’t go with him, so I don't know who he talked to but that teacher was called into, probably, the principal's office or something and they discussed it. He said, "But I asked if anyone was related to a chiropractor." Dad was like, "That doesn't matter whether they're related or not. You are teaching false information." That health teacher never did that again.
[laughs] Yes.
I feel quite sure. [chuckles]
Thank you, Debby. I so appreciate your time.
You're very welcome.