Dr. M. T. Morter Jr. is an internationally recognized authority on health. He is a past president of both Logan and Parker Chiropractic Colleges. In his nearly forty-five years as a practicing chiropractor and health care specialist, Dr. Morter has developed the revolutionary Morter HealthSystem, which is based on his Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique.
B.E.S.T. has been at the center of many research studies documenting the success of this neurological refining technique. Dr. Morter and his certified staff of instructors have taught this system of health care to tens of thousands of health care providers and have lectured to hundreds of thousands of others.
Dr. Morter is the author of five nationally released books on nutrition and the mind/body connection. He and his children—all accomplished chiropractors in their own right—currently conduct programs for health and life improvement; instruct weekend seminars to train health care providers; conduct private life-changing sessions with select clients; bring the philosophy of Morter HealthSystem to nationally prominent groups such as Chiropractic Leadership Alliance, The Masters Circle, Tony Robbins, Parker School of Professional Success, and Transformational Leadership Council; conduct corporate health programs for major corporations around the world; and produce a specially formulated supplement line.
In an interview with The American Chiropractor (TAC), Dr. Morter discusses his unique body, mind, spirit approach to health and healing.
TAC: Dr. Morter, what influenced you to become a chiropractor?
Morter: When I was about fifteen years old, my younger brother was hurt in an accident, and we took him to the hospital, where he lost consciousness. The medical doctor there told my folks that, despite his efforts, he was losing their son. I can still remember them telling that to my dad.
“We don’t really know why, but he is just going away, and we think he’s going to die.”
So, my dad, disregarding the rules, took my bother out of the hospital saying, “They told me he was going to die, so I’m taking him home to die.”
He took him home and promptly called our chiropractor. That man left his office full of people to drive over an hour-and-a half to get to our house. He walked in, and went in to treat my brother. In only a few minutes he came out and said, “Your boy is going to be all right.”
When I went in the room a short time later, my brother was up playing with his toys. Now, that made an impression on me! We were just in this big hospital with all these doctors and nurses and they were going to let him die, and this chiropractor, with nothing but his hands, had saved my brother’s life!
TAC: How did you become interested in nutrition?
Morter: I noticed that some patients responded faster than others to my chiropractic care, and I assumed it was due to diet. So, I asked those patients about their diets. I assumed that those who ate a wholesome diet—you know, home-raised food from the farm, like milk, eggs, beef, chicken—would be the ones that responded to care, and the ones who grabbed a cup of coffee and doughnut on the way to work were the ones who weren’t responding. What I found was quite the contrary! The people who got a cup of coffee and doughnut were responding faster than the others!
Now, I knew that didn’t make sense. There is no nutritional value in a cup of coffee and a doughnut. So I went out and bought all the literature on the market at that time on nutrition. And, talk about confused! All the theories seemed to contradict each other.
So, instead of all that, I simply went back to the anatomy and physiology textbooks. If each cell of the body worked perfectly, what was required nutritionally to augment that—to keep those cells healthy?
What I found was that first, people on the wholesome “farm” diet consumed much more protein than the coffee and doughnut sect. And, so, I began studying just how the body handles protein. You know, we need protein to live, but too much protein will kill you. The most significant thing that alters cell physiology is intracellular pH. Therefore, intra-cellularly, all cells are alkaline. Protein has an acidifying effect on the body and, if you consume too much protein, it will acidify your body entirely. But, just when that gets bad enough to kill you, the body has a beautifully designed backup system of producing ammonia. The urine will then become alkaline, because of the ammonia. However, your urine will also be alkaline if you are on a vegetarian diet. So, if you are testing the pH of urine and you find it to be alkaline, you really don’t know that much about it. Is it alkaline because of the sodium minerals you are getting from your vegetable diet, or from the ammonia produced to save you from your high protein diet?
I’ve developed a three-day acid challenge test to find out. For sure, ammonia odor in urine is a sign of an overly acidotic body.
So, basically, I got interested in nutrition because I discovered that those persons who ate less protein got well faster. And, of course, I had to know why!
TAC: What have you discovered about nutrition and its role in being healthy as well as correcting and preventing disease?
Morter: I discovered that alkalizing the body will normalize, stabilize, and energize the body. It has to be done. The only things that will alkalize the body naturally are fruits and vegetables. The body can make acid, but it can’t produce alkalinity. It has to be consumed in the form of fruits and vegetables. Basically, you have to have sodium minerals to eliminate the acid of the body. Sodium minerals only come from fruits and vegetables. This is not sodium like table salt. That’s another misconception out there.
TAC: With all of the changing information about what’s “healthy” that we’re bombarded with, do you have recommendations for how our readers can best determine what’s really healthy for themselves as well as their patients?
Morter: High protein diets have been the fad recently. Initially, they do often help people have more energy and lose weight; but, if these people continue to follow these high protein programs over time, they’ll end up with osteoporosis or some even more catastrophic illness.
A natural diet is the only healthy diet. Sixty percent of the body is water. It is alkaline by nature, but acid by design. If you are alive, you’re producing acid. You have to counter that by consuming alkaline.
I researched how a cell functions to determine just what would make the cells more alkaline. Here’s what I found. What’s healthy is that which will put the least amount of stress on the body: a diet with good, healthy, pure water and high in alkaline minerals. I recommend the ideal diet to be between 70-75% fruits and vegetables and between 25-30% seeds, nuts and grains. I’m not saying you can’t have meat, but it should only be consumed as less than 10% of your diet, not 90%, as a lot of people do.
TAC: What kind of results or changes can a person expect from decreasing protein intake?
Morter: Well, if the person is a big protein eater, and then drastically decreases that intake, the initial results are not going to seem too pleasant!
So, I recommend you gradually increase your servings of vegetables and then of fruits, while gradually decreasing everything else until you are eventually eating 75% fruits and vegetables and 25% grains, meats, and dairy.
The reason I believe this is a healthy way of eating is that your body isn’t operating in damage-control mode trying to subdue excess dietary acids. Most fruits and vegetables leave ingredients that actually help the body neutralize hard-to-eliminate acid; they help to keep your body alkaline, and your cells work best in that internal environment. The results? A healthier body, functioning with more energy, more vibrancy and a healthy immune system. Talk about slowing down the aging process!
TAC: What about nutritional supplements? Are they really healthy and effective? How can you tell?
Morter: I do use supplements that I created. For supplements to be effective, they must be a whole food concentrate. In other words, just a food, not synthetically made. Nature has the answers. The supplements I recommend are as near nature as they can be. The less man has to do with the formulation of supplementation, the better. Nature always knows best. It’s not just a matter of the ingredients in the substance. Man could put all ingredients in, but he can’t get the relationship to everything as in nature. Nature is smarter than we think and smarter than we can think. Whatever you consume must augment and be low stress on the body.
TAC: Do you have an overall philosophy about nutrition and health?
Morter: Our philosophy of the Morter HealthSystem is that we all “are” because of six essential things: what we eat and drink, how we exercise and rest, what and how we breathe, and what we think. And, what we think is more important than the other five combined. So, in my work, I’m concerned with the thought processes and emotional processes when dealing with the health of an individual.
It is my belief that every physical ailment is a physical expression of a suppressed emotional memory override—a lesson that was not learned, because it’s all about how we respond to stress. If we learn the lesson, there is no judgment, and then forgiveness is not necessary. Judgment causes interference, and interference is the big cause of disease—that is, interference with the power that made us. B.E.S.T. was developed to address and remove this interference, as well as subluxation.
TAC: Tell us about the B.E.S.T. technique of which you’re the founder.
Morter: B.E.S.T. (the Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique) was developed because I found that people would come to me, and I would adjust the subluxation, and they would be better when they got off the table.
But, many times, I would hear them say the symptom, or another like it, was back a short time later. I got to thinking, what is the cause of the subluxation? I learned along the way that, if you adjust a vertebra and you had the patient get up and move around, one of three things happened: 1. It came back out; 2. The one next to it came out; or 3. The opposite came out. So, I realized that subluxations are compensations, and that all subluxations are a perfect response to interference.
The number one cause of interference is the improper use of the conscious cognitive mind. Then innate—which doesn’t think, judge or reason—responds to the interference. In other words, your body responds subconsciously to the interference as if it were a new innate. And, that isn’t the real innate, so things start to go wrong.
I developed B.E.S.T. as a technique of locating and removing the cause of the subluxation, which is the cause of the symptom that brings the patient to us. I felt we had to learn how to adjust and correct the cause of the subluxation at the same time we correct the subluxation itself.
TAC: Is there anything controversial about the B.E.S.T. Technique?
Morter: In my mind, there’s no controversy! However, there seems to be some none-the-less. All I know is that I believe the cause of disease is interference, which is created by choices we make in six essential areas. And, you can’t eat your way out of a subluxation, nor adjust your way out of a nutritional deficiency.
TAC: Do you have a check point system of the whole body, to help our readers make sure not to overlook any problem on their patients?
Morter: Yes, I do. If the patient is face down on the table, and you look at their legs in the down position –are they even? And, then, you raise them to the up position. Are they even? Then you turn the patient over; are the legs even in length? When you internally rotate their legs, are they loose in spasticity?
In an arm check, are both arms strong with the eyes open and closed?
Now, if all of these things are positive, that person will get better between now and when you see them again. It doesn’t matter what technique you used; you got that accomplished.
On the other hand, if any of the things I described is not true, there is more you can do to bring about a better homeostasis within that patient. What I have found is that they are segmented, and innate intelligence is working on one part of the body and ignoring another. Where it’s ignoring, disease like cancer could develop, and where it’s paying attention, pain will develop. By balancing the body, you can bring it back into alliance so it’s able to receive the power that made it, which is the only power that can heal it.
TAC: What is your favorite success story?
Morter: One of the most dramatic stories—and I’ve seen many over the years using B.E.S.T.—happened just recently.
I was on stage, doing one of our B.E.S.T. Life Intensive seminars in California. There were over 500 people in the audience, and I asked for someone to volunteer to be treated on stage as an example. The lady who came up (they had to help her to the stage) was standing by the table, and I said for her to bend forward as far as she could until it hurt. She, basically, just moved her eyeballs.
So, I asked her to bend backward until it hurt. She really couldn’t move at all in any direction.
I asked her if that was all she could move, and she said that it was. I also asked how long she had been like that, and she said that she has been disabled for fifteen years. I told her how I was surprised they hadn’t fused her spine. She said they had—that she had had spinal surgery and remained disabled.
My first thought was, how could I expect her to get better when her spine had been fused? And then I thought, who was I to determine how good this person could get?
So, I immediately went to work and removed the interference between her and the power that made her. I’d get some work done, and have her think about her low back pain and instantly she’d freeze up. So, I’d do some more work. It probably took twelve to fourteen minutes.
And then I had her think of her back pain and it didn’t change her physiology. Keep in mind, any thought that changes physiology is interference. So, I helped her off the table and I moved her gently to bend forward and backward, just a little bit. I didn’t want her to activate the fight or flight reflex she had been stuck in.
I then told her to bend forward slowly until it hurt. And, she bent forward farther and farther until she touched the floor with the palms of her hands! I looked at that, and I was amazed! I knew I was seeing it! She then stood right up and said, “And it doesn’t even hurt!”
Well, needless to say, the crowd went wild! Later in the seminar, she was even up on the stage dancing! I realized later that this was the lady who had been in a motorized wheel chair when she came in. I hadn’t even put that together when she came up on stage. Her husband then told me that, previously, she had not been able to stand for more than five minutes because the pain in her back would be so excruciating that she’d have to sit down. I have seen her at subsequent seminars and she’s been dancing and, happily, normal. Now, to me, that’s a miracle—being able to remove the interference so the power that made her body could run her body.
TAC: Any final words for our readers?
Morter: As far as I’m concerned, chiropractic needs to expand its concept of its function in relationship to the welfare of mankind, worldwide. We need to be able to look at the human body differently. The body was built perfectly, and it cannot do anything wrong.
Our job is to find out why it’s been doing what it has, that has lead to disease.
Because, whatever it’s been doing is a perfect response to something. An effect. Move away from diagnosis and then subsequent treatment, and move toward finding and addressing the cause of the condition. Until we address the cause directly instead of chasing symptoms, we are doing nothing more than giving an aspirin for a condition. That’s healing from the outside in, instead of what it should be: healing from the inside out. We must remove the interference with the power that built the body in the first place—reestablishing the original, perfect connection.
For more information on learning the B.E.S.T. Technique, go to www.morter.com or call 1-800-874-1478.