Pain

Pain is an indication that something is not right.  Period.  It's your body's alarm system.  It wants you to stop remodeling your kitchen or whatever it is you're doing and give your body time to heal.

This is most definitely not the time to reach for a pain reliever and get back to work!  Aspirin and tylenol are designed to interrupt the pain messaging system of your body.  They do absolutely nothing to ease the actual cause of the pain.  

What they do do, and quite effectively I admit, is wreak havoc on your stomach, liver and kidneys .  These are toxic chemicals, therefore your body makes it a top priority to get rid of these agents.  Since nature never intended for humans to consume such items, the liver isn't well equipped for the job and sustains a bit of damage with each dose.  This damage accumulates over time and eventually leads to liver failure.

Further, the body builds a tolerance to the use of these medications.  Requiring higher doses or stronger, more sinister formulations.

The way these drugs are marketed, it's hard to imagine they could do much harm.  But the fact is, the risks are not appropriately acknowledged, especially in relation to the meager benefits they provide.  All medications can become very dangerous, and should never be mindlessly taken.  The risk-benefit ratio must always be considered.

So when pain arrives, listen to it and stop what your doing.  Make an appointment with your chiropractor.  Together, you can figure out what you were doing that provoked the pain and develop logical steps for prevention.  Chiropractors are THE musculoskeletal doctor!  On a daily basis they treat and beat pain of various causes without the use of potentially harmful medications.  It only makes sense to talk to the experts.

Wake Up People!

We as a society are addicted to quick fixes.  When something needs done, it needs done NOW!  In the hustle and bustle of every day life, we've lost our patience and are becoming more dependent on drugs.

With even the slightest headache, we reach for an aspirin or tylenol - which by the way are the #1 cause of liver damage.  We've got a stuffy nose, pass the sudafed.  Can't sleep at night?  Here's the nyquil.  But have we ever stopped to think about why we have these symptoms?

Are runny noses and fevers really the problem?  I hope you're not too surprised when I tell you they aren't.  These are just symptoms caused by the body in response to the real problem - typically a viral infection.  The nose runs in attempt to rid the body of more invaders trapped in mucous.  The body warms up to create an environment that's too warm for the virus to survive.  These are HEALTHY immune responses.  Does it make sense to take a pill to stop these processes?  Now that you think about it, doesn't it make sense why over the counter cold meds don't work?  Even the national news has recently caught on to this!

Okay, so let's help our body eradicate the infection!  Great idea, but antibiotics aren't the answer, especially if the infection is viral, as most cold are.  There's not an antibiotic available anywhere that can tame a viral infection, and your doctor knows this.  By prescribing one, he's just trying to make you happy and shut you up - and this should be malpractice.  If the infection is bacterial, then an antibiotic will help, but it should at least be selective for the causative organism rather than broad spectrum.  Thanks to these miracle drugs, we've got killer bacterial strains like MRSA.

The fact is, your body is, or at least was, well equipped to deal with infections on its own.  Remember that innate intelligence we talked about a few blogs ago?  The human body is quite amazing and has many strategies for dealing with invaders, especially when supported with a good diet, proper rest and a well functioning nervous system.  Not giving your body a chance to stand up against infection weakens it over time.  So the next time you feel yourself coming down with something, take a day off, toughen up and DEAL WITH IT!!  Try giving your body what it really needs for a fighting chance - rest, healthy food and a nervous system-enhancing chiropractic adjustment.

Ask Your Doctor If Death Is Right For You!

Fun fact of the day: Medicine is the number one killer of US citizens!  Between adverse reactions, nosocomial infections, botched surgeries and run of the mill errors, 783,936  people are killed each year.  I don't know about you but this makes me absolutely sick!  You are literally putting your life in danger just by stepping foot in a hospital!

Unfortunately it's not easy to come across these numbers.  A google search of  "#1 killer" is likely to come up with something like heart disease rather than allopathic murder.  This is because hospitals rarely classify their mistakes in the "oops my bad" category.  Rather, hospital acquired infections (nosocomial) is lumped in with those infections caught outside.  Botched surgeries is just another person who couldn't make it. 

This makes America one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to health care.  How could this be?  Because we've allowed politics to infiltrate our health system.  Many people who serve on the FDA (that government agency that "protects" us) have held high positions in pharmaceutical companies and vice versa.  Pharmaceutical companies sponsor research on their own drugs, which over 80% of the time has favorable results (compared to just a bit over 50% if an unbiased party sponsors).  

Everything just mentioned is just the tip of the iceberg.  The current health care system is an atrocity.  It's completely hypocritical to me that chiropractic is deemed quackery and unsafe, when considering in our entire history, we've not harmed as many people who DIE in a single year at the hands of allopathy.  It's time we demand the truth be told, as it is the only way our system be corrected and the health of our country be restored!

A Road Less Traveled

Chiropractic is really a system of health care.  This is a completely new idea to a lot of people unfortunately.  But I hope you'll keep an open mind as you continue to read this article (and future posts).  I'm not here to tell you you're wrong, you've just been misled.  And you're not alone.  Our society is not programmed to maintain health and prevent disease, instead we're taught to live in the now and take a pill when it hurts.

The first body system to develop is the nervous system.  That's right, it is NOT the cardiovascular system.  This makes sense because the nervous system - comprised of the brain, spinal cord and nerves - controls every aspect of our body, including the beating of our heart.  Even days after conception, the nervous system is regulating the development of the rest of the body.

This makes the brain the central controller of our body.  It sends its messages down through the spinal cord and out to every organ, tissue and cell in the body.  Because of this vital role, mother nature made sure the brain and spinal cord were protected by bone - the skull and vertebra.  There's are 24 individual vertebra surrounding the spinal cord.  Some people refer to this as your back bone, but it is in fact 24 individual bones.

Occasionally, these vertebrae can become misaligned.  Chiropractors call this a subluxation.  Subluxations interfere with the nerves that exit the spinal cord and travel between each of the vertebrae.  This interference has many manifestations.  Commonly there's some stiffness of the back musculature, but much more sinister is the potential effect this interference has on the tissue it supplies.  Digestive issues, asthma, depression, bed wetting, even angina can all be caused by spinal subluxations because there is a nervous system connection with the stomach, lungs, brain (obviously!), bladder and heart!  

A lot of people think chiropractic primarily deals with back pain, but hopefully you've just realized how it can help with so much more.  Pain is really just the tip of the iceberg.  Underneath that pain is a much bigger problem.  Most people reach for something like aspirin to "get rid of the pain," but does that aspirin do anything to fix the underlying problem - the subluxation?  Of course not.  It's like turning off the fire alarm so you can ignore the fire.  Pain is present to tell you something is wrong, that your body needs to heal.  Does it make sense to mask the pain so you can continue the tasks that will damage you further?  Does the absence of pain make you less damaged?  Pain is often the last symptoms to appear.

Your body has a self-healing intelligence, chiropractors call this innate.  Again, this innate healing ability is carried out by the nervous system and without proper communication, the message gets distorted.  This is where chiropractors come in.  We adjust the vertebrae, to put them back into proper position and restore proper motion so that the nerves can once again carry their messages uninterrupted.  This allows the digestive system to get the most nutrients from the foods we eat without experiencing unpleasant episodes of reflux, bloating and gas.  By improving motion, exercise is made easier and muscles are less tight, helping us to sleep better at night.  All these things help the immune system fight off invading viruses and bacteria.  Chiropractic patients experience fewer colds each season and often don't get the flu, but these are hardly the best of the benefits provided by chiropractic care.

Chiropractic can open the door to a life full of potential.  When teamed with good nutrition and exercise, a solid foundation is made on which true health can be achieved.  

Welcome

This is my second attempt at blogging.  My first succumbed to the extreme lack of "free" time I have as a student of Chiropractic.  I'm going to try so hard to stay dedicated to this blog because I really think it could turn into something valuable for someone.

My goal is to provide loads of useful health information that my future patients can refer to.  Topics will relate to "alternative" health, i.e. how to avoid medicine as much as possible and the benefits of a chiropractic life.

As I said above, I'm a student, attending Logan College of Chiropractic in St. Louis, MO.  It's a myth that we're not real doctors who don't undergo the same rigorous studies as our allopathic counterparts.  We just focus on healing naturally and maintaining health and our primary tool is the chiropractic adjustment rather than potentially toxic chemicals created in a lab and called medicine.  I think it's clear why I didn't go to med school.  

Most people are surprised to learn that chiropractors spend many more hours studying anatomy and physiology than medical doctors.  We have classes in cardiology, neurology, endocrinology, as well as classes focused on diseases of all body systems.  We're also required to take a class on pharmacology.  Our medical friends spend much more time studying pharmacology, while we're focusing on critiquing our manual adjusting and learning specialized adjusting techniques.  We too spend time performing clinic rounds, more than 15 months worth.  Overall, we match the number of credit hours of most medical schools, at Logan we actually have a few hundred more hours.

So that's a very quick overview, it hardly does us justice, but it's a beginning I hope.  My next blog should cover what chiropractic really is and why everyone can benefit, even if you've never had back pain.