Archive for December, 2008

“Regardless of how much money is raised to fight disease, any disease, the war will never be won attacking an enemy that doesn’t exist.”

"North is a reality that is independent of us"

I can’t tell you where I got this quote because I don’t remember.  I share it as one of my favorites for it inspires in me a desire for truth.  Truth is not influenced by power, money nor can it be ignored; it is incorruptible and as such needs not be defended. As this relates to health care, I have compassion for so many who are seriously ill and desperately searching for help only to find confusion.  What it takes to regain health can not be found outside ourselves, it can’t be found in powerful pharmaceutical marketing, it won’t be found in fancy surgical procedures, it is where it has always been, in the innate wisdom that from our conception needed only to be nourished.

Many times, as a dear friend of mine recently pointed out, we chiropractors are inclined to describe chiropractic by highlighting what it’s not rather than what it is.  He went on to add that as a result, little is done to emphasis what makes chiropractic so special because we’re so zealously involved in relating what we see as the “horrors of those remedies” that are not chiropractic, “rather than actually explaining what a chiropractor really does.”

Having been in this profession as long as I have, I sincerely appreciate his point; it used to be a challenge trying to explain what chiropractic is because there’s a perception that all doctors are trying to achieve the same things for the people who come to see them and by default, all methods used to lead them to this end are congruent.  A definition can mean everything and when it comes to restoring your health or the health of your family, a clear understanding is vital when the stakes are high and in many cases the ultimate price can be paid for being naive.

With that being said, what then is Chiropractic? Chiropractic is the lifestyle consecrated to nurturing the divine intelligence that heals, regulates, and expresses life in the body, love in humanity and light in the world.  Focusing particular attention on and uniquely qualified to detect and adjust subluxation, chiropractic is not about disease management for disease is simply the message, not the messenger; it’s drug-free, non-invasive and respectful of the body’s inborn ability to heal itself when given 100% of the nourishment needed to support life.

In a sentence, Chiropractic is about maximizing the full expression of life, love and the divine spirit in humanity through the restoration and support of a Clear Neurological Connection.

Fruits, vegetables, healthy fats, grass fed beef, raw dairy; I believe most of us have an inner sense of good healthy nutrition, even when the media sells something different; but does good nutrition simply refer to what we put in our mouth?  There’s a tremendous amount of research to show that movement, in the form of regular exercise, is just as vital to overall health as the foods we eat every day.  Your brain, connected to every cell in your body, has been shown to require a certain amount of stimulation from all the joints, especially those of your spine, to maintain normal health.  This stimulation is critical not only so the brain can manage every issue related to moving the body properly but to prevent the stress that has been shown to be associated with inactivity. 

This stress often comes by other names like obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.  From the Journal of Applied Physiology, Booth et al. writes “In other words, physical inactivity is an abnormal event for a genome programmed to expect physical activity, thus explaining, in part, the genesis of how physical inactivity leads to metabolic dysfunctions and eventual metabolic disorders such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and so forth.”  What he is saying is profoundly important if you want to understand exercise for what it really is.  It is nothing short of genetic food for the brain and if we choose not to exercise then we choose to starve ourselves of one of the most important nutrients the body requires every day. To add, Eaton & Eaton state “At present human genes and human lives are incongruent, especially in affluent western nations. When our current genome was originally selected, daily physical exertion was obligatory; our biochemistry and physiology are designed to function optimally in such circumstances.”  With all our modern luxuries, we are sacrificing our genetic God given potential, our health many times for the sake of convenience.

I hope this has sparked some interest to reconsider the importance of regular exercise in our daily lives.  As always, I’m here to serve and should you ever have questions, feel free to ask about our weekly workshop schedule were we take time to expand on topics that nourish the body proper.

See Reference page for citations.

Have you seen the Edina Clinic parking lot in Northfield lately?  I drove by today after an early meeting to see it almost filled to capacity at 8:15am.  I wasn’t thinking “Wow… They must be good” although I’m sure they are, I was, as I have been for over twenty years, trying to understand what it is that so many people are looking for. Just this week I placed a quote in the office for all of our practice members to see by Marriane Williamson. She says, “We don’t reach the light by endless analysis of the dark. We reach the light by choosing the light.”  I love this because with the change of a couple words, you can begin to identify what is really happening to so many people with regards to their search for health.  “We don’t reach health by endless analysis of disease. We reach health by choosing health.”  I know, it seems far too simple considering the Merck Manual, volume 17, a book of all currently known and identified diseases is three inches thick with over 2700 pages.  The fact is however, regardless of how many names we can come up with, all of these diseases simply represent the body adapting ‘perfectly,’ yes perfectly, given the environment in which it is placed. 

What!  Yes, I mean perfectly.  Pick and choose a disease, any disease and you will see that the symptoms that lead us to a diagnosis are simply the body’s attempts to tell us we are either toxic or deficient.  We’ve been poisoning our body with too much of something (most of us innately know what this is) or denying it the basic fundamental building material to restore improve and nurture health… the second fundamental principle to a life well lived.  I believe, to answer the question I so often ask while driving by that parking lot, we seek ‘health.’  People… you, me, our friends, family, neighbors, we just want to live a full life and no matter how we slice it, that requires ‘health.’  With this realization, I begin to understand that there is much for me to do;  seeing that full parking lot reminds me of my commitment to help others attain the full and complete expression of health through the restoration of a Clear Neurological Connection.

“Drugs never cure disease. they merely hush the voice of nature’s protest and pull down the danger signals she erects along the pathway of transgression. Any poison taken into the system has to be reckoned with later on even though it palliates present symptoms.  Pain may disappear but the patient is left in worse condition, though unconscious of it at the time.”  

Daniel Kress, M.D.