Archive for February, 2009

Today, Wednesday the 25^th of February 2009, while out for an afternoon walk I heard and saw the first robin of the year.  As a resident of this part of the world for the better part of 28 years, I had to scratch my head; I don’t recall ever seeing robins returning for spring so early.  Granted, I’m no ornithologist but I know what a robin looks and sounds like so that leaves one question; what does any of this have to do with Chiropractic?

Chiropractic is about fully expressing life!  Unlike nearly every other form of “health care” available, we as chiropractors focus on what’s right within each of us, the innate perfection, the life force that controls and coordinates every single cell tissue and organ in the body.  With a positive focus, a healthy lifestyle and a clear neurological connection, you move toward health, wellness and wholeness thus expressing your full potential and accomplishing your unique purpose.  Watching that robin today reminded me of how beautiful life can be when we follow the divine plan for our lives and live out our purpose.

 ”We do not struggle with circumstances.  We hold onto beliefs that create circumstances.” Ernest Holmes

The overwhelming majority of us are brainwashed to believe that health and illness come from the outside. This belief, as with all beliefs, determines our actions.  Whether you have symptoms of a cold or of cancer, to believe that it comes from the outside is to then look to the outside for help.  In this country alone we consume 36,000 pills per hour to relieve our symptoms and the consequence is medicine has become the leading cause of death in this country.  As more and more people turn to “alternatives” to medicine, without a change in their beliefs, we now spend more money on bottled water, health foods, vitamins, and health clubs than ever before with the same result.  Whether you’re taking prescription medication or over the counter vitamins, popping pills without a change in belief will still lead to the same outcome.  Join us each week as we answer the fundamental questions of where does health come from and how can we achieve it as the natural of expression of a clear neurological connection.

From the moment of conception to our very last breath, there’s an intelligence within each of us that coordinates and controls every single cell, organ, tissue and function within our body.  As a result, our health at any given moment is a reflection of how that intelligence is interacting with and adapting to the world in which we live.  When we experience symptoms of illness (the consequences of the inner intelligence reacting to our environment), how we interpret those symptoms will dramatically affect the choices you make with regards to restoring your health.

Take for example a cold; three common symptoms related to a cold include a runny nose, stuffy head and fever.  Your body perceives a threat in the form of a virus and begins to act in your defense by trapping the virus (stuffy head) flushing the sinuses (runny nose) and raising the body temperature to kill the virus (fever).  Using medication, a decongestant for the stuffy head, Tylenol for the fever and a antihistamine  to stop the runny nose, only serves to interfere with the body’s efforts to overcome the virus.  You may ‘feel’ better but your body, now with one arm tied behind its back and under the influence of a chemical soup, is left to carry on its work with the extra labor of defending you against the drugs.

Chiropractic is the one art science and philosophy of health care specifically devoted to nurturing that built in intelligence, your life force, so that without interference, it can do what it’s designed to do… express health.  Your life force animates your body and flows over your nerves while your brain controls and coordinates everything perfectly so that you live harmoniously with the world around you! Because your spinal cord is surrounded and protected by your spinal column, if there is any dysfunction in your spine, it can impact the nerve system and the free flow of your Intelligent and healing life force.  Chiropractic adjustments restore normal alignment and function to your spine and therefore allow your life force to flow freely once again, and resume helping you adapt, heal and grow toward the full expression of your purpose and potential in life!

The fireman may be great for helping you save the house from completely burning down, but don’t ask him, with his axes and hoses, to help you remodel or rebuild your home when a carpenter is perfectly suited for the job.

Millions of dollars are spent every day to convince us that the solution to our health problems can be found in the latest greatest lotion potion pill or shot.  The pharmaceutical industry has this money to spend because hook line and sinker we as a society have come to believe that it’s true, and pay dearly for it.  The irony however is that they literally make hundreds of billions of dollars a year attempting to replicate and mimic what our body already naturally produces. According to David Simon, MD, “When we are healthy our bodies can produce anti-depressant drugs, anti-anxiety drugs, immune-enhancing drugs, digestive system normalizing drugs, sleep-inducing drugs.” Etc.

Your brain and many of your internal organs, hormones, glands and tissues work together to keep your internal pharmacy functioning properly.  This army needs healthy, natural, nutrient dense foods (as opposed to processed, refined, artificial “junk” foods) as raw building materials as well as a clear neurological connection to coordinate any and all operations.  The quality of your raw materials (food) comes from your conscious decisions about what to eat and drink while the quality of the communication system that coordinates its use comes from a properly functioning spine and nervous system.

The role of your chiropractor is to help you keep your (and your families) nervous system functioning at its optimal level so that your immune system (using the natural internal pharmacy) can maintain a high resistance to disease.  If you have subluxation, you cannot function at your best and your “army” is ineffective.

Get a chiropractic spinal checkup; it’s easy, healthy and won’t require a thirty second list of potential side effects like death spoken at an unintelligible rate to meet legal standards for “properly informed.”

“The only safe vaccine is one that is never used.” Dr. James R. Shannon, former director of the National Institute of Health.   

Should we ever desire to see a dramatic improvement in the health of this nation, this is a great place to start.  There’s still no proof that vaccinations work while evidence of an overwhelming nature continues to mount making the toxic vaccination soup of aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde and foreign cell proteins injected into our kids every day a primary cause of everything from SIDS to Autism and Alzheimers to Cancer.  There’s no better time to become informed than now… your kids are banking on it.

This question, depending on how you answer it can have a profound effect on your health for the rest of your life.  It’s been my experience that most people believe that germs are the reason they get sick.  In fact, this week so far, I’ve had several occasions to listen to people talking about avoiding germs by “spraying the whole house with Lysol” or “avoiding other people to keep from getting sick.” Last week a practice member who teaches middle school shared with me that twenty to thirty kids a day went home sick in spite of the record number who get flu shots each year.

If you believe that germs are the cause of sickness and disease then your idea of maintaining health will be completely different from someone who understands that germs don’t cause disease any more than flies cause garbage.  Germs, such as bacteria and viri, are everywhere: in the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink and every single thing we touch.  It’s not uncommon that you have influenza, tuberculosis, tetanus, staphylococcus and other germs in you all the time. It’s estimated that each of us give host to more than 3 trillion bacteria that live in harmony with our bodies, most of them completely necessary to our survival and yet infections are relatively rare.  Why then isn’t everyone sick all the time?

The reason is that germs are a threat only when you create a hospitable environment for them to flourish!  “You have, inside of you, a vast army with advanced weaponry on a constant search and destroy operation to find, repel and eat any invader.” Eat?  ”Well that’s how your immune system kills bacteria, viri, all kinds of germs – even cancer cells.” It patrols your every nook and cranny, searching to keep your body safe and secure by consuming and rejecting everything that doesn’t belong.

Your immune system, controlled and coordinated by the nervous system, is part of an amazing healing power designed to keep you perfectly healthy for well over 100 years.  This healing ability is able to cure even the most “incurable” diseases, everything from the common cold to cancer.   With this in mind, it’s the focus of the healthiest people on the planet to strengthen and maintain a healthy nervous system.  Provide your body with healthy raw materials and the freedom to communicate health and you will begin to experience a life without disease, in spite being surrounded by germs and those who choose to spray for flies rather than clean up the garbage.

“Children who produce higher fevers, strong rashes and good discharges of mucus and pus, are healthier and more robust and have stronger immune systems than children who produce a low intensity of these symptoms.  These robust children vigorously externalized and healed their infections spontaneously, often without antibiotics; they had had little or no antibiotics, antipyretics or vaccinations in their lives.  The children who had had all their vaccinations, lots of antipyretics and antibiotics – a lot of suppressive, internalizing medical treatments, these children never got high fevers and were the ones who were more likely to have allergies and autoimmune problems.” (13) 

A fever is designed to serve the body and indicates a healthy robust immune and nervous system. Don’t let the fear mongers convince you that your child’s body is weak and in need of outside intervention nor that your instincts don’t matter.  Most parents I serve have a sense of what is good for their child and simply need reassurance given all that they hear on television.  The power that made their body heals their body!  Trust it!

Fever is one of the body’s most powerful infection fighting weapons. In his book, How to Raise A Healthy Child…In Spite of Your Doctor, Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn, MD writes  “If your child contracts an infection, the fever that accompanies it is a blessing, not a curse… fever tells you that the repair mechanisms of the body have gone into high gear.  It is something to rejoice over, not to fear… (10) Perhaps equally important, studies show that artificially lowering a fever with drugs such as acetaminophen (Tylenol ^TM) or aspirin (antipyretics) keeps sick people sick longer.  In one particular study doctors gave half a group of patients with the flu, aspirin while the other half were permitted to have a fever.  The group taking aspirin to lower their fever stayed sick 3 ½ days longer then the group allowed to naturally maintain it.  The paper concluded: “Antipyretics prolong illness in patients with Influenza… The duration of illness was significantly prolonged.”  (11)  This I hope would be cause for parents to reconsider the common prescription for illness which is to suppress and or remove all signs that the body is working to restore health.  One cannot however stop at thinking that reducing fever simply prolongs illness.  In another study researchers reported: “There is no convincing evidence that naturally occurring fevers are harmful. In contrast, animal studies have shown that fever helps animals to survive an infection whereas antipyresis (lowering fever) increases mortality…there is considerable…evidence that…human immunological defenses function better at febrile temperatures than at normal ones.” (12) In other words, artificially interfering with your body’s natural immunity in fact opens it up to being overwhelmed to such a degree as to risk death.  The body is so intelligent it understands that foreign bacteria cannot live above a certain temperature; to interfere with that process is to make the body weaker and the bacteria stronger.

Dr. Mendelsohn, MD adds that “The human body has a remarkable capacity to heal itself – a capacity that in most cases surpasses anything that medical science can do – and it doesn’t produce unwanted side effects.  ”Common sense is the most useful tool in dealing with illness.  Your doctor is less likely to employ it than you are, and certainly no more able, because that’s not what they taught him in medical school.”  Natural immunity is a blessing that once understood can be nourished by supporting the one system that controls and coordinates it… your nervous system.  Have your child checked by a “chiropractor” and never again look to a bottle for answers.

 ”Subluxations can reduce nerve impulses by 60%” Chung Ha Suh Ph.D. Univ. of Colorado

What would communicating with others be like if 60% of each and every conversation on the cell phone could not be heard or understood?  I imagine most of us would become quit frustrated and complain to the cell phone companies if not outright fire them while we look to hire one we can rely on.  With your body, it’s not so easy.  If you ignore the problem or misdiagnose it as static’itis’, it will only get worse and there’s no tossing the phone or firing the company…. You’re it!  Poor communication affects everything you do and everyone you know.  Get checked for subluxation and know a clear neurological connection (health).

A recent article on page two of the Northfield Hospital Family Health Winter 2009 Newsletter sites opiate use as “eclipsing marijuana as a gateway to the world of illegal drug use” and that according to Charles Reznikoff, MD, an opiate addiction specialist, “pain pills contribute greatly to the opiate addiction he sees.  From what I could gather, it appears, Dr. Reznikoff, believes that adolescent risk taking and self medicating to “address untreated mental health disorders, such as anxiety, depression or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,” are primary reasons for this trend.  I can’t help but ask myself at this point, what risk and why not?

What risk is he talking about?  By the time we’re 20 years of age, every western citizen has experienced 18,000 hours of advertising. That’s 18,000 hours of opportunities to establish and build on a belief system that perpetually reinforces the idea that you are weak and that your health is dependent on outside sources like drugs for answers.  Our country makes up 5% of the worlds population and yet consumes 60% of the world’s drugs, that’s 25 million pills consumed every hour every day every week of every year.  This trend is not expected to end any time soon as it’s estimated that in the year 2013, the global market for pharmaceuticals will top $1.0 trillion with the highest growth rate expected in the generic prescription drug market. 

How is it that our kids are supposed to understand that there’s any risk whatsoever in popping a few pills to feel good when from infancy they’re taught that all answers are expected to come from a bottle?  Self medicating is the rule rather than the exception for if you have a headache, take Tylenol, if you have a runny nose take an antihistamine, if you have an upset stomach take the pink stuff (you know what I’m talking about), if you have allergies take Benadryl, if you’re depressed take Paxil if you’re anxious take Valium if you can’t sit still take Ritalin and if you don’t have any energy, drink coffee until one day you have no reservations about going to the medicine cabinet for a hit of Oxycontin, Percocet, Vicodin or Methodone to take the edge of your stressful day.

Ironically enough, the same article then goes on to suggest the use of Methadone and Suboxone (drugs) as “tools available to manage withdrawal” and that they’re “proven to reduce death from drug overdose and HIV transmission.” I wasn’t quit able to follow the logic but then that’s the point.  Do you really believe that the power that transformed two cells at conception into a living breathing human being has now become so inept at birth that the only chance we have at living a long and healthy life is to rely on drugs made by companies that make more money each year than most countries? Why should any child take us seriously when we believe that “to prevent kids from wandering into recreational opiate use and the prospect of addiction” we think the answer lies not in nurturing the bodies self healing power but in “disposing of all pain pills and controlled substances when they have served their purpose or hiding them if they are still needed for legitimate medical use.”  Kids using drugs, ‘risky’ as it may be, is only a symptom and until we’re ready to correct the cause, expect the symptoms to get far worse before they ever get better.