Your eyes are incredible; as an extension of your brain they use one third as much oxygen as the heart, need ten to twenty times as much vitamin C as the joint capsules that move your arms and legs and require more zinc (our intelligence chemical) than any other organ system in the body.  When combined with your brain, they make up 2% of your total body weight and yet consume 25% of the nutrition we take in every day. (14) 

It’s no wonder then why blindness is such a concern for diabetics.  Your eyes are unable to protect themselves like other tissues from too much insulin in the blood stream and because both insulin and vitamin C resemble one another in structure, the doorway for each cell to let in the vitamin C (an antioxidant) is blocked from the excess amounts of insulin that compete to get in.  When you then realize that the vast majority of diabetics do not exercise, (a requirement to increasing the bodies ability to acquire and use oxygen), you can begin to see a recipe for disaster.  See yourself clear to understanding how your body really works and you will gain the power to experience health without limits.

“98% of the atoms in your body were not there a year ago.” Deepak Chopra M.D.

This is an extremely profound quote when you think about its implications. The various parts of your body are constantly regenerating new cells to replace old cells as the cycle of life rolls on.  Some cells, like the liver cells that detoxify your body, regenerate much faster than the cells of your bones. As a result, the entire body takes roughly 13 months to completely rebuild itself. That’s right; at any given moment you are no more than 13 months old.  Why then does our body seem to degenerate with time? 

Consider this process of cell replication like using a copy machine with one rule; you have to use each copy to make the next copy rather than have access to the original.  When you place the original in the copy machine, your first copy is the best copy, but from that point on each new cell or page is made using the previous copy.  As you might guess then, the copies begins to fade and blur making it more and more difficult with time to produce good quality copies.  This then places a tremendous importance on using good quality material and an active maintenance program to care for your copy machine. The quality of the ink and paper, whether you maintain the machine at its most efficient level and your commitment to keeping a clear and steady supply of electricity running to the machine all affect the final product.  Not only that, in the case of your body, the worse the quality of the material you use and the more you abuse the machine, the faster the copy machine works.  The goal then is to use the best nutrition and maintain your body’s ability to function at its optimal level if you want not only to slow the aging process down but produce the healthiest happiest you possible.  Should you ever have questions about health and healing, please don’t hesitate to ask or join us at our weekly workshops.

I don’t watch a lot of television these days so I’m not quit sure if the ads are still running, but do you remember all the commercials where celebrities and athletes were sporting milk mustaches?  I wonder if they really drank milk and if they did, would they drink it now when offered the truth about what they promoted.  I personally love milk and drink my share of it but I have to qualify that what most consider milk is not really milk at all.  When we go to the grocery store or stop down at the local ‘gas and go’ to pick up “milk,” what we are in fact buying is one of the most adulterated convenience foods ever corrupted by the hands of man.  It’s a modern day three part lab experiment gone terribly wrong.

Part one: Consider that what goes in a cow is not what comes out and you’ll have no compunction about feeding them anything as long as it’s cheep. The result; an average gallon of milk bought from our modern day distribution centers, gets you a serious dose of estrogen from soy meal, aflatoxins from GMO grains (which are very susceptible to mold and rot that produce the aflatoxins), very potent neurotoxins from citrus peel cake (the by product of making fruit juice from fruit routinely soaked in pesticides), antibiotics and growth hormones just to name some of the more obvious contaminants. 

Part two: Make people believe that the process of pasteurizing milk or any other product for that matter is good for them and soon they won’t even suspect that the hero is the villain in a modern day science fiction movie.  Pasteurization denatures, deforms, devitalizes and breaks down the “milk” proteins in such a way as to force the body to think they are foreign. The result is a full blown immune response that causes your body to expend a great deal of energy fighting something it should otherwise be getting nourishment from.  If the immune response is aggressive enough, we chalk it up to “lactose intolerance,” a catch all phrase similar to fibromyalgia that simply means someone doesn’t do well on or they get sick from drinking “milk.” If the body’s response is not so aggressive, the low level reaction quit often leads to allergies down the road that for many people seem to come out of nowhere.  In a recent interview of Sally Fallon, the founder of A campaign for Real Milk and president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, she states “Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C, B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer.”  Imagine, as it is in the case of ultra pasteurization taking “milk” from slightly chilled to above the boiling point in two seconds.  If it doesn’t strike you as a violent means of treating food, it’s only because advertisers have done a bang up job of keeping us distracted with happy pictures of famous people with “milk” mustaches.  Don’t worry about your child’s health Mr. and Mrs. Jones; see how happy the super stars are?  Remember, calves fed on pasteurized milk do poorly and many die before maturity.

Part three:  Play every angle, use any mirror and appeal to every emotion to keep the consumer buying in spite of the evidence.  If consumers are looking for “health food,” create one and two percent milk, use the cream for ice cream, which makes more money, and add non-fat dry “milk” containing oxide cholesterol, a number of carcinogens and MSG to give the water that’s left the appearance that it’s still “milk” while convincing them “it does a body good.”

According to Sally Fallon in the same interview, “milk” sales have decreasing at 1 percent per year, “relentlessly decreasing.”  Do yourself and your family a favor and opt out of the cultural lab experiment and opt in to eating real foods like real “milk.”  Again, if the cream doesn’t rise to the top, don’t drink it… its not milk!

Not too long ago and for the better part of man’s existence, the milk of cows, sheep, goats, llama’s, water buffalo, rain deer, camels and several other mammals have been vital to the health if not ultimate survival of many cultures around the world.  In each case there was no pasteurization, homogenization, refrigeration and certainly no regulation about consuming raw milk from real animals fed on real feed as an integral part of ones daily sustenance. Generation after generation were raised to understand and appreciate the value of an animal that when properly cared for would sustain them on what can only be considered one of natures perfect foods.

At the turn of the 19^th century many families had their own cow or had access to someone who maintained a small herd of old fashioned breeds like Jersey, Guernsey or Red Devons. These cows, living an average of 12 to 15 years were raised on green grass from early spring to late fall and green feed, hay and root vegetables through the winter. They spent the vast majority of their lives on pastures exposed to the fresh air and sunshine doing what cows do. The result was one to two gallons of milk rich in vitamins A and D and what is known as the “Price Factor” (a fat soluble catalyst that promotes optimum mineral assimilation) produced every day for the making of butter, yogurts, clabber, cheeses etc. 

In sharp contrast, the modern day cow is a mega Holstein that lives three to four years in confinement with very little access to fresh air and sunshine. To produce three times as much milk per day as the old fashioned cow, she’s fed a diet rich in growth hormones, antibiotics, cottonseed meal, soy meal, commercial feeds, citrus peel cake laced with pesticides, chicken manure and bakery waste.  Then without fanfare she is sold off to become pet food for the family dog.

Only in modern times have we found such a circumstance in which one is led by hook or by crook to believe that a gallon of milk is a gallon of milk whether you buy it from the local big box department store, a convenience gas station or from a “real” farmer.  For better health, don’t be fooled; real milk comes from real cows fed real food.  Remember, if the cream doesn’t rise to the top, don’t drink it!

Chiropractic works by restoring your body’s inborn ability to be healthy. When under the proper control of your nervous system, every cell, tissue, and organ in the body is designed to function at such high levels of health that they naturally resist disease and illness without any help from us.

 Chiropractic emphasis’s the innate healing power that already exists in each of us and that most often is suppressed under the strain of subluxation.  Our spine, while designed to protect and house our nervous system, can quit frequently strain the delicate nervous system to such a degree as to prevent it from communicating properly with the brain, which as you know, controls everything.  As a result our body finds itself unable to maintain normal health.

Locating interference (subluxation) and adjusting the spine works to restore the normal impulse of life that communicates through your nervous system.  The goal of Chiropractic then is to restore normal communication to the nervous system with specific chiropractic adjustments that allow your body to heal itself naturally.  So you see, chiropractic is not about removing anything, it’s about increasing the impulse that from conception has always done the right thing given the environment in which it is placed. The expression of health and vitality is normal. Maintaining a deliberate focus, a healthy lifestyle and a clear neurological connection are your keys to health and vitality!

There’s no age limit when it comes to living a healthy life.  Adjusting a pregnant mother improves the health of a developing child by improving the health of the mother.  Newborns, considering the modern birth process and especially if they experienced a difficult or traumatic birth, need to be checked for subluxation as soon as possible while older folks can be adjusted well into their advanced years without ill effects.  As Chiropractors, we are trained to know if there is any condition that would contra-indicate a certain adjustment technique and we tailor our care to every practice member so that they get the spinal adjustment that is the safest and most comfortable for them to receive.  Even teenagers should be checked; we can’t promise the music they listen to will be better but you never know – adjustments are known to do some incredible things. The younger the child is when checked the better the chance at correcting any problems before they grow chronic.

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.”