Today we are going to be talking about how to achieve better health, and how to achieve better health beyond a simple pain relief. So first, Id like you to imagine a group of people that lived in this village. This group of people in this village were trying to come up with a solution to a very important problem that they were experiencing. You see, this village had a cliff to the south. People were falling over the cliff and they would get severely injured. The bottom of the cliff was too far away from the hospital with enough time in order for them to get treatment. Eventually they would die.
So, the villagers are all getting together trying to figure out how they could solve this problem. Someone comes in from a really rich country with a bright idea and says, “we have the solution to your problem. We will pay for an ambulance to come and the ambulance will be placed just below the cliff so when someone falls off the cliff, the ambulance will pick them up and will take them to the hospital in time so that they would live.
This sounded like a decent idea so they bought the shiny new ambulance, and it worked. People who felt off the cliff were able to get to the hospital in time so that they wouldn’t die as a result of falling off of the cliff.
But my question for you is, does this plan really actually work?
Maybe for a while, but eventually the ambulance would break down and the people of the village who received the ambulance. They eventually stopped appreciating the gift because they don’t know how to fix it. or even how to really use that ambulance very well.
Hose well meaning folks who donated the ambulance are probably not very happy about it either because the receivers didn’t appreciate this wonderful gift that we gave them.
They Missed the Point
The problem is that they solved the wrong problem. What if in that meeting they listened to the guy that said, “I have a different solution, a cheaper solution. It may take a lot of work but why don’t we build a fence up on the top of the cliff. If we build the fence on top of the cliff, then we may be able to prevent people from falling off of the cliff in the first place.
And maybe saving lives that way. Maybe people would never get injured because they never fall off the cliff. They did that and no one ever fell off the cliff again. Finally, we solved the right problem, and I believe that many times when it comes to our health, we solve the wrong problem.
We Also Miss the Point in Our Pain
We sometimes focus so much on our pain that we maybe don’t understand the underlying problem. What is that actually mean if you don’t have pain? Does that mean that your health is complete, that you are all better, that you have nothing else to think about or wonder about, or worry about health wise?
Because if that really is the case you might as well just pop as many pain pills as you can so that you don’t have pain. But that’s not actually going to make you healthy and let’s think about that for a moment.
What are the number one and number two killers in America?
Are heart disease and cancer. Those are two diseases that by the time you actually feel a pain or a discomfort as a result of those diseases you are very close to death. Either you are having the fatal heart attack or you’re a very late stage of cancer, and so you are going to die.
So, if you were judging your health based on how much pain that you are experiencing then, that’s just … That’s not going to cut it,
What Does It Mean To Be Healthy?
So, what is it mean to be healthy? There are a lot of places you can look but there’s the World Health Organization says that health is optimal, physical, mental and social well-being and not just the absence of disease.
So, you want to work on getting your body to function up to its optimum potential and not just focus on getting rid of the pain. You want to work on helping your body to be as healthy as possible and function as well as possible. And that’s where wellness chiropractic comes in the play. You see, the nervous system controls everything. Your brain sends messages down the spinal cord, out of all the nerves and these nerves travel every single part of the body and as long as that pathway is clear, your body functions really well.
We want that pathway to be clear, but we go through different stresses. Physical stress or chemical stress, or emotional stress and those various stresses are going to put pressure on different parts of the nervous system. That nervous system is not going to function the way that is supposed to and when that happens you are going to start noticing problems. You might notice pain, but those nerves controlled more than just those pain receptors, that nervous system controls every function that we’ve got.
So, as a Tucson chiropractor, it’s my job to locate those areas where the nervous system isn’t functioning right. We locate that, and we make corrective changes, and when we do your body functions better, you’ll feel better, and in the long run, you’re actually going to be a lot healthier in the process.
There are very specific studies that have shown chiropractic to help with a number of different things, and we’ll talk about some of those things here really
quick. Number one, an increase in athletic performance. There are studies that’d shown in tracking field athletes, Olympic track and field athletes that a single adjustment in some cases has given an 8 to 10% improvement. And you might think of 8 to 10% as not a lot, actually when you are an elite athlete and a quarter of a percent can make a huge difference, that 8 to 10% is amazing, which is why a lot of Olympic athletes have chiropractors who will travel with them to the events, to the games to get adjusted before.
It improves your daily performance; it improves athletic performance. If it’s going to improve an athlete 8 to 10%, imagine what it can do for the rest of us that aren’t functioning nearly at that level, imagine the improvement that we can get.
Serum thiol levels, and that you probably have no idea what serum thiol is, but this is very important when it comes to wellness care and being truly healthy. Serum thiol is an antioxidant that’s found in the body, these antioxidant levels when they’re really high are associated with a longer life. So, serum thiol levels are associated with longevity. Long term wellness chiropractic care, has been shown, has been proven to increase your body’s serum thiol levels. So, long term chiropractic care has been shown to increase some of the markers that are related to long and healthy life.
Next, cardiovascular improvement. Your heart responds well to chiropractic care. There are a number of studies, numerous studies that are showing that chiropractic care, especially in the upper cervical part of the spine, have been shown to be able to decrease blood pressure.
Prevention of pain.
Here’s a picture, and I’m not sure if you can see this but, here’s a picture of my X-ray. Can you see that, okay? There’s a picture of my X-ray. And if you look at that, it
doesn’t look very good; it’s not straight. A normal lumbar spine x-ray like this one hould be straight when looking from the front.
And years ago I was told, based on the appearance of that X-ray, that I was going to have some serious issues with my back and potentially having surgery and the things that I do here as a chiropractor is definitely at risk because of what we see in my spine.
But, I remember when I was told this grave news I set out to make sure that wasn’t going to happen. That I was going to be healthy, that I was going not to suffer just because my spine isn’t functioning the way that it should. And so, I have committed to taking really good care of myself. I’ve now noticed after committing to take great care of myself, I have no pain at all. I have a great chiropractor that I get to see on a very regular basis; he takes great care of me. I exercise a lot; I really work to try to eat as healthy as I possibly can.
I have to be honest and say I don’t always … I’m not always incredibly successful at that, but I work really hard at it, and when you put those pieces together, for me it’s kept me from ever having to deal with significant back pain where when you look at my spine and where any doctor was look at my spine and think that I’m bound to suffer. Well, it’s not the case.
You’re Not Destined to Suffer
And you are not doomed to suffer either. You should be able to live healthily, you should be able to feel fantastic, you should be able to experience amazing health with chiropractic care, and that’s something that we’re committed to providing for you. And it’s time for us to solve the right problem. We mentioned before, you can work to make changes, you can work to correct something, but you want to make sure that you are solving the right problem and that’s something that we are committed to.
Take care of your body in a way that’s not only going to just result in you having less pain but actually improve every function that you have. See your chiropractor regularly, exercise in a way that’s going to improve your health, eat in a way that is going to improve the health of your body and not break it down. Let’s work together to move your health in the right direction.
I’m Dr. Emil Tompkins. I look forward to seeing you live beyond the pain.
