Healthy In A New Way

 Often times we think of health in a particular way and live our lives according to that thought. What if viewed our health differently, how would things change? Would we still have a health care crisis or even have so many people suffering from chronic disease? Would we have a happier, less expensive, more cheerful population of people?

I don’t know if that would happen but I do believe our view of health in this country and many countries in the world has become distorted and created a sickness mentality that has created a crisis model for healthcare.

By now you are probably wondering, “where is this guy going with this? I promise you I will explain and hopefully entice you to look differently at your own health and create some positive change.

For many years the idea of healthy was and still is often thought of a lack of disease or sickness. In other words if we aren’t sick or feeling ill then we must be healthy.

According to Tabers Medical dictionary health if defined as “A condition in which all functions of the body and mind are normally active.” The World Health Organization defines health as a state of complete physical, mental, or social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

I like this last definition best, it truly describes a healthy person all around. We have believed that if our body is not screaming at us or our blood tests are okay then everything is fine.

I am sure you have encountered someone or heard of someone who was “healthy” and for no apparent reason dropped dead of a heart attack or cancer. We must be missing something vital to promote and free the expression of health in our body.

Some of the most obvious things to promote health is to stop making yourself sick with toxic chemicals such as tobacco, alcohol, and drugs (legal or illegal, prescribed or over the counter).

We are a self-medicating, pill popping society that relies on chemistry to help our ills. If you are too stressed take a pill or a drink, if you are too tired take a pill, if you can’t sleep take a pill etc… We have forgotten a very vital truth, our body heals.

When you have a cut it heals, if we go beyond the limits of our body to resist the environment and we damage our tissues, often times the body can heal itself. I am not saying that we should disregard all care when we have damage or feel sick. What I am saying is our focus should be on identifying how the body heals and promote that not necessarily by adding more chemicals to our body, but by allowing the body and its wisdom to go about healing without interference.

An example of where we can go wrong would be when we get a cold. Immediately the medicine cabinet flies open and we start to look for something to help heal the symptoms of a cold (nasal congestion, cough, fatigue, and in some cases a fever).

The symptoms, if we look at them a different way, are not sickness themselves, they are the body’s way of removing the irritation, damaged cells, and a result of the immune system doing its job of clearing out toxins and dead tissue.

The runny nose andcough keeps viral components and debri out of lungs and blood stream. If we medicate these symptoms so we feel better we might interfere with the body trying to heal itself.

We need to look at what the body is doing and regard it as the best solution at the time to try to heal itself. If we could find a way to help it do that and not try to get in the way we would be healthier, have less chronic disease, and a better connection between the mind and the body.

Since being a chiropractic patient and a chiropractor I have learned that the body heals, through proper nutrition (healthy food), proper mindset (healthy thoughts), and healthy nerve flow (the major control system of the body), a person will heal faster, is less likely to be sick, and less often suffers from chronic disease.

This last statement is based on my personal experience with patients over the past 20 years. I find that when the body is treated in way to allow to complete its healing and it is honored for how it is healing that health truly occurs, not just a relief of symptoms. 

Exercise, eating right, keeping a positive mental attitude by putting in as much motivating positive input into our minds as we can, and keeping a well aligned spine to allow for the health in our body to flow at its maximum is a less expensive, more efficient way to achieve and maintain health.

We still need drugs/surgery and heroic measures in an emergency situation to overcome the crisis, but to build health is a different story.
Do we get headaches because we don’t take enough Advil in our diets, or do we get infections because we don’t ingest antibiotics daily, or is high blood pressure caused by a lack of high blood pressure medication? Think about it….