From:TheBahamasWeekly.com
Chiropractic Philosophy “What is Health”
By Brian G. Blower, DC
Nov 3, 2009 - 11:15:45 AM
Perhaps it's time to confront
the common misconceptions of what health is before we discuss how to
best obtain and maintain it. Misconceptions, common beliefs that
are unfounded, they don't work; they never will work and have never
worked in the past.
Yet we are correct to readily
and thoroughly believe that health is something, but most of us erroneously
miss the target of comprehension.
Perhaps if you knew and were
to think more like a chiropractor we could stop the misconceptions and
help President Obama with his apparent undefeatable war on “health
care costs.”
Chiropractors think this way;
health is an innate state of wellness where everything in the human
body is functioning to potential all of the time.
Chiropractors believe that
the human body doesn't need help, just don't interfere with its instinctive
and innate abilities to find its own balance, its homeostasis.
In my practice I've challenged
our body's potential ability to find its balance, its homeostasis and
function, its health. And I'm a demanding chiropractic practitioner.
You bring your body to me for care and I'm going to put it to work to
find out how healthy it is.
For the over 35
years
I've been in practice it has become apparent that the health
of the human body is a slippery eel indeed. Health is hard to
get back once you've lost it and harder still to constantly maintain
it once found or returned.
Before we philosophize on what
health is let's get something out of the way. Let's all understand
what health is not, and then we'll discuss what health must then be.
First,
health is not what you
feel or for that matter what we cannot or don't feel. Health has
nothing to do with symptoms at all. Let me repeat this in another
way. What we feel is of interest, what causes us to feel symptoms
are of concern. We get those symptoms when something isn't working
right, something isn't meeting its potential to function and the parts
are laboring. We cannot treat the laboring effectively; we must
treat the cause of it.
Secondly
health isn't what
things may look like. Although it's true that structure equals
function to a great degree there is more to health than what something
looks like. Healthy isn't what you look like although what you
look like may reflect a lot of things that may not be working, not up
to health potential.
So if healthy isn't what it
looks like and it isn't what we feel then what is it and how can we
assure ourselves that we are expressing our fair share of it?
That is the billion dollar
question. The nightmarish non healthy conditions of most of our
poor and ignorant society along with our ongoing appallingly ridiculous
assumptions about proper body care are literally rapidly, relentlessly
and brutally killing us. And to make matters worse it costs us
our children's legacy to do it.
Bodies are what they are.
Don't interfere with our bodies and they run beautifully and well, boasting
of their resiliency and adeptness. Most of us are born of
good stead and have the potential to enjoy health for the duration of
our all too short life spans.
We are born with potential
and then someone comes along and leads us astray. They teach us
how to shorten our lives, how to get ill and how to be unhealthy.
Usually we are led by an unwitting parent, someone that has assumed
that their parents did the right thing by them and that's the way to
go. (assume = the ass before u and me)
Never assume, never believe
without first “big braining” it. That's right, you have a big
brain and it's time we used it in our personal confrontation and fight
for our health.
The first modern day chiropractor,
Daniel David Palmer, is credited with getting the ball rolling towards
manually confronting interferences with our spinal health.
Dr. Palmer, a Canadian, gave
the first chiropractic adjustment in 1895. He was persecuted for
his methods as were thousands of chiropractors to come for many years
following, and even today gross prejudice exists from the bayards of
health care control and administration. (a bayard is one that is “uninterested”
in what others have to say)
Even when I graduated from
the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in Toronto in 1973, upon
returning to British Columbia I was taken aback by the Chiropractic
Act of the province. The Act did not allow us to adjust the extremities.
Imagine what that meant. I had studied eight years, was licensed
and permitted to vigorously adjust the spinal bones surrounding the
brainstem, but I wasn't permitted to even lightly adjust your elbow.
Of course we have corrected
these injustices but as far as your health goes there are a plethora
of ignorant assumptions and practices that are outdated and continue
to go on in all settings of the erroneously labeled “health care system.”
And these hobbling practices
through our ignorance hold back the advancement of our health and wellness.
It costs us money to chase the old incorrect paradigm of what health
is supposed to be. It costs us in misery and hardship to support
the misinformation and therefore the misguidance of our habits as citizens.
If our beautiful perfectly
made and potentially perfect functioning body just doesn't need any
interference to do its job, then where does the interference of it come
from?
Interference comes from us
doesn't it? It comes from me and you and like it or not it's the
way of the game of health. Our bodies are what they are and we're
just not looking at them correctly. We are misinformed about what
our bodies really are and how they work and the bayards that surround
us all seem uninterested in us knowing the truth and the way out for
all of us. There is only one way back to our good health on a
large and permanent scale.
What we do to stress our bodies
causes us to malfunction. But stress is a symptom, not a cause
of disease. Stress is of interest but not of concern. Stress
is a natural instinctive and innate response to a stimulus. It
is our reaction to the stimulus that causes disease and loss of health.
“Oh come on Doc. I have stress!”
Sure you do, we all have stress from some cause or another. But
our response of stressing is always the same; we “draw up tight.”
Stress, from old French “stricture,”
from Latin “strictus,” i.e. restrict or constrict. Restrict
and constrict something and then go and put it to work. When it
cannot function to potential then label it unhealthy and you will be
right.
So if we, as a large and functioning
society, were correct to treat stress then when the body gets-up-tight
and strains and sprains becoming painful, either inside or outside of
itself, we drug it. How does the drugging and stupefying of the
brain and nerves help in reducing stress, in returning that “drawn
up tight' individual back to healthy functioning?
How can numbing the sprained
joints and holding elements of the body be labeled health care?
How can reducing the inflammatory state with drugs be “healthy?”
Under a functional load the parts still fail to function. The
body isn't healthy. It just feels good and we already discussed
that. How we feel isn't a benchmark for health.
How many of us or our loved
ones have gone to the lab and had their blood pulled and got the worst
of bad news in return for their visit? “I didn't feel that coming
on!” The lab test showed that things weren't working but long
after the initial shift from function had begun.
The fact is very few doctors test
function and fewer of us still go to our doctors on a preventative basis.
Early identification and treatment
of the causes of stress is the only way to keep tabs on a body and prevent
it from early drawing-up-tight and breaking down.
The secret to stopping stress?
We must think as a genius and apply our wisdom to overcome the stressors
common to the “Garden of Eden.” These common stressors are
all about us, constantly. Yet they are also within our grasp of
comprehension, and then of course, elimination.
Just like health can be regained
in many cases by information and application of knowledge in a timely
fashion, so can we avoid many of the common stressors that are ruining
our bodies at an accelerating and alarming rate.
That is why the chiropractor
takes four years of study including diet and nutrition, lifestyle assessment
and counseling. We as chiropractors know that to be healthy things
must be sound and functioning on the inside as well as within the musculo-skeletal
and nervous systems.
We as chiropractors know that
the identification of stress and its immediate reduction is a multifaceted essential way of viewing and achieving our health potentials.
Only your chiropractor trains so extensively on these premises and his
paradigm of health, which is practiced throughout the chiropractic profession,
and is proving itself over and over again.
For those of you that read
this column regularly I would like you to know that my next article we
will delve into our common stressors in the “Garden of Eden.”
Hang on to your paradigms for we're about to shift the one on “health!”
Also please feel free to forward
this to all of your likeminded friends as we would like them to also catch
up and be ready for this “stress eliminating” information.
About the author:
Dr. Brian Blower has been a licensed chiropractor for 35 years
practicing Applied Kinesiology and has been in private practice on
Grand Bahama Island for the past
10 years. He is a founding member of Applied Kinesiology Canada and was
educated at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College. He has treated
many celebrities and also specializes in sports medicine. Dr Blower is
currently in practice at the Family Wellness
Center on Coral Road, Freeport. He can be reached at 242-374-5424. You
can also find Dr. Blower on Facebook HERE
Feel free to contact Dr. Blower with any of your questions or comments at BodyByBlower@yahoo.com
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