My neighbor just fell on some slippery tiles in her garden and broke her fibula.  She is a woman of about sixty.  Over the course of the past several years she has been hinting that she had some issues and would like to consult with me about them.   She has suggested neck and hand pain as well as the inevitable struggle with her lower back from time to time.  

Being a bit of a teaser I suggested she has a “tacky chassis.”  She laughed but didn’t get the truth in the barb.  From observation of her posture and gait it was clear to me that she was off her healthy gravitational plumb, and was therefore being cheated out of her health.   

A yogi once said that our bodies are only as young as the oldest part, that we are as healthy as we are supple.  Stiff and sticky joint movement reflects a decreased range of motion (ROM) of the parts.  Youthfulness is suppleness...

We’ve all seen them on the roadways and most of us look but don’t really recognize what is happening right before our eyes.  Yesterday I was driving down the street and there was another one, a runner.  

Few of the runners I see are running well.  Most of them are spur of the moment “get up and off the couch and get in shape now” runners.  

Dressed in anything from co-ordinates to shorts and no tee they are out there trying to ignore us as we zip by doing our busy essentials.  

But take a look at some of the postures, the irregular strides and yesterday what prompted me to chat about the runner is that she was hobbling down the road with an attitude and a limping gait...

Human nature often leads us to cheat. Cheat literally means to “fall away from something.” Like when everyone is on a pathway and someone takes a side trail trying to get ahead of the others.

With our health we often use dubious methods which only appear to help us on our way. As we “fall away” from health we may suddenly wake up and become desperate for “loss avoidance” and we cheat. We take any and all desperate paths to get what we want back again, our health.

Just like in many human relationships, we have a friend or loved one and we may find ourselves cheating on them. We are falling away from them. We will frequently risk the relationship for some unrealistic lofty goal...

Now in his mid 90’s Jack Lallane is going strong helping to prove that his philosophy about how to get and stay healthy works for us.  He advocates that the ‘King and Queen” of health are exercise and diet.  

I agree, diet is the single most important thing you can become adept at providing to support your health.  

Only with the right components in our blood, the source of energy and repair for our strength, stamina and endurance, do we have a shot at being healthy.  Without those healthiest constituents within us we are not able to reach and maintain the lofty goal of health.  

With healthy chemical components that yield energy, carefully placed within our blood, we will be able to do work.  We will also feel robust and virile...

Chiropractic as we know it has been formally practiced in the north Americas for the past one hundred and fifteen years.  First administered by a man named Daniel David Palmer, a Canadian practicing magnetic healing in Iowa.   

D.D. Palmer was apparently looking to solve the upper back pain of a man named Harvey Lillard when he decided that the “bump” on the back of Mr. Lillard’s shoulder was from bones that didn’t match the placement of all of the others nearby.   

D.D. Palmer had Mr. Lillard tell his story about the painful bump on his back and about some of the other symptoms he had been feeling.  Mr. Lillard had pain, in the upper back, about the neck, and also had difficulty hearing since the bump appeared...

For most of us chest pain is pretty serious stuff, and indeed it may be a prime indicator of a disease process that is best rapidly identified and dealt with.  

However most chest pain may not be immediate “serious stuff” but many of us in our panic and knee jerk reactions to pain, spend a lot of time and money in the wrong office getting a wait-and-see diagnosis.  Then after an arduous course of EKG’s, x-rays, physical exams and a plethora of other avenues of investigation, “just to make sure” we are left alone to wait and see.

But most chest pain isn’t a heart or lung or other organ problem at all.  Most chest pain is due to physiologic bone and muscle pain... 

How many many times patients have hobbled into my practice with a painful foot.   Often the foot pain is just a few days present and the pain, in the ball of the foot is excruciating.

Our feet are an anatomical wonder and we take them for granted.   We take it for granted that they are what they are and will just do what feet do, always.

With foot pain it’s hard to keep up with the pack and that means an immediate solution to the pain becomes first on our list of priorities.

Over the many years of my practice of chiropractic both here in The Bahamas and in Canada the story has been similar among many of my female patients.  “Doctor Blower, my husband and I have been trying to conceive and cannot.  Is there anything you can do as a chiropractor to help us?”  

Often chiropractic spinal manipulation can help the processes of conception.  Many women in my practice were able to go on and successfully conceive after just a few months of chiropractic care.  

Our spine is a “pipeline” and a “lifeline” connecting the brains to every tissue cell of the body... 

As the sapling is bent so grows the mighty oak.  

Taking it for granted that our children are growing well and will   be attaining the full potential of their bodies may be foolish.   Look at their posture, others do.

If you find yourself constantly reminding your child to “sit up straight” or poking your finger in their back with the “quit slouching” command, maybe it is time to seek out a professional’s opinion about their growth progression.

Stressed?   "Boy Doc, do I have stress! "  We hear it every day.   Most people complain of stress continuously.   It’s an ongoing, nagging, health ruining scenario and modern life seems to be full of more and more stress as time passes.

Had enough of it?   Read my little story here and see if we can’t get rid of a lot of stress in a permanent manner, in a hurry

I remember the fall of 1969 arriving in Toronto from Vancouver in what was to become my home for the next four years, the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College.

Wet behind the ears would be an understatement.   I had no idea of what chiropractic was and even less knowledge of it being the third largest form of “health care” in North America.   Third to allopathic medicine and dentistry.

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...”

My 15 year old son Nathen, came to me the other day with a painful tooth on the upper left molar area.    He is a tall and aesthetic young man very active and gifted, especially in soccer which he plays midweek and coaches on the weekends as well.   

As his mother had already booked a dental appointment for the problem, my son came to me perhaps more to inform me of his pain and not necessarily to consult for the causes of the painful tooth syndrome.

I was just driving home and noticed a man of about fifty dressed in shorts and singlet walking up his driveway.   Being a posture buff I noticed immediately he was grossly sloped downwards on one shoulder and had a Dowager’s Hump, a very kyphotic or forward rolled rib cage, chest and neck.   From this stooped forward posture he craned his face and head up in a bird like manner and with more energy expenditure than the healthy human design should have to use, he pushed himself up the slope.

He reminded me of a youngster brought to my clinic for evaluation and treatment a few weeks ago.   The mother of the very happy, intelligent and well rounded young man, no pun intended, was tired of poking her finger into his back and thought there might be some growth issue that a chiropractor could deal with.   She was concerned.

As a chiropractor with over thirty five years of licensed practice I have been asked this question many times.   For some of us spinal and extremity manipulation seems foreign and unusual.   Let me enlighten those of us that have this “generation’s old way of thinking” clouding our mind.

Our gifted body has over three hundred joints.   They may be of various descriptions but all of them are present for a purpose and all of them have function.   Function means to do work.   Remember that for us to be “healthy” then all of the parts must be able to do their work.   And to do work all of the parts must have an adequate nerve supply.

As a chiropractor for over 35 years I have administered by hand millions and millions of chiropractic spinal and extremity adjustments.   I remember my early days in the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College and how we as students were lovingly guided into the hidden realm within the human body by countless hours of anatomy, human dissection, technique lessons along with case examples by clinicians and doctors from the field.

Funny how fate happens to turn our lives about for the buddy I went to school with was the son of a chiropractor and he had talked me into it.