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.

A young woman arrived outside our clinic the other day and couldn't get out of the car for she was having acute lower back muscle spasms and pain.  That in itself isn't too uncommon here on Grand Bahama Island for like anywhere back muscle spasms and lower back pain are ubiquitous in nature.  But what made this case of immediate interest was that she was crying out and shrieking loudly as her husband tried in vain to help her.  We don't get that much vocal screeching with our patients and their pain so I was paternally alerted.

Somehow her husband got her to stand and by holding on to his back she was half carried down the short hall to my treatment room.  No case history, get that as we go along, this girl had ...

A mother brought her son in to see me a few years ago for he was experiencing pain in his lower back and leg.  The son was then only 11 years old and although he was a large boy for his age he didn’t differ much from the genetics of his mother.

After an initial consultation and exam to determine his cause of leg and back pain I suggested to the mom that her son will have ongoing problems with his legs and lower back unless she helps us by actively partaking in a program to solve and then maintain his lower spine’s strength and integrity.  I expressed concern over his immediate need for treatment through chiropractic adjustments of his lower back and also his upper spine too, right at the top of it as it is joined to the head...

On our earth of billions not one of us is too healthy. In fact not one out of all of the billions is even healthy. To be healthy, we would have to have everything, all of our parts, working to capacity all of the time. If this were true, that some of us were healthy, then those people would not age, not break down nor eventually die. It just doesn’t happen and no one can claim that they are truly healthy.

Nor should anyone claim to be the master of health. Not while we are living this lifetime. Being a master of health would involve an impeccable track record of lifestyle, the ability to identify and sidestep all aspects of stress and we have seen that there are too many stressors to successfully avoid.

So we “roll with the punches” and try to do what is best-and-right for our parts, pieces and systems...

My neighbor 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 had 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...

Your neck pain may be of many types and varieties.  Many causes of neck pain are generally overlooked and when untreated then inevitably lead to degeneration of the discs, bones and joints.  Early arthritis and pain often ensues. 

Knowing this and practicing as a chiropractor for many years I was more that just interested the other day by an article in a prestigious Medical Journal which revealed that the degeneration of the spine, particularly of the neck, is strongly associated with osteoporosis at that site as well.   

Osteoporosis, the loss or lack of calcium and bone density is a common finding especially among the north American populations...

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... 

“Crack my back for me will you please?” Or someone will point a finger and say, “Doc I just need you to crack my neck right here.” I hear it all the time in and out of practice. Crack this or crack that and I think, “If I wanted to help someone go to the chiropractor and improve his health how in the world will cracking his bones entice them to visit one?” I wouldn’t want my bones cracked. And why and how do they make that cracking sound when they are adjusted?

Living to his mid 90’s Jack Lallane proved that his philosophy about how to get and stay healthy works for us.  He advocated 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...

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... 

There, I’ve acknowledged it.  The elusive “Fountain of Youth.”  Does it exist?  Perhaps there is a way through “nourishing to thrive” that kind of mimics it.   Certainly Cortez and his band of rabble had misconceptions of how youth and longevity could come to be theirs.  We aren’t that far advanced to not have the same misconceptions of a “fountain” that will pour out an elixir which eradicates all disease, then giving us youth and longevity. Researchers are investing huge amounts of effort and finances into the prospect of finding the next “magic bullet” for eternal youth.  

It ain’t going to happen folks. There will be no Santa. No angel will swoop down in our hour of need and pardon us for our follies, restoring youth and vigor.  Billions and billions of us have come and gone and will continue to come and go.  We will not make a difference and our legacy to our children and their children to will not be too different from that of our forefathers unless we take action and change our attitudes...  

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.

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...

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...

The phone call the other day from my daughter away at college was wonderful to me.  Glad to hear about her youthful experiences I held the receiver closely pressed to my ear.  After awhile she said she had been ill and that she was so happy to now be back in the swing of things.  Then she passed me over to her room mate and we chatted along easily like old friends.  Finally the story of their “illness” came out.  

Apparently a few weeks ago the two of them were invited to a barbecue at one of their friends places down the hall.  Both my daughter and her friend are fans of mine and  have adopted their health paradigm centered on stress-less nutrition only for themselves.  However this particular night when they got to their friends apartment his patio barbecue was one of spicy peppery meats and sauces.  As young people will more often go along with the crowd rather than be seen as different they dug in and helped themselves to the fare. ..

I glanced out into the reception area a few days ago and saw Laura there looking uncomfortable and waiting to see me.  She had acute lower back pain and I could see by her distorted sitting posture and her painful facial expression how agonizing the condition had her in.  

Laura is a woman approaching middle age but a real fitness buff.  In fact she is a trainer and has been helping others get fit for many years.  But her own health history has been terrible over the past ten years that I have known her.  She has greatly improved her health since we first started to treat and council her but she has her own ideas about lifestyle and diet choices and her improvement has been mostly made through wrestling with me and slowly giving up those stressors in her life that continually pull us all down.  

When her turn came she shuddered to rise to a standing position and I intently watched as she took the first few steps with a bent over body and a limping gait...

“How long have you been experiencing this type of lower back pain?” I asked.  He said it was here for the past few weeks but he gets lower back pain all of the time and has for most of his adult life.  Now retired he found that some of the problems were lessened since he didn’t have to use it much.  How I remembered that good looking shiny Chevy at the curb that we didn’t dare start up. 

Looking one way and managing to work is one thing but when we think we look and work in a healthy manner but on examination fail miserably that doesn’t cut it.  His most recent lab work showed elevated cholesterols and triglycerides and borderline diabetes...

At a cocktail party the other evening I had a conversation with an apparently healthy, aesthetic and mature-in-years man who’s job it was to run a local dive experience.  This is a daily tourist-oriented adventure out onto the reefs here around our island.  As the chat got going it became apparent that his experiences with people was extensive and he quickly brought up the subject of obesity in Americans. 

He especially bemoaned the large size and poor state of the health of so many of his country’s “tourists.”  Apparently their jumbo size demanded from him and his staff extra work and considerations to get them outfitted and in and out of the boats when on the reef.  He then proceeded to tell the story of one woman recently getting her hugely obese knee caught between the rungs of the boat ladder and then complained that there should be a lift available, or at least a ramp off of the stern, to allow her to enjoy the use of the facilities like anyone else.  And also, she complained that she needed assistance because she has “chronic lower back pain!”