Stay Active
Eat Healthy
Be Positive
Get Adjusted
Be active.
Years ago a letter in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) gave the opinion that the closest thing there is to a panacea (“a cure for everything”) was exercise. Exercise does not have to be strenuous or complicated. It should be enjoyable you will want to do it. Walking is one of the best exercises. If you can’t walk then bicycling, either stationary or outdoors, is good. If those options are out then find something that forces you to move enough so that you have to breath deeper. Aside from improving your breathing movement helps pump blood and move food through the system. Constipation effects both body and mind! I’ve had racing fans tell me that, when in doubt, bet on the horse that takes a dump just before the race.
Eat Healthy
Even though chiropractic school is heavily weighted toward nutrition one of the best bits of information I got was from my father, a butcher who never went beyond the 8th grade.
Years ago I drove a truck and I was passing near my parent’s house on a run that was on my father’s day off. I called him and asked if I could get us lunch and stop by. “What are you gonna get," he asked? I told him I was going to stop at a fast food joint and get a “Big…” (well you know what) “What’s that?”, he asked. I went on and told him in glowing tones the wonders of this culinary delight. Interested he asked, “What’s it cost?” I told him 85 cents. (yes this was a long time ago) “No," he said. “Why not?” I asked and went on to describe the shear joy he was turning down. “No!”, he said in a more definate way. “But Dad,” I said, “they taste good!” Then he schooled me on a basic economic fact about nutrition. “What kind of meat do you think you're gonna get for 85 cents?!” The moral: Cheap junk food is crappy food.
Consider a Mediterranean style diet. The Mediterranean diet is based on the traditional foods that people used to eat in countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, including France, Spain, Greece, and Italy. Although there are no strict rules or regulations for the diet, it typically encourages fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and heart-healthy fats. Processed foods, added sugar, and refined grains should be restricted. The further your food is from its raw unprocessed state the less healthy it is and “ultra processed” are a known cause of a lot of health problems!
Be Positive
The function of physical matter is to express spirit and the function of spirit is to animate matter. By concentrating only on the physical and not acknowledging the spiritual you can’t achieve health. One of the earliest manifestations I see in a neglect of things spiritual is a negative attitude that doesn’t give the patient the energy to heal. If you have a negative attitude you can work your way out of it. There is always something positive! Pick out the good points of folks you don’t like, leave out celebrities and politicians as their persona is fabricated and not real. When someone points out that “so & so” is funny looking — try and mention one of their positive points. When the bills become a huge burden, think about how nice it is to be warm and dry. When you are in misery because of pain avoid thinking about the pain. Instead think about something beautiful or just funny. I highly recommend old movies like any of the Marx Brothers films, or my favorite “get over it” movie “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”
Lastly, your pain and troubles are not a punishment for being evil any more than riches are a reward for being good. The name “Satan” can be roughly translated as “the Accuser” because his accusations lead us to damnation. (e.g., Because you are a bad person you got cancer or because you are better than others you are rich) That’s not the way it works so when you get those thoughts tell your “Satan” to “get thee behind me”.
Get Adjusted
The primary system of the body is the nervous system, every function and emotion is either directly controlled or modified by the nerves. Nerve health depends on many things, one of which pressure on the nerve roots as they exit the spine (DRG). Pressure of around 10mm/Hg will affect the flow of the substrates of the neurotransmitters. The interactions of the various neurotransmitters at the synapses (connections between the nerves) are what causes the nerves to do what they were designed to do. A subluxation can put that much pressure in that area (DRG) This affects the nerve function. Chiropractic adjusting removes that pressure.
Nerve beds in all joints continually send messages to the central nervous system (CNS) keeping it appraised of the joints position and function. If the joint is restricted or somehow affected in its movement the signal the CNS gets a bad message. In turn the CNS does not accurately have the various muscles, tendons, ligaments and other soft tissue function as they should. This can cause pain, inflammation, loss of range of motion or some other dysfunction that will decrease the efficiency of whatever body part is affected. Chiropractic adjusting is designed to restore proper function. Obviously, you cannot function at 100% if the nerves are not functioning properly.