The LifeStyle
Many people believe chiropractic is all about helping alleviate body pain, when in fact it is about living a healthy lifestyle. True, chiropractic is the safest moist efficient way to deal with issues, such as lower back pain and headaches, but the adjustments delivered by a chiropractor accomplishes so much more. As I will explain.
Medical paradigm
Disease and their Symptoms
The medical profession has a paradigm, that is of of dealing with the diseases of the body and the symptoms they create. They do not address the underlying cause of the symptoms, they only address the symptoms of the cause.
For example; if someone presents with inflammatory bowel disease, they will give the patient medications to alleviate the inflammation without even looking for the root cause of the disease. They believe the body is making mistakes and needs outside help, in the form of medications to correct the issues. I would like to point out here, a drug induced homeostasis (continual balance), is not healthy and nowhere near what “true” homeostasis is within the body.
Chiropractic paradigm
Health and Homeostasis
Chiropractors adjust the affected areas of the spine. For instance, in our example of IBD, the Chiropractor would find vertebral subluxation complexes (VSC) in the lumbar regions of the spine. This is because the areas of the lumbar spine vertebra are where the nerves going to and from the intestines exit the spinal cord. The adjustments of the VSC only address one aspect of the entire problem. We must also look into the diet and the psychological(stress) aspects as well in order to get the complete picture.
Chiropractors look for the issues that create the symptoms the person is dealing with. The problems the medical profession define as diseases are really only the bodies attempt to deal with a bad situation to the best of it’s abilities. The body can only function as well as the fuel it is provided. It’s no different than that saying about the computer programs; “Junk in, Junk out”. There are 2 possible reasons the body develops diseases; 1) Toxins 2) Deficiencies. So a disease in the body is it’s own self defense mechanism, but this defense can only be as good as the tools it has to work with.
For instance; let’s say a farmer has a crop that is not healthy. Not growing as well as it should, not producing and is looking really sickly. He can’t figure out why it is no doing as well as his previous crops had done, so he hires as expert to come out and look at to figure what is wrong and what he should do.
After the expert is done with his examination, he lets the farmer know there are toxins in the soil that are preventing the crop from flourishing. He then prescribes something to put on the plants he has manufactured and tells the farmer that this should help. Well the farmer follows through with the prescribed plan and sure enough the plants got greener, but they still don’t grow anymore and they produced very little.
Later that fall when the farmer was harvesting his meager crops he noticed a stream of water flowing into his field. He thought this was odd as it was not there the last year. He followed the stream of water back to its point of origin and found it was coming from a chemical plant. He then addressed the issue causing the toxicity and corrected it. The following year, the farmer planted his crops, made sure there was no toxins and gave the plants the proper nutrition and was blessed with a bountiful crop the next fall.
This happens in today’s health care system on a daily basis. This is why the U.S. is ranked 33rd out of 35 industrial nations in health. The paradigm needs to shift and we need to start looking at our diets (toxins & deficiencies), exercise and stress in our lives if we are going to change this. We spend billions of dollars on “health care” and medications and yet we continue to get sicker as a nation. The medical paradigm obviously isn’t working.