I’ve had some great feedback from my last couple of posts and I really appreciate the many encouraging words. I have had a number of patients however asking me the same thing. ” Why?”. There have been a couple of different “why ” questions, so I thought I would answer those this week.
One question I have received a few times is why a Chiropractor, or a “back doctor” is talking about all this health stuff. This is an excellent question, and one I plan on discussing in greater detail in the future. If I do my job right in the coming weeks, the answer to this question will be obvious. For now, I’d like to give the quick response.
I chose chiropractic as a profession because of its philosophy. Chiropractic is a separate and unique health modality. The basic premise is that the body is a self healing, and self regulating system. If you cut your finger, it heals. If you break your leg, you get it set in the proper place, and it heals. The miracle of conception, pregnancy, labour and birth. Think about it. At conception, the sperm and the egg meet. These two cells become one cell. Twenty three chromosomes each, now become forty six. Next, that one cell begins dividing. Two cells to four cells, eight, sixteen, thirty two etc… Each and every cell carrying the exact same DNA in its nucleus. The first organised system of cells that forms is the central nervous system. From this central nervous system, all of the other systems, the circulatory system, skeletal system, the heart, lungs, etc are formed. All without any outside interference, your body and those cells know exactly what to do. When the time is right, again your body knows what hormones to release to start the process of labour and what muscles to contract so that child can come out into the world. Amazing!
The innate intelligence of the body doesn’t need any help, just no interference. I believe this is such a central and important concept that you will find these words displayed in the front of our waiting room.
The brain and nervous system co-ordinate this healing and regulating. The brain is protected by the skull and the spinal cord exits the skull, and is protected by the spinal bones. If there is added stress or interference on the nervous system, either going from the brain to the body or from the body to the brain, then your body can’t function at 100%. Proper alignment and movement of the spine is important for balanced brain activity. According to Roger Sperry Nobel Prize Winner in Brain Research, movement of the spine generates 90% of the nerve stimulation used to run the brain.
You could say that movement of the spine is like the windmill of the brain; it recharges the brain that runs the entire body. The increase in alertness that you feel when you are exercising or when you’ve just been for a walk is mainly due to increased brain stimulation from spinal movement. If you sit behind a desk all day without moving, do you feel great at the end of the day because you stored up all that excess energy that you didn’t burn all day? Of course not, you feel sluggish and tired because your windmill wasn’t stimulating your brain. Proper spinal motion can lead to better brain health and since the brain coordinates the activity of virtually every cell in the body, this means better overall health.
Having a healthy spine and nervous system is just one piece of the pie. How we EAT, MOVE and THINK are all crucial to our overall health.
Another question I have been asked lately is why am I writing and sharing this information. The answer is simple. I believe I would be guilty by omission if I didn’t share the information I have found in my research with the people I come in contact with.
I was at a conference a few years ago, and one of the presenters put a quote up on the wall. It was from Martin Luther King, and it said, ” The day we remain silent about those things that matter, is the day we die”.
I have spent the last 15 years studying health and wellness. Attending conferences, reading science journals and books, anything I could get my hands on. I have always been a skeptic about anything that went against the grain, or the popular belief. But the science behind what I was discovering was overwhelming and now I feel as though it is my duty to share what I have learned.
I encourage you to have a healthy amount of skepticism too. Don’t believe everything you read. Do your own research and find out for yourself what feels right.
What I have come to believe is that we all have the capability to lead extraordinary, healthy, happy lives. We ALL have that ability. As humans, our genes are built for health. We aren’t designed for chronic disease and a slow, medicated death. According to Dr Bruce Lipton PHD biologist, only 3 percent of our population is sick due to genes. The rest of us are sick from our lifestyle.
There is no doubt in the scientific literature that these diseases are on the rise. The question we need to be asking ourselves is why. How could all these sickness genes be on the rise over the last 50 to 100 years? How could our genes, all of a sudden, start expressing the increase in heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, depression that we have seen over the past 50 years.
We need to change the way we view our health, and where health truly comes from.We need to change the questions we ask about health.
What I have learned to be true for me is this. The quality of our questions determines the quality of our lives. If we ask, what do I need to be healthy and what does my family require to be healthy, and what do we need to avoid in order to be healthy, we win. If we ask, what treatment do we need, what remedy or what therapy do we need, we lose. Not that it isn’t great that those services are there when we need them. It’s when we just treat the sign or symptom, without discovering WHY the sign or symptom is there in the first place, we lose.
So what, or where should we study and base our information on what is healthy? How do we define health? Where are we going to find such a subject? If I was to study a healthy Rhino, I’d go to Africa, and measure them in their natural habitat. As long as their habitat was healthy at the time. So where do we find healthy humans? In the wild. That’s why anthropology is so amazing when looking at health. Anthropology allows us to study what healthy humans did. What they ate, how they moved, what their family and social environments were like when humans were thriving, and dominating the animal kingdom. This is why I have been recommending a paleolithic, or Paleo style lifestyle. It’s eating as close as we can to what we are genetically designed to eat. Here’s a link to an article on great site run by Mark Sisson which explains the principles behind this in greater detail .
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-blueprint-101/#axzz2bl4RndDv
This week, keep an eye out for what questions you ask yourself about your health.
Thanks for your comments!
Brian Peterson DC