What is Real Health?

What constitutes real health? And how can chiropractic adjustments help to restore it? Most people consider themselves healthy if they have no adverse symptoms. Patients arrive into our office stating that they have no health problems, despite evidence to the contrary. Why do they say that? Because the conditions they do have are ‘well-controlled’ by prescription medication. That’s not real health!

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you sleep well (soundly and long enough)?
2. Do you enjoy a high energy level (no sleepiness or lethargy in the afternoon)?
3. Are you at an optimal weight and fat percentage for your height and sex?
4. Are you physically active in getting regular exercise several times per week?
5. Are you mentally active with good memory and no brain fog, anxiety, or depression?
6. Do you suffer from joint pains, muscle spasms, or headaches?
7. Are you on medications of any sort that you take regularly?
8. Did you feel healthier when you were younger?

Did you answer “yes” to any of the above? If so, your health could be improved.

Health Isn’t Simply the Absence of Symptoms

True health is a level of vitality that is beyond the absence of symptoms – it’s balanced and optimal functioning on all levels. As a doctor of chiropractic, I focus on the physical structure of the body and treat people who complain of joint pain from the stress of an unbalanced spine and nervous system. This can occur from accidents, injuries, or from poor postural habits and poor ergonomics.

Chiropractic adjustments relieve pain and, over time, help to normalize the structure of a patient so that they can experience a life that’s pleasant and pain-free.

The Vast Health Potentials of Chiropractic

Chiropractic is not just a pain reducer, and it goes way beyond treating a sore back and headaches in its health effects. Chiropractic adjustments normalize the functioning of the nervous system, the most important controlling system of the entire body.

The brain and nervous system is the supercomputer and communication system that takes information from outside of the body as well as inside (internal organs and tissues) and processes and analyzes this information. It then sends out communications that alter how the body reacts, all to the end of keeping everything in the body functioning as optimally as possible. That’s called homeostasis – keeping everything in balance and it’s what the brain and nervous system are responsible for.

Chiropractic works to eliminate interference to the nervous system so that communication within the body is improved, thereby improving the function of not only every joint and muscle but all the organs in the body as well. The better the communication to and from the brain and nervous system, the better job it can do of coordinating all of the complex processes and interactions that go on inside our bodies. And believe me, the sheer number involved would truly boggle the mind!

Health is not just the absence of disease or symptoms. It is the optimal and integrated functioning of our body-mind-spirit that is the human condition at its best.

The Computer Analogy

Despite living in Silicon Valley, I confess that I’m not a techie. But the computer analogy is a good one for the basics, so let’s take it a bit further. ‘Garbage in, garbage out’ works for more than just computers. In the human body, ‘We are what we eat,’. And if there is interference from swollen joints or tight muscles that block or interfere with the communication lines (nerve flow), then the function is negatively impacted. Pain is a clear sign the body uses to tell us that something is wrong. It’s like the red blinking light in the car trying to get our attention.

Symptomatic or Corrective Care – Your Choice

A symptom is what usually indicates that something may be wrong or out of balance in the body. The diagnostic label given to a condition is often a restatement of the symptom. For instance, ‘cervicalgia’ is the diagnostic label for neck pain, and it literally means ‘neck pain.’

Similarly, we can label a condition of low back pain ‘lumbago‘, meaning low back pain. I could go on but the point is that the symptom is not the problem. Rather it is an indication that there is a problem. The only way to truly fix a problem is not to mask the symptom but correct the underlying cause. Sometimes, too often, people equate the temporary absence of symptoms with the solution of the problem. They think that if they take a pill or get a treatment and the pain goes away that the problem causing the pain has gone away also.

Chiropractic adjustments can be very effective at pain relief. I’ve had patients come in to see me for treatment of debilitating pain who after one treatment ‘disappear’. When they later come back in with the same or different pain, they happily exclaim, “Your last treatment fixed me right up. The pain went away and only recently came back. Do the same thing you did last time.” Well, that’s pretty good symptomatic relief but it’s not the same as corrective care which creates measurable changes that permit the body to function more normally.

Corrective care goes way beyond just symptomatic treatment. We always recommend corrective care for our patients because we know it’s better for the patient. Fixing the problem for good is in the long run more economical than chasing symptoms and providing only temporary relief. Those who decide to follow our recommendation for corrective care, receive chiropractic adjustments that result in not only symptom elimination, but a nervous system that functions more ideally as well as a more structurally sound, balanced and physically fit body. The benefits cannot be overestimated. We’re here to help.