HOW TO STAY HEALTHY: PREVENTING HEALTH PROBLEMS

HOW TO STAY HEALTHY: PREVENTING HEALTH PROBLEMS

Dr. Sarah Collins, one of the main characters in the True Justice series, is a Doctor of Chiropractic whose practice emphasized preventive healthcare practices.

But wait, don’t chiropractors only fix bad backs, sore necks, and headaches?

No, that’s what chiropractors have become known for because they’re pretty good at helping people with these afflictions, but the true basis of chiropractic is preventive healthcare.

If chiropractors can keep their patients healthy, then folks won’t get sick and need other, more radical forms of care.

But how do chiropractors keep people healthy?

Well, to answer that question, let’s look at what Medical Doctors do. They use drugs and surgery to assist their patients.

Doctors of Chiropractic use just about everything else like spinal manipulation, nutritional counseling, acupuncture, exercise, advocating a healthy lifestyle, etc.

Not all chiropractors utilize every one of these different facets of preventive healthcare, but most use at least one of the thirty-one recognized methods of spinal manipulation to help people regain and maintain their health.

For today’s discussion, let’s restrict our conversation to how spinal manipulation can keep people healthy.

We'll cover diet, exercise, and a ton of other aspects of preventive healthcare in later blog posts. 

For decades, chiropractors have been explaining the healthcare benefits of spinal manipulation by stating that they remove nerve interference by adjusting the spine so an unimpeded nerve flow can keep the various organs and systems of the body functioning at peak efficiency.

Well, yes and no.

It was an explanation that was easy for everyone to understand but it wasn’t totally correct.

However, it was the best way chiropractors had to explain how chiropractic works to keep the body healthy. 

At least it was the best explanation they had until the scientific research caught up with the results they were seeing in clinical practice.

Recent research has been able to shine more light on this subject.

It appears that instead of direct nerve interference, the interference is being caused by pain signals that feed back into the spinal cord from a distressed joint or organ.

Those noxious pain signals then shut down portions of the autonomic nervous system.

Interestingly, the pain that causes all this havoc can be sub clinical.

That means that even though people do not feel the pain because it is below the threshold below which they can detect it, it’s still there doing its nefarious work.

But what’s the autonomic nervous system do, and why is it so important?

It governs all the stuff we don’t have to think about like digestion, keeping our heart beating, etc.

Spinal manipulation is a common method (almost exclusively administered by Doctors of Chiropractic these days) used to correct a malfunctioning joint and thereby stop the flow of pain signals to the spinal cord.

That allows the autonomic nervous system to return to normal.

A wonderful study comparing chiropractic care to medical care published in 2007 illustrates how spinal manipulation translates into real world benefits.

The free abstract of that study that can be found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17509435.

Abstracts of scientific studies are relatively easy to read and only a few paragraphs long, so don’t be afraid to check these results for yourself.

When using Doctors of Chiropractic as the gatekeeper of an IPA instead of the more traditional Medical Doctors, this study found a reduction of 60.2% for in-hospital admissions, 59.0% less hospital days (the number of days a person stays in the hospital after they’ve been admitted), 62.0% fewer outpatient surgeries and procedures, and a whopping 85% decrease in pharmaceutical costs when compared with conventional medicine IPA performance.

That’s a lot of monetary savings (and much less pain and suffering for patients) resulting from preventive healthcare practices being used by their doctor.

That’s especially true when these stellar results brought about by preventive healthcare measures are compared to irresponsibly waiting until a health problem starts which then must be tended to by more radical and expensive methods.

Remember, it’s not just the cost savings that are important.

Avoiding pain, suffering, and loss of normal living during the duration of an illness is also vitally important.

The resulting reduction in pharmaceutical costs and utilization alone when utilizing Doctors of Chiropractic as healthcare gatekeepers would go a long way toward helping to alleviate the “Opioid Crisis.”

The opioid crisis is what you hear so much about in the news these days because people are being treated with narcotic pain relievers instead of addressing the root cause of their health problem.

You may also ask, what is the subluxation that the Doctor of Chiropractic corrects and why is it so important?

The simplest explanation is that it is a joint that is not moving correctly.

Make it move the way it is supposed to, and the subluxation disappears along with the noxious nerve impulses feeding into the central nervous system and shutting down portions of your autonomic nervous system.

The overall effect is that now the nerve impulses can flow freely from the brain to the various body parts free from interference.

That, in a nutshell is how chiropractic can keep you and your loved ones healthier.

Dr. Terry Rondberg explains all this in wonderful detail in his tremendous book, Chiropractic First: The Fastest Growing Healthcare Choice... Before Drugs or Surgery.

Dr. Rondberg points out, in easy to understand terms for the layperson, that Chiropractic is the largest natural primary healthcare profession in the world, and why that is important for you and your family.

Chiropractic is the first choice for many families who want to avoid the use of dangerous drugs and the risks of unnecessary surgery.

Maybe you should read Dr. Rondberg’s book and see why it may be the best choice for your loved ones also.

You can check out his book to see if you want to begin keeping your family healthier by clicking here.

Well, that’s the basis of what Dr. Sarah Collins alludes to in the True Justice series of novels.

Naturally, she doesn’t go into that much clinical detail (that would get boring very quickly, and I never allow my novels to become boring!) but she does try keeping her friends healthy by offering tiny snippets of advice.

She really can’t help herself.

Her whole life has been wrapped up in learning preventive healthcare techniques and keeping people healthy.

It’s a shame she can’t do it full-time anymore, and only does it for her closest friends, but you’ll have to read why. I don’t want to spoil the story for you.

I hope you enjoyed this little blog posting and return for more.

As a matter of fact, why don’t you sign up for the RSS feed so you can be notified when a new blog is posted?

I have a lot more preventive healthcare tips you may be interested in hearing about.
 
Until next time,
 
Dale (aka: D. E. Heil)