Are you passionate about your health? Discover why you may actually be insane when it comes to your health.
How do you view our healthcare system? Where does it fit into helping you optimize your health?
Modern medicine is often an exercise in futility, with its focus on treating the symptoms rather than addressing the root cause of the problem. The medical industry has become a corporate machine, intent on keeping people dependent upon their drugs and procedures, rather than helping to restore and maintain optimal health.
What is the 3rd Leading Cause of Death?
Heart disease and cancer should come as no surprise as the leading causes of death in the United States. But, what would you guess is the third? I might have guessed trauma or violence. I would have been wrong.
The title of this paper in the National Library of Medicine says it all, Your Health Care May Kill You: Medical Errors! Wow! It goes on to say that studies estimate that medical errors account for 251,000 deaths a year.
We would like to think that healthcare is about health but it really isn’t when the risk of death from medical care is this high. And, there are certainly other challenges with the medical model.
What is the Medical Model of Health?
I’ve written before about how important it is to have the right tool for the right job. It was Abraham Maslow who famously said “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.
The traditional medical model is based on a reactive approach that relies heavily on symptom-based treatments. Unfortunately, this approach often fails to address the root cause of the problem – not just treating the symptoms, but addressing the underlying issues that led to the symptoms in the first place.
I’ve often said that the absence of one thing does not mean the presence of its opposite. Let’s use a few examples.
- Have you ever known someone to be depressed and antidepressants helped? But, alleviating the depression didn’t make them happy and joyful.
- Someone has a heart attack with severe chest pain radiating down their left arm. Heroic medical interventions stabilize the heart and alleviate the pain. But, the heart disease is still present and isn’t going away.
- What about someone who feels fine and is experiencing no pain. Would you consider them healthy? Then they find out they have stage 4 cancer and weeks to live.
Medicine is pretty good at relieving symptoms and changing what is happening in the body. Many times that is important in preserving health. But, it is all about the diagnosing and treatment of illness and disease. It is not about health.
Medicine shines in acute care. What do I mean by that? Trauma care is where medicine is at its best. If I had a closed head trauma or a fracture there is nobody I’d rather see than a trauma specialist.
But, when it comes to preserving and optimizing my health, why would I wade into a profession that is the third leading cause of death in the US?
The Master Control System
What is health? Not so easy to answer, is it? We know when we’re not feeling healthy but the examples above show that how we feel isn’t the best indicator of our health. The human body is amazing in its capacity to:
- Self-monitor: it is continually monitoring thousands upon thousands of chemical reactions and processes in the body.
- Self-regulate: it takes that information and makes continual adjustments to maintain homeostasis or balance.
- Self-heal: all healing takes from within the body. Sometimes extraordinary measures like surgery or antibiotics might be necessary but they don’t do the healing, the body does.
The next question is what system in the body is the coordinator and control system governing the monitoring, regulating, and healing?
THE NERVOUS SYSTEM!
Here’s a million $$$ dollar question for you:
What drug is going to remove interference from the nervous system and correct misaligned spinal bones?
If the nervous system is the master control system that coordinates every aspect of human health might it not make sense to remove any interference to the functioning of the nervous system?
That’s what chiropractic does. Chiropractic helps a lot of health challenges, but not because it is trying to resolve any symptoms. It helps because the focus is solely on the removal of interference from the nervous system.
How is the Chiropractic Model of Health Different?
Chiropractic is a natural solution to these modern medical issues; it seeks to remove interference from the body’s nervous system so that it may operate at peak efficiency.
Chiropractic care provides an alternative to the outdated medical approach, taking into account your overall health and wellness to provide you with a comprehensive solution.
Chiropractic helps to alleviate pain, improve joint and muscle function, improve digestion and circulation, reduce inflammation and improve overall health. It is based on the principle that the body has an innate ability to heal itself when given the proper conditions. By removing interferences to the functioning of the nervous system, chiropractic helps to restore balance and allow for proper healing.
Chiropractic care can help treat headaches, neck pain, back pain as well as many other ailments related to spinal misalignment. It can also be used as a preventative measure for those who wish to maintain ideal spinal alignment in order to maximize their overall health.
3 Reasons Why You’re Insane!
Hey, I know you’re likely not insane! It’s not you that’s insane but rather how our healthcare system approaches health.
Are you really interested in not just maintaining health but being as healthy as you can for as long as you can?
It’s a concept we might call health longevity. Our culture focuses on simply staying alive rather than living as healthy as possible.
Here are 3 reasons our society is insane when it comes to health!
Reason #1: Confusing Symptoms with How Healthy We Are – symptoms are a very poor indicator of health. The absence of symptoms does not indicate health and very often the presence of symptoms is not a very good barometer of how healthy or sick you are.
The top 2 causes of death, heart disease and cancer, are silent until they are very well developed. It’s not uncommon for a massive heart attack to be the first symptom of heart disease. And many people do not discover cancer until they are stage 4.
Reason #2: You Are Reactive When it Comes to Healthcare – many people only do something about their health when they encounter a crisis. And, then the focus is all too often on controlling the symptoms with medication. Every medication comes with risks. Every time you put a foreign chemical like a drug into your body you put stress on your liver and kidneys.
The only path to health is to be proactive about your health. If you are not taking active steps to support and grow your health then you are likely slowly eroding your health.
Reason #3: Viewing Health as an Event – this is part of #3. We look to do something when we don’t feel good, whether it’s a drug or visiting a chiropractor. And when the pain or symptom is gone we assume the problem is too.
Anything that really supports and nourishes health and wellness is a process. What do I mean by that? Processes take time. If there is something that will help you be healthier it is something that needs to be repeated. I’ll discuss this more below.
What Do You Want?
How you care for your health is related to what you want. Many people are very reactive when it comes to their health, meaning that they only take action when they find themselves in a crisis. And, when the crisis has passed they resume the same lifestyle that brought the crisis on.
Anything that contributes to your health is a process that must be repeated regularly for it to have any significant impact on your health. Here are a few examples.
- Movement & Exercise: you can’t expect to move once a week and have any sort of significant impact on your health. You must move on a regular basis.
- Diet & Nutrition: it would be crazy to think you could eat junk 6 days a week and eat nutritiously once a week and have any impact.
- Natural Healthcare: it doesn’t matter if we’re talking massage, acupuncture, or chiropractic. They all need to be repeated on a regular basis to truly benefit from them healthwise.
It really is up to you. Unfortunately, our medical system calls itself healthcare when it is nothing but sickness care. That’s fine if you learn how to use it appropriately and not try to rely on it to keep you healthy.
Bill Berkowitz, DC
Bringing more than 3 decades of practice experience, Dr. Bill Berkowitz focuses on balancing and corrective care, applying his expertise to provide patients with predictable, repeatable and measurable results.
Dr. Bill consistently strives to enhance the well-being of his patients by addressing the root imbalances of their problems and promoting optimal balance, alignment, and function of the spine and nervous system. His commitment to delivering corrective chiropractic care has earned him a reputation for excellence among both colleagues and patients alike.
His wealth of knowledge and experience has allowed him to develop a nuanced understanding of the human body and its intricate connections. With each adjustment, he supports the body in returning to a state of balance that goes beyond mere symptom relief, focusing instead on long-term correction for his patients’ well-being.
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