The time is always right to begin returning to good health. Regardless of whether your issues involve weight, exercise, diet, blood pressure, diabetes, or chronic pain, now is the time to begin taking action on your own behalf.
You are not alone. Literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide have various chronic complaints and illnesses.1,2,3 Some problems are more serious than others, but everyone eventually wants to find a better way to manage their health problems. Eventually everyone wants to actually begin to be healthier and feel better.
Of course, a healthy diet and regular vigorous exercise are the key elements in any process of returning to good health. People know this, but for the most part this knowledge alone does not do any good. The deep truth is that feeling good and actually being healthy takes a lot of effort. It's much easier to pick up dinner from a fast food restaurant than to spend precious time planning and shopping and preparing meals. It's much easier to sit on your couch and watch people on TV trying to lose weight than to actually do the work of losing weight yourself. It's much easier to spend 30 minutes watching the news for the third time that day than to put on your workout clothes and go for a brisk 30-minute walk.
We are all slaves to our habitual ways of thinking and habitual ways of living. Just as in physics, people have inertia. Newton's First Law of Motion states that a body at rest stays at rest and a body in motion stays in motion, unless it is acted upon by an external unbalanced force. We will do the same things we have always done, achieving the same results we have always achieved, unless we make an active choice to engage in new thinking and new activities.
By the way, no one is going to make any lasting changes in their lifestyle - for example, by choosing a healthy diet and daily exercise - merely because someone told them they needed to do it. If you're chronically overweight, your doctor has told you every year that you need to make changes. Every year at your annual physical she tells you to begin regular, vigorous exercise and adopt healthy eating habits. Do any of these admonitions ever make a lasting difference? They don't, not becauses they are bad advice, but because they were not a match for your own world view. Real change, lasting change, has to come from within, from your own personal choice.
When a person is actually ready to choose to revamp her lifestyle with respect to achieving good health, there are many possible steps to take. Chiropractic care can be an important and critical component of an overall health improvement strategy.
For many of us, the practice of meditation seems like a totally foreign notion. In an era of full-time, morning-to-night distractions and distractibility, the concept of quietly sitting with nothing else to do seems impossibly ridiculous. Why would anyone do that, we ask, as we text message with one hand and channel surf with the other.
Of course, this lack of ability to pay attention and focus for more than 15 seconds at a time is at the core of many of our health issues. Learning how to meditate directly addresses this problem, providing training in developing concentration skills. But meditation offers an abundance of additional benefits, many of great significance to our overall health and well-being.
Years of research have documented the profound benefits of meditation, including reductions in elevated blood pressure levels, stress reduction, pain management,1 and even rewiring of neurologic connections in the brain.2,3 Thus, there are many reasons to begin meditation practice. The key question is how to get started.
Learning how to meditate is actually straightforward. There are many types of meditation practice. Some utilize a mantra, a silently repeated short, meaningless phrase. Others involve specific breathing methods. Others focus on the breath itself without utilizing specific instructions on how to breathe.
This latter method is that employed in Zen meditation. You sit comfortably in a quiet space, ideally facing a blank wall, situated approximately two feet from the wall. (Your specific situation may vary. The important point is to be in a quiet space without distractions of people or technology.) You focus on your breath, seeing your breath go up your spine in the back and then down your spine in the front. After observing one cycle of breathing, you silently count "one." Continue to observe your breathing cycle, adding to your count with each completed cycle. "Two." "Three." When you've completed ten cycles, go back to the numerical beginning and count "one" on the next cycle.
But if your mind wanders (as it inevitably will) and begins to think about whatever, when you eventually notice that you've lost your focus, go back to the beginning and count "one" again.
The "practice" part of meditation relates to practicing paying attention, paying attention to the breath. Your mind wanders, eventually you notice this, and you return to the breath. That's all there is. There is no requirement that you need to stay focused. A person is not a "bad meditator" when they find they are continually thinking of other things. The power is in the practice itself. By actually sitting down to meditate, by actually setting aside that time to be "still", you will derive unexpected benefits. And the more you practice, the more your practice becomes a habit, the more you will gain.
What is a recommended length for meditation sessions? There are no rules. The key is to begin, and then to continue. Starting with a five-minute session, twice a day, is a very good beginning. If you wish, you could build up to two 30-minute sessions per day. Again, your meditation practice is not a contest. What works for you will work for you.
1Marchand WR: Mindfulness-based stress reduction, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, and zen meditation for depression, anxiety, pain, and psychological distress. J Psychiatr Pract 18(4):233-252, 2012
2Hasenkamp W, Barsalou LW: Effects of meditation experience on functional connectivity of distributed brain networks. Front Hum Neurosci 6:38, 2012 [Epub 2012 Mar 1]
3Brewer JA, et al: Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 108(50):20254-20259, 2011
Your chiropractor has many powerful tools at his or her disposal to help you get well. These powerful tools include chiropractic care itself and specialized knowledge in nutrition, exercise, and rehabilitation. There are some things that you, too, can bring to the chiropractor-patient relationship in order to get the most out of your chiropractic care.
Eating healthy food is very important in helping yourself to get well, whether you're dealing with a cold, high blood pressure, or lower back pain. A common factor in getting better from any disorder or condition is having the necessary ingredients available to support a strong immune system and to build healthy new cells and tissues to replace those affected by ill health or injury. A balanced diversity of choices from all food groups is necessary for ongoing good health, and is particularly needed when you're attempting to restore good health. It's especially important to make sure you're eating at least five portions of fresh fruits and vegetables every day.1
Getting regular vigorous exercise is key to feeling good right now and to promoting long-term health and well-being. Government agencies and the scientific literature recommend 30 minutes of vigorous exercise five days a week. This recommended minimum can be easily accomplished by a 30-minute brisk walk each day. Of course, if you haven't done any exercise in some time you'll want to build up to a 30-minute duration and gradually build up your pace. The important thing is to begin a habit of regular exercise and stick to it over time. You will likely be delighted to find how personally empowering regular exercise can be. Regular exercise provides benefit for all your body systems and enhances creativity and other cognitive abilities.
A third set of activities that help your chiropractor help you involves developing and maintaining a positive mental attitude. To be effective in this area, it's important to get a good sense of what a positive mental attitude means and implies. Of course, all of us have real problems at one time or another. Certainly, health issues can often be very problematic. Having a positive mental attitude doesn't mean pretending that the problems do not exist, nor does it mean spouting a lot of "happy talk" to cover up your feelings. Rather, creating and maintaining a positive mental attitude involves making a choice. Even when faced with some pretty stressful circumstances, we have a choice to be positive or negative. The circumstances may be tough, but we have a choice concerning whether we're going to have a good day. Such an attitude may require a lot of a person, and there will be many times when so-called negative feelings are foremost. What counts is the willingness to look for the positive and to return to a positive mental attitude as soon as possible.2,3
Each of these three main activities will help you gain improved health and well-being. Done together with regular chiropractic care, these activities will help promote personal (and, by extension, family) wellness.
We are awash in numbers, thanks in large part to the proliferation of personal mobile devices and the wrong-headed use of so-called big data.1 But applying statistical tools to the same set of data can support competing theories and lead to contradictory results. Such conflicting outcomes, known as antinomies if you remember Philosophy 101, cannot logically co-exist, and the field of statistics gets a bad reputation as a result. But big data can provide substantial value for people as individual patients. The key is to set some ground rules and understand the limitations of statistical investigation.
First and foremost, it's important to gain some clarity regarding the concept of false positives in regards to health. This statistical construct is familiar to all of us, although we may not be aware of it. If one of your doctors sends you for a laboratory test and the results are "positive", you'll be sent for follow-up tests until a final determination is made. If the final test turns out "negative", then the earlier results represented a false positive. The test results said you had the condition or disease, but in fact you did not.
False positives create numerous serious problems, not the least of which is the emotional toll of stress, anxiety, and fear experienced by the patient and her family and close friends. This is especially true when the suspected disease is a malignancy or other serious, life-threatening condition. It's useful and empowering for people to learn that 5% of all test results are falsely positive right from the start. Medical tests are designed this way. The 5% false positive rate is a necessary part of statistical analysis. It's built-in to the statistical design. In other words, test values that represent "normal" are obtained by cutting off the bottom 2.5% and the top 2.5% of a large sample of results from people who are "normal" for the thing being tested, such as white blood cell count or hemoglobin level.
Thus, 5% of normal people automatically have false positive results. Another way of stating this outcome is to consider that if you undergo a panel of 20 blood tests, one result (5% of 20) will be positive no matter what.
The vast majority of patients are not familiar with the statistical concept of false positive results.2 With a basic understanding of this construct and its implications, patients could ask their doctors meaningful questions such as, "What do the test results mean?", "Have you considered the possibility of a false positive result?", and "How will the additional tests you're recommending affect decision-making in my case?"
Posing such questions is tremendously empowering for you, the patient, and helps reestablish equity in the doctor-patient relationship.3 As a health care consumer, a little knowledge goes a long way. Gaining more than a little knowledge by reading articles on diagnostic methods and health care decision-making will further strengthen your own process as a patient.
1Bates DW, et al: Big data in health care: using analytics to identify and manage high-risk and high-cost patients. Health Aff (Millwood) 33(7):1123-31, 2014
2Paddock SM: Statistical benchmarks for health care provider performance assessment: a comparison of standard approaches to a hierarchical Bayesian histogram-based method. Health Serv Res 49(3):1056-73, 2014
3Stacey D, et al: Decision aids for people facing health treatment or screening decisions. Cochane Database Syst Rev 28;1:CD001431, 2014
In the classic 1944 film noir, "Double Indemnity", insurance salesman Walter Neff (played by Fred MacMurray), gets into some pretty hot water involving his client (Barbara Stanwyck) and his co-worker (Edward G. Robinson). Neff tries to misuse the concept of double indemnity and he pays a heavy price. Surprisingly, double indemnity works very well for the rest of us. Exercise, healthy nutrition, proper rest, and regular chiropractic care can pay off, not only double, but often in many multiples. However, before we begin reaping these benefits we have to know where to look and how to make use of this property we all get for free.
Out in the world, insurance policies pay us a benefit when problems arise. Car insurance, home insurance, life insurance, and health insurance are all financial instruments that compensate people (in some degree or other, more or less) when things go wrong. Inside our bodies, double indemnity is turned on its head. When we do things that are good for our health and well-being, our built-in "insurance policies" pay off double, sometimes triple, and sometimes in ways that cannot even be calculated.
Let's consider a person who is overweight, possibly seriously overweight. That person decides, much like Howard Beale in the multiple-Academy Award-winning film "Network" (1976), that he is "not going to take this anymore". He declares to himself that he will begin to lose weight. He makes a commitment to start exercising regularly and eating nutritious food. Change takes time, and sooner rather than later he loses a few pounds. Then he loses a few more. After three months he's 12 pounds lighter, and after six months he's more than 20 pounds lighter than when he first chose to live a healthier life.
By now his body's double indemnity clause has started to pay off. He began doing some things, began engaging in a healthy new lifestyle, and he begins to reap the benefits. Owing to his new exercise program and his new diet, his blood pressure begins to go down. His insulin levels begin to stabilize,1 rather than spiking and falling off drastically throughout the day. His blood glucose levels become steadier, too, and his cells, organs, and tissues (particularly his brain) are beginning to receive consistent supplies of oxygen and other precious nutrients.2 His immune system gets stronger.3 As a direct result, his stress levels are going down and his heart rate is steadier. His sleep is more restful and he has more energy throughout the day. There are many other benefits, too, known only to him and his loved ones.
Our built-in double indemnity clause is primed for action. It is ready to kick in and begin an open-ended flow of good health and well-being. All we need to do is begin taking consistent actions that will enable our innate powers to function in the ways they were designed to function.
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes applied himself to a difficult case, he famously utilized his powers of deduction. Holmes assembled and examined the facts before him and employed a scientific method of analysis to arrive at a solution that took into account of all the elements of the case. The great fictional detectives who followed in his wake including Agatha Christie's Miss Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot, and G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown, all utilized Holmes's painstaking attention to detail and his inimitable, relentless logic.
Your chiropractor, as well, employs methods similar to Holmes’ in their search for the causes of your health issues and the keys that will provide access to abundant wellness and well-being. On the first office visit with a new patient, your chiropractor obtains a thorough health history, including current and past problems, past surgeries, medications, and everything else that is important to understanding your present health circumstances. Next is the physical examination, in which your chiropractor gathers objective findings such as the ranges of motion of your neck, lower back, and various extremities. The strength of key muscle groups is determined, reflexes are tested, and sensory patterns in your arms and legs are assessed.
Additionally, your chiropractor examines the mobility and overall function of the joints of your spine, especially in the cervical (neck) and lumbar (lower back) regions, to identify locations of spinal joint dysfunction and nerve interference. Finally, based on your health history and the physical examination findings, as well as information derived from X-rays and other special tests, if needed, your chiropractor deduces the likely source of your health complaints and devises a program of treatment that will help restore and maintain good health.
By utilizing a comprehensive process of deduction, your chiropractor ascertains the primary spinal regions of joint dysfunction and nerve irritation that are interfering with your ability to express optimal health and well-being. Treatment is directed at correcting these biomechanical problem areas by use of manual chiropractic methods and instruction in rehabilitative exercise routines. Your chiropractor may also help you to set-up a healthy eating program that works for you, as well as provide information on establishing nighttime habits to consistently obtain sound, restful sleep.
Regular chiropractic care is important for all of us, from the youngest members of our families to the oldest. By detecting and correcting sources of nerve interference, our chiropractors help us to demonstrate high levels of health and wellness, now and into the future. Habits of good health can spread throughout a neighborhood and a community. As a result, in the long run, everyone benefits.
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