The Fourth Lesson of my Chiropractic Philosophy

4. Nutrition – All calories are not created equal.

Why do people become overweight? This has long been the subject of debate, and one of the loudest and most often heard arguments is that people gain weight because they create an energy imbalance by eating too many calories and burning too few.

It has only been within the past 10 years that conclusive evidence has been provided that maintaining the appropriate “energy balance” is not responsible for weight gain. So the key to losing weight is not controlling our impulses and exercising more, but rather changing the particular foods we eat.

Not all calories are created equal.

Insulin regulates how much fat gets trapped in your fat cells. This hormone is well understood as the explanation for why our fat cells get fat. I feel it is fairly common sense to assume that fat fat cells lead to fat humans.

The kinds of carbohydrates we eat today are usually from highly refined and processed foods such as soda, bread, candy and all sorts of sugar-laden pseudo foods that drive up our insulin levels.  This is the nutrient-hormone-fat interaction on the full human system. But, they conclude, while individual cells get fat that way, the reason an entire human gets fat has nothing to do with it. We’re just eating too much.

You don’t need to have an advanced science degree to understand this hypothesis. If our cells get fat based on excess exposure to carbohydrates through all the refined and process foods we consume, our bodies, which are made of these cells, ultimately get fat as well. Simple enough.

The simple formula I like to use to illustrate a healthy approach to nutrition is:

                                    HEALTH = NUTRIENT LOAD / CALORIES

This understanding has freed me from a focus on calories and allowed me to focus rather on the quality of the calories I consume. For example, I’d rather eat a high fat snack of raw almonds and a half avocado over a low-fat bagel with low-fat cream cheese. I don’t obsess about fat and calories; I focus on the nutrient quality of the foods I consume and know that if I keep that high, I will stay happy and healthy and my body will thank me. It has freed me from a “calorie-counting” mentality and yet has enabled me to maintain my natural weight.

One other thing that I relate to nutrition that perhaps other medical providers don’t is sun exposure. In tangible scientific ways, the sun’s light energy gives us energy, but in an even more human way, the sun should be seen as a nutrient. Keeping your spine strong requires sufficient amounts of calcium and vitamin D. Vitamin D should be received from exposure to sunshine, or if that is not feasible, from an oral vitamin D3 supplement. Vitamin D3 is found in eggs, organ meats, animal fat, cod liver oil, and fish. It is the equivalent to the vitamin D3 formed on your skin from UV-B. You should stay away from the synthetic D2, as it has been shown to be toxic at the higher dose ranges.

Tune in next week for the fifth lesson of my chiropractic philosophy about the importance of staying hydrated!

The Third Lesson of my Chiropractic Philosophy

3. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

It is a fundamental fact of cause and effect that if you neglect anything that requires maintenance, it will develop a problem. Problems develop silently until enough damage occurs to trigger a symptom or crisis. Unfortunately, the crisis or symptom may not occur until significant or even permanent damage has accumulated over time. A chiropractor addresses problems at their fundamental origin, the spine. Western medicine, such as most pharmaceutical or surgical treatment options, treat the symptom with a better band-aid that does nothing to treat the underlying causes of pain or disease, but will undoubtedly cause you additional harm in the process.

Heart disease is a good example. This condition is known to result from eating high fat foods which clog arteries. You do not feel heart disease during the intermediary stages. You feel the heart attack when enough disease has accumulated. Once that threshold is reached, a heart attack manifests as a symptom. Thus, the attack is just the effect of the heart disease in the crisis stage.

Over the years, chiropractors have experienced tremendous success in helping patients with all kinds of health problems. The avenue of approach chiropractors take towards improving health is primarily focused on the spine because it houses and protects the spinal cord – the “switchboard” of the nervous system – through which nerves pass from the brain as they carry nerve impulses to the various parts of the body. The nerves branch off the spinal cord through openings between the movable spinal bones (or vertebrae). When these vertebrae, likely along with the discs between them, become involved in a vertebral subluxation complex (VSC), nerve communication becomes obstructed. Most people don’t realize the implications spinal misalignment and the resultant disturbance to normal function of nerves in the body can have on their total health.

The spine requires maintenance from birth for maximum nerve integrity and optimum health potential. Why do I say this? Because of numerous changes to the world which have affected our daily routines over the years, such as sitting for long periods of time in front of a computer. These stresses are very different from how our bodies developed in past generations, when we were likely to be much less sedentary. Our modern environment, even the shoes that we wear, can greatly hurt the way our spine and resultant biomechanics develop.

When neglected, spinal misalignment or subluxation occurs and causes nerve interference, which results in tissue and organ dysfunction. Vertebral subluxation complex (VSC) is a silent problem.  Over time, when enough tissue damage or dysfunction occurs, crisis and symptoms result.

Many people go to a chiropractor to correct their back problem(s) (subluxations), yet some do not maintain the correct spine. That is like going back to a purely fast food diet and no exercise after getting a heart attack and a coronary bypass!

Before you can maintain your spine, you have to make sure that your spinal subluxations have been corrected. If subluxations are not corrected, you will be merely managing a problem rather than maintaining the correction.

Everyone should have a chiropractor on their health care team for one reason: proper spinal alignment for optimum nerve integrity. After all, what if your so-called “medical problem” was really coming from a subluxation? What if there was some aspect of your nerve impulses that was mis-communicating? Wouldn’t you like to know?

The Second Lesson of My Chiropractic Philosophy

2. Our natural state of being is a healthy system of mental, physical, and spiritual balance. Toxins and trauma cause the balance of each of these areas to shift out of equilibrium.

It starts with one simple aspirin for a simple headache. When one aspirin will no longer cover up the headache, you take two. After a few months, when two aspirins no longer cover up the headache, then you take one of the stronger compounds. By this time, it becomes necessary to take something for the ulcers that have been caused by the aspirin.

Now that you are taking two medicines, you have a good start.  But after a few months, these medications will disrupt your liver. If a bad infection develops, you could take penicillin. Of course the penicillin will damage your red blood corpuscles and spleen so that you develop anemia. Another medication is then taken to cover up the anemia. By this time, all the medications will put such a strain on your kidneys that they may start to break down.

When you take antibiotics they destroy your natural resistance to disease, and you can expect a general flare-up of all your symptoms. The next step is to cover up all these symptoms with a sulfa drug. When the kidneys finally plug up, you can have them drained. Some poisons will build up in your system, but your failing kidneys can keep going this way for quite a while.

By now the medications will be so confused that they won’t know what they are supposed to be doing, but it doesn’t really matter…you’ve already started the quick and deadly slide towards death painfully facilitated by the pill popping “cures” offered from modern medicine.

Chiropractic is not a cure. It does not cure your pain, symptoms and disease. That said, it can be highly effective. Here’s how: by using gentle adjustments, I can realign your spine and restore normal joint movement, which allows proper nerve messages to flow from your brain down the spine and out to all your cells, tissues and organs. Proper alignment and joint movement also allow the information from your cells, tissues and organs to be delivered to the brain so that it is better able to regulate everything going on throughout your body. Restoring and ensuring proper nerve communication enables your body to heal itself naturally. I work with my patients to develop a personalized plan for lasting structural outcomes, preventing the pain from initiating or returning.

I practice using techniques developed by Chiropractic BioPhysics, a sub-specialty within chiropractic treatment that goes well beyond pain relief by focusing and addressing the structural rehabilitation of the spine so that you can get sustainable correction. In short, Chiropractic BioPhysics is an advanced form of chiropractic that is more knowledgeable, comprehensive, and systematic in the way it combines scientific principles and standard chiropractic joint adjustments. Furthermore, we set objective outcomes and then track progress towards our goals to monitor improvement.

Through methods developed in Chiropractic BioPhysics, I create for my patients an integrative program that consists of the following personalized areas: chiropractic adjustments and manipulation, physical traction therapy, exercise, stretching and nutrition. Furthermore, my practice integrates as many other areas of importance for health as are practical, such as routine sleep (homeostasis), toxin avoidance, lifestyle decisions, and even the power of the placebo effect by creating a positive mental attitude towards one’s health goals.

As a chiropractor, I recognize that the natural state of being is a healthy biological system of mental, physical, and spiritual balance.

Stay tuned for next week's blog on prevention versus cure. Thanks for reading!