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?