Beyond Chiropractic: Wellness Health Care
30 million Americans are treated by chiropractors. However, many
others remain somewhat skeptical or just unclear of the care chiropractors provide.
This article will help clarify the important role that they can serve in
helping you improve your health.
After reading this article, the practical challenge you may want
addressed is how to identify a good chiropractor who can help serve as your
health and wellness guide.
Many people have a misconception about chiropractic and the
critical role it plays in health and well being. That misconception is that
chiropractic care is limited to treating back and neck pain. Although many
people have experienced relief from back and neck pain through chiropractic
services, the foundation, intent, and vision of chiropractic is far beyond
simply helping to reduce symptoms.
Chiropractic is the largest licensed, non-medical health-care
profession in North America, with approximately 60,000 practitioners in the
The other type of chiropractic doctor is a wellness
chiropractor. This wellness chiropractor focuses on your general health and
well-being, and that of your family. The objective of the wellness chiropractor
is to work with you in maximizing your life potential. In his book “The Wellness Revolution” [1],
economist Paul Zane Pilzer relates that wellness is “not about a fad or trend,
it’s about a new and infinite need infusing itself into the way we eat,
exercise, sleep, work, save, age, and almost every other aspect of our lives.”
Pilzer succinctly articulates the difference between sick care
and health care: “The sickness business is reactive. Despite its enormous size,
people become customers only when they are stricken by and react to a specific
condition or complaint...the wellness business is proactive. People voluntarily
become customers—to feel healthier, to reduce the effects of aging, and to
avoid becoming customers of the sickness business. Everyone wants to be a
customer of this earlier-stage approach to health.” As the culture moves in a
direction seeking behaviors that enhance well-being, there will be those who
attempt to fit old paradigms with new clothes. For example, some factions in
medicine are promoting early detection protocols as “wellness” services.
Such services may include such things as screening for
hypertension, cancer, or other medical conditions. While there is a place for
early disease detection, it should not be confused with a wellness
strategy. Similarly, some medical and
chiropractic practitioners employ fear-driven preventive strategies. People are
encouraged to get their spines checked, or control their blood pressure because
they fear the consequences of not doing so. As with strategies based upon the
early detection of disease, such approaches should not be confused with
wellness care.
What then is wellness? The Merriam-Webster online dictionary
defines wellness simply: “The quality or state of being in good health
especially as an actively sought goal.” [2]
Wellness Paradigms
|
|
Conventional
Medicine |
Wellness
Chiropractic |
|
Goal |
Prevention and early detection of disease |
Maximize the expression of innate potential (the genetic code) |
|
Strategy |
Passive |
Active |
|
Motive |
Fear |
Empowerment |
|
Practitioner role |
Dominant |
Partner/Coach |
|
How delivered |
Event |
Process |
|
Temporal profile |
Episodic |
Lifetime |
|
Criteria |
Based on "normal" values and epidemiologic data |
Goals set by the individual |
“Wellness is an active, lifelong process of becoming aware of
choices and making decisions toward a more balanced and fulfilling life.
Wellness involves choices about our lives and our priorities that determine our
lifestyles. The wellness concept at ASU is centered on connections and the idea
that the mind, body, spirit and community are all interrelated and
interdependent.” [3]
The National Wellness Institute definition is as follows:
“Wellness is an active process of becoming aware of and making
choices toward a more successful existence.
The key words in this first sentence are process, aware, choices and
success.
“Process” means that we never arrive at a point where
there is no possibility of improving. “Aware”
means that we are by our nature continuously seeking more information about how
we can improve. “Choices” means
that we have considered a variety of options and select those that seem to be
in our best interest. “Success”
is determined by each individual to their personal collection of
accomplishments for their life.” [4]
Finally, consider the elements of this definition:
Wellness is a choice—a decision you make towards
optimal health.
Wellness is a way of life—a lifestyle you design to
achieve your highest potential for well being.
Wellness is a process—a developing awareness that
there is no end point, but that health and happiness are possible in each
moment, here and now.
Wellness is a positive acceptance of oneself.
Wellness is the interaction of the body, mind and
spirit—the appreciation that everything we do, think, feel, and believe has an
impact on our state of health.”
These definitions embrace a vision of wellness grounded in
empowerment, choice, and awareness. The wellness concepts sharply contrast with
those of the fear driven, patient passive, episodic strategies of early
detection, prevention, and maintenance.
Chiropractic is based on the philosophy that the body is a
self-healing, self-regulating and self-developing organism and that your
nervous system is the master system and controller of your body. If you cut
your finger, it heals. You don’t have to take anything or do anything to make
that happen. If you were to cut the finger of a dead person, healing would not
occur. Life heals; it is as simple as that.
The blueprints for life are encoded in the genes.
You live your life through your nervous system, and it’s
connection with the higher energy systems of the body (the genetic blueprint of
function encoded on the DNA). This is the master system and controller of your
body. Right now your heart is beating, kidneys are working, liver is
functioning, brain chemicals are flowing all without you having to think about
it. This is because your nervous system is coordinating it all and making it
happen. What would happen if there was interference with the function of your
nervous system? It would interfere with you body’s ability to heal and
regulate. An important term and concept
that every person should know and understand is vertebral subluxation.
Vertebral subluxation, or subluxation for short, refers to a
mechanical problem in the spine that relates to nerve interference
(communication between the body’s systems and the body’s blueprint of function).
When a person is subluxated, it reduces their ability to heal, regulate and
express well-being. Like cavities in teeth, subluxations are very common in our
culture. It is the primary goal of the chiropractor to detect and correct
subluxations so that you can improve healing, regulation, and general
well-being.
A limited nervous system means limited wellness. If we want to
optimally create higher levels of wellness, we then need to remove nervous
system interference as a part of the process.
Chiropractors are uniquely trained to do this. Millions of people, from
infants to seniors over 100 years old, benefit from chiropractic adjustments
every year. The chiropractic profession
is perfectly positioned to lead the wellness revolution, and to reap the
benefits, material and spiritual, of accepting that challenge. The inevitable
consequence is altered body function and loss of health.
Subluxations compromise our body’s ability to respond to our
fullest potential. By addressing
vertebral subluxations, and the physical, biochemical, and emotional
(energetic) distress that cause such subluxations, a person seeking wellness
care enhances their life experience. A wellness patient does not seek merely to
maintain the status quo, return to pre-injury status, or prevent illness.
Individuals who truly understand wellness recognize that they
must work with a physician (Wellness Doc) who can evaluate their biochemical
and energetic needs as well as the structural factors
(Chemical-Structural-Energetic factors in the Triangle of Health). If the foods
in their diet do not have the nutrients necessary to adequately sustain their
health, they will look towards organic foods and nutritional supplements to
fill in the gaps between what their diets provide and what the needs of the
body are.
If organ systems have lost their perfect health and reserve
energy, their Wellness Doc will give them vitamin-mineral-herbal formulas or
homeopathic formulas to enable the highest fulfillment of the blueprints for
health encoded on their Genes.
We absolutely do live in a world that has challenges to our
health. We also absolutely do have the
ability to respond to those increased needs to achieve the highest levels of
health, vitality and years of disease free living our bodies were designed to
provide for us.
Individuals are just beginning to recognize that Chiropractic
care is a lifelong process—a way of life—that is an integral component of a
global strategy for human empowerment.