Whether you're a seasoned chiropractic veteran or experiencing chiropractic for the first time, we have found that we can enhance your success by keeping you informed. We have found that there are some fundamental or foundational pieces of information that really can help you achieve the greatest success from your care in our office. Usually at this early stage of care most people are focused on feeling better and it's how chiropractic goes about helping you feel better that makes what we do here unique. So in order to understand that, I just want to take a couple minutes of your time to build a foundation on where we're heading and what we're doing. The first thing I want to do is take a look at what it really takes to create true health within the body, I mean that's what we all want right? We want to feel better and be healthier but what does it mean to be healthy? So for that we're going to go to the World Health Organization's definition of health which simply states that health is a condition of optimum physical, mental and social well-being; not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. So I want to unpack that a little bit for you to make it more practical and meaningful. It says that optimum: optimum meaning best possible, right? Not just getting by or hanging in there but the best possible optimum physically, literally and mentally how I interact with people. I think what makes this definition the most meaningful and the most accurate is the last part that says “and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” You see for most of us if I said to you “are you healthy?” you would say well I guess so, I don't have a disease or I don't know that anything is wrong with me but just because I don't have a diagnosed health condition doesn't mean that my body is functioning optimally, physically, mentally and socially. So to understand that a little bit better we need to understand what controls function or what coordinates function in the human body and for that we're going to look at the nerve system. We have our brain which is essentially the control center of our body that controls and coordinates all the function of our body. Think of it of a conductor of an orchestra. We have all these different organs and systems in our body that are all doing perfectly and wonderful functions that we need to have happen but somebody has to coordinate and conduct that and make different systems function at the right time in the right place and that is done through our nerve system. Below our brain is the spinal cord and the nerves, those spinal cords and those nerves run to all parts of your body and control your body, well that spinal cord and all of those nerves are housed within your spine so essentially your spine is what we call the sensory integration system of the body. It is what allows your body to connect what's going on in the environment with what is going on inside of you and how your body can adapt to that, so again to keep that practical I'd like to look at a little model of the spine. If I took these vertebrae out of my back and I pulled them around here these are the bones of the spine these are the discs in between if I turn it on end you can see there's outside fibers to the disc and a nucleus in the center and then there's a spinal cord, the spinal cord runs down through the spine and gives off branches of nerves that go out to all the parts of your body. So what does this have to do with chiropractic when your spine gets out of proper motion or alignment or is not functioning properly? We call that vertebral subluxation complex. When that happens the joints become stuck, they lose motion, it irritates nerves, it causes muscles to spasm, it causes inflammation, it causes pain and discomfort and it limits our life and what it is that we enjoy and love to do. Our goal is not to provide you with a drug or medication to cover up those symptoms; our goal is to realign your spine and restore proper function and alignment in your spine so that your nerve system can function healthy and that can control all of the functions of your body so how is this information valuable to you? The reality is we want to feel better, but in the process of feeling better we want to function better and if we can improve how we function by restoring proper function to the nerve system we can improve how you feel. When we think of chiropractic we think about realigning joints so that we can alleviate pain and that is a big part of what we do in an important part of what we do if that's the only part that we think about it really limits the possibilities that chiropractic offers for you and your family. So when we think about chiropractic, think of it as a way to re-balance or re-stabilize your body so that your nervous system can do exactly what it was designed to do which is: control all the functions of your body. Thank you and have a great day!
