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Chiropractic Care:
Helping the Body Heal Itself
Calculated Risk Care
You would be surprised to receive a card in the mail from your dentist that said, "It's been six months since your last checkup, but don't bother calling until you have a real serious problem that will require painful, expensive intervention and may cost you a few teeth." Yet this is how many individuals, insurance companies and even doctors approach other areas of personal health.
This is what I call calculated risk health care, a mentality firmly ingrained nationally, yet which seems very naive when spelled out. This is how it works. I know that if I eat nutritious food, exercise, stimulate my mind, don't smoke, do drugs or drink to excess, I have a better chance of living a healthy, happy life; - BUT, for whatever reason, I don't. Instead, I do the opposite and hope nothing goes wrong. I am maintenance free, until breakdown.
The advantage humans have over airplanes is that the body has an amazing inborn natural ability to repair itself and adapt to environmental and self-inflicted stress. This is called Innate Intelligence. A risk taker bets their health that Innate will exceed the damage of their stress. Then they risk that if Innate fails, a doctor can either add a drug to their body or remove a part from it in such a way that side effects will be less uncomfortable than the symptoms or disease process itself. To hedge the bet they constantly pay a backer, their insurance company, which may or may not pay when they lose their health.
The good news for the calculated risk taker is that innate is in fact, very strong. Innate expresses itself in part through the process of homeostasis; the body's effort to keep an internal balance in reaction to physical and emotional stress. It is manifest in the immune system that is constantly recreating itself to fight bacteria and viruses. It is found in direct healing processes that react to trauma, misuse or abuse of the body. Innate is involved in every individual system of the body, but the nervous system is preeminent because it provides the primary lines of communication and control through which innate and all the other individual systems operate.
What is health? What are symptoms?
What the risk taker may not realize is that health is not simply the absence of symptoms. Symptoms are the result of a process that has gone beyond the body's ability to cope. A signal from the nervous system, most commonly pain, says, "You have a problem, take care of it." Calculated Risk Care might provide pain relief, it's a way of telling the nervous system, "Shut up and take care of yourself."
Even if risk takers are able to avoid overt symptoms, they experience a lower quality of life. They live in a state of marginal health on the edge of disease, which may have slow developing, long-term effects. The calculated risk has not been well calculated.
A Vitalistic Approach
So why don't doctors teach people to keep their bodies at optimal function, maximizing innate, rather than neglecting it? Some doctors do just that.
Health care that respects the body's power to heal itself not using drugs or surgery is known as vitalistic or holistic care. Vitalistic care encourages healthy lifestyles through education, and uses treatments that allow the body to correct or maintain itself. Acupuncture, homeopathy and chiropractic fit into this category. Of these, chiropractic is most focused on the nervous system, the home of innate.
The central nervous system is housed in the skull and spine as the brain and spinal cord. Nerve branches coming off the spinal cord exit the central nervous system through spaces between the bones of the spine and travel to the entire body. If a joint, especially a spinal joint is not positioned or moving properly, the surrounding nerves are affected. The communication between the central nervous system and whatever those nerves come from or go to -- whether an organ, a muscle, a gland, blood vessel, etc. -- is also affected and innate is weakened. When a chiropractor restores function to a joint, not only do they slow the degenerative process of the joint itself, they remove that obstacle to Innate, (nerve irritation) and allow for optimum body function.
Studies have been done by both private and government agencies which support chiropractic's role as both the most effective and most cost-effective treatment of neuromuscular conditions such as headaches (including migraines), lower back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome and infantile colic. Lesser known is that there are many studies supporting chiropractic's role in treating non-neuromusculoskeletal conditions such as asthma, painful menses, and ear infections. While chiropractic is very effective in the treatment of such disease states, let's not slip into the calculated risk/crisis management mentality. The point is that chiropractic works in treating all of these conditions because it affects the nervous system and allows the body's Innate to heal itself. But why wait to get sick? Were an individual's nervous system kept in good shape through a healthy lifestyle including periodic chiropractic care, the crisis of disease might be avoided.
We are healthiest when Innate is at its strongest -- when the body is at its peak performance level -- able to fight any stress it is exposed to whether that is a virus, an overworked muscle, an emotional shock or a physical trauma. Living a healthy lifestyle which includes chiropractic care prepares the body for these stresses and lessens their impact. Of course, even the healthiest individual sometimes encounters overwhelming stress or trauma and needs crisis care, but in the end it is always the body which heals itself; those with the strongest Innate healing the best. The best doctor is the one inside you. The second best doctor is the one who respects and assists that best doctor.
Health Care Joke
There is a joke about health care that goes like this: If there was a sharp curve on the edge of a cliff where many motorists had skidded off and been injured, modern medicine would build a hospital at the bottom of that cliff. If someone was to propose building a guard rail, the hospital and insurance companies would protest because guardrails have not been proven effective in the treatment of injuries sustained in auto accidents.
It is unfortunate that this joke has a ring of truth, but it indicates a certain amount of outrage concerning the health crisis management mentality and a turning toward more proactive, conservative approaches. Chiropractic is one such approach.
From Dr. Jonathan Smith