So now the rubber meets the road. How do we live? Do we abandon traditional medicine and the “hyper-mechanistic” culture we now live in? Do we blend vitalism and mechanism into a quasi health care/ sick care approach to living? Or do we go with the culture and surrender decisions to the next most-important drug or surgery that we must have or else?
I hope this is hitting you hard. I hope that right now you are truly questioning how you live your life. It is a choice! And you are the only one responsible for how you live and the consequences of those decisions.
Yesterday, a patient asked me if they should take a statin drug for the rest of their life because they have high blood pressure. I can’t answer that because my professional license won’t let me comment on medications. But, the person feels tremendous pressure to make a decision. For the past year their M.D. has been telling them that if they don’t start taking this new drug, they will quickly end up in the grave. This person’s gut is saying, “I don’t want to take a drug for the rest of my life.” Their head is considering an early exit from this world if they don’t take the drug. I encouraged them to use the resources they have, their M.D., the drugs website, etc., and do their own research. I firmly believe that educated and informed people make better decisions than those who respond from fear or emotion. I did encourage them to consider their lifestyle, their diet, exercise and emotional response to stress.
They had thought of these things a year ago and asked their doctor about how these components could impact their blood pressure. “Changing those things won’t work,” was the response. So much for conservative care first!
This attitude of drug it in or cut it out is overwhelming our society! We tell our kids that doing drugs is bad and then medicate them from cradle to the grave, Ritalin to Prozac, amoxicillin to Crestor. Take a pill for every ill!
We live in the heaviest nation ever in the history of the world. Our children are expected to have lifespan shorter than we do for the first time in our nation’s history. No insurance plan or government program will save you from how you live your life. It never has and it never will. It can’t!
I said I liked history. I also like to have a say in what my history leaves behind. What am I leaving my children? How have I impacted my peers and my community? Am I willing to put myself out in this world as a voice of clarity and an example of freedom by the way I live my life?
BJ Palmer once said that chiropractors work with the “subtle substance of the soul.” When your innate potential is released at the moment of the adjustment, new opportunities emerge for you that were restrained or held back before. You are more of you after you are adjusted. A common analogy is a light bulb on a dimmer. As we encounter stressors in life, the dimmer can be turned down on our life. We are still present, but less light is emanating from us than earlier in our life. The adjustment helps turn the dimmer switch up and more light is expressed from our life.
Subluxation. Sub=less than. Lux=light. Ation=the whole. Subuxation=less light in the whole.
Your adjustments help free you from the ball and chain of accumulated negative experiences in our life so that we can be who we have been created to be. That is not just health care, that is life care.