New Beginnings
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Chiropractic Care and Long-Term Health
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Achieving long-term health does not imply that you will never get sick. Achieving long-term health does not imply that you will never have a neck or back problem. Achieving long-term health does mean that you will get the most out of what you've got; you will be much healthier than otherwise; and you will feel better about yourself, have more energy, and get more out of life.
Chiropractic care is an essential component of achieving long-term health. Making sure you eat good food, drink plenty of water, and eat several portions of fresh fruits and vegetables each day is a very good place to start. Adding a daily program of 30 minutes of regular, vigorous exercise is the next key piece in achieving good health. Chiropractic care is the important link that brings everything together, enabling your body to make the best use of your nutrition and exercise. Chiropractic care helps ensure that the various parts of your body are working in harmony to achieve your long-term goals in health and wellness.
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The time is always right to begin returning to good health. Regardless of whether your issues involve weight, exercise, diet, blood pressure, diabetes, or chronic pain, now is the time to begin taking action on your own behalf.
You are not alone. Literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide have various chronic complaints and illnesses.1,2,3 Some problems are more serious than others, but everyone eventually wants to find a better way to manage their health problems. Eventually everyone wants to actually begin to be healthier and feel better.
Of course, a healthy diet and regular vigorous exercise are the key elements in any process of returning to good health. People know this, but for the most part this knowledge alone does not do any good. The deep truth is that feeling good and actually being healthy takes a lot of effort. It's much easier to pick up dinner from a fast food restaurant than to spend precious time planning and shopping and preparing meals. It's much easier to sit on your couch and watch people on TV trying to lose weight than to actually do the work of losing weight yourself. It's much easier to spend 30 minutes watching the news for the third time that day than to put on your workout clothes and go for a brisk 30-minute walk.
We are all slaves to our habitual ways of thinking and habitual ways of living. Just as in physics, people have inertia. Newton's First Law of Motion states that a body at rest stays at rest and a body in motion stays in motion, unless it is acted upon by an external unbalanced force. We will do the same things we have always done, achieving the same results we have always achieved, unless we make an active choice to engage in new thinking and new activities.
By the way, no one is going to make any lasting changes in their lifestyle - for example, by choosing a healthy diet and daily exercise - merely because someone told them they needed to do it. If you're chronically overweight, your doctor has told you every year that you need to make changes. Every year at your annual physical she tells you to begin regular, vigorous exercise and adopt healthy eating habits. Do any of these admonitions ever make a lasting difference? They don't, not becauses they are bad advice, but because they were not a match for your own world view. Real change, lasting change, has to come from within, from your own personal choice.
When a person is actually ready to choose to revamp her lifestyle with respect to achieving good health, there are many possible steps to take. Chiropractic care can be an important and critical component of an overall health improvement strategy.
1Temple R, Murphy H: Type 2 diabetes in pregnancy - An increasing problem. Best Pract Res Clin Endocrinol Metab 24(4):591-603.
2Li S, et al: Genetic predisposition to obesity leads to increased risk of type 2 diabetes. Diabetologiz Jan 26, 2011 (Epub ahead of print)
3Urquhart DM, et al: Increased fat mass is associated with high levels of low back pain intensity and disability. Spine Jan 25, 2011 (Epub ahead of print)
