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The majority of Americans will spend more on their \”health\” in the last two weeks of life than they will the rest of their life. Dr. Eric Plasker from the 100 year lifestyle said it best, \”Many people spend the first 50 years of their lives ignoring their health while they accumulate wealth, only to spend the next 50 years losing their wealth to buy back their health. Knowing that your longevity potential is 100 years gives you an opportunity to place your health at the top of your value scale.\” Understandably, chiropractic patients seek out care quite commonly for an ache or a pain. They believe pain is the issue and once the pain is gone, everything will be better.This is almost never the case. The reason why is that pain is a motivator for people to seek out care. Pain is keeping them from doing something they love. They aren\’t necessarily motivated to see a chiropractor for pain, they are motivated to return to a quality of life they deem acceptable. The challenge is they are too late.The human body is an incredibly adaptive organism. Studies of certain isolated populations show populations of people that lived between 120 and 150 years without any evidence of disease. It is my contention that these societies live differently! Much differently!

Does anybody really want to manage pain? As a society and a human being, wouldn\’t we rather understand: 1.Why the pain is there 2. How to fix it at the least amount of cost so that it does not return? Of course! Drugs and surgery are not the answer and Americans are finally starting to see the light. That boat is sinking. For too long the medical community has left people with three choices 1. live with the pain and do nothing 2. Take medication to reduce pain but risk side-effects 3. The last is surgery which can have a high failure rate depending on location. Who wants to bet on those odds? The intent of this article is to identify how the differences in philosophy between medicine and chiropractic have a dramatic effect on outcome. Often medicine \”misses the forrest for the trees.\” When we look at the metaphysics of medicine vs chiropractic, we discover a vastly different nature of reality. Medicine utilizes a reductionistic model of health. The goal is to break the body down into its parts to be able to understand the whole. For example, they study cells, organs, tissues, biochemistry, physiology, etc… Each is its own branch of science. When a patient comes to a medical doctor with a symptom, the doctor runs tests to see if the body is producing something in excess or if it is deficient. The most common solution is to control the biochemistry with a pharmaceutical drug or perform surgery with the ultimate goal of normalizing the body.

The nature of the Chiropractic model of health is that the body is a self-regulating and self-healing \”organism.\” We are much more than just a compilation of cells, organs and tissues. We are a thriving, complex and dynamic living being. Our nature cannot be reduced to a double blind randomized control trial. We do not fit into this paradigm because of the complex nature of our existence. We belong in a holistic model and for good reason. The very nature of holism takes into consideration the entire being. Holism looks at the dynamic interaction of the body on a structural (cells, muscles, organs, tissues, nervous system etc…), biochemical (macro and micronutrients, enzymes, cofactors, air quality), and emotional level (thoughts, circumstances of life a.k.a. \”stressors\”, 2500 words per minute running through our brain telling us who we are and what our potential is.) The health of the human body cannot be broken down merely into systems. One system cannot be considered without taking into account the other. They are one in the same and each system depends equally on the health and function of the other to maintain human life. When each system is doing its job appropriately, would you say that the organism is dying or thriving? Obviously thriving!

Structure, biochemistry and emotions are interdependent. Each affects the other. When one of the three branches of human health become stressed what happens? There is absolutely a direct impact on the other two systems. Emotional stress can have such a deleterious effect on the body that it compromises the structure of the musculoskeletal system. This usually manifests as pain. The answer to the problem for the medical community is to put a metaphorical band aid on the pain. This comes in the form of anti-inflammatory drugs and pain killers. The real issue the person was having was emotional in this example! When the doctors prescribe, it is like yanking the batteries out of the smoke detector. The patient feels better and believes nothing is wrong! In the meantime, the house is still burning and damage is accumulating. Is there any surprise that the pain returns? Often worse! The diagnosis was blown from the start. The real problem was emotional, not structural. The structural problem is an outcome or effect of an emotional cause. Have you ever been so angry at a friend or family member that it felt like your blood was boiling? This was your emotions causing changes in your biochemistry in the form of elevated blood pressure. Can you imagine someone who lives in a state of emotional overdrive. Is it any surprise now why they have high blood pressure?

Pain is NOT your problem. It is the fundamental answer to the frustration and confusion regarding the pandemic of chronic pain in the United States, and it is the title of this article. It is not the problem. Pain is a symptom which serves as a protective mechanism to prevent further compromise to the body. Surprisingly, the sensory portion of the nervous system, which produces pain, makes up a small percentage of the total nervous system, 10%. The remaining 90% operates thanklessly and silently. When the safety of the body is in jeopardy, the sensory system sends out a warning signal to \”Listen up!\” How often do you listen? These fast-faced times clearly demand productivity. We have been desensitized to pain. We have been taught to ignore and minimize pain. How many times did we hear \”don\’t be a baby, walk it off, suck it up, don\’t rub it, take an aspirin, etc…\” from our mothers, fathers, teachers, preachers, coaches and big pharmacy.

Here is a little secret, *whisper* we were LIED to! Who told us to question the origin of our aches and pains? We were never taught to be sensory acute to our bodies. At this point you might believe aches and pains normally appear out of the blue sky. Absolutely not! They only seem like random occurrences for the externally driven person. The external person is the eternal victim. This is the \”why me\” type of person; the person who blames bad luck, bad germs and bad genes on their circumstances and their health. The way we feel on the outside is a mirror image of what is happening to us on the inside. Aches and pains are warning signals. They are progressive sirens that will get louder and louder the longer you ignore them. We should train our kids to appreciate what pain means and to value the role of the nervous system in the body so they grow up to be internally driven. This would help to eliminate the problem of chronic and unexplainable pain. When you start living internally and taking action towards your own health, we better comprehend how everything in life is an outcome of our efforts and investment. Positive or negative. If you are a person suffering from chronic pain, I will guarantee that you have been poorly educated in regards to a proper diet, effective exercise routine and the impact that emotions have on physical health. Or you might struggle with implementation. You have likely never taken much responsibility for your own health. You have never recognized the root of your problems because you have lived externally up until today and nobody told you. Because I care about you so much and you deserve to express life optimally, start challenging yourself now. Take massive action!

Pain is your wake up call that screams at you to change your life and take control. Pain demands that you exchange your lower level behaviors for ones that serve you better. As you work to isolate the \”why\” you are in pain, you start the process of deepening your understanding of health. A mind once expanded can never contract to its original size. You cannot unring a bell! The more you embrace the process and take massive action, the stronger and more internally drive you will become. These actions lead to knowledge which, when combined with experience, lead to personal power!

When you decide to invest in chiropractic care, this is a proactive and preventative action. You consciously choose to live internally and to break free from the belief system you used to cling to. When you pay for a gym membership, it does not come with a guarantee that you will get leaner and stronger by joining. You know that a clean bill of health doesn\’t come with purchasing the membership card. You intuitively understand that you have to show up, sweat and participate! Just like life! You are either the \”observed\” or the \”observer.\” The \”observed\” live internally and consciously. 100% of my patients pay cash for their care for this very reason. They value their life and choose to live optimally for as long as possible. No different than the gym membership, my educated patients appreciate that in order to get the most out of care; they must be committed to their health and to the journey of wellness. Wellness does not have a pinnacle. There is no point where you have \”made it.\” The value and results last as long as you are on the journey. Only life has an absolute destination. What we do before our imminent demise is human potential. Whether or not we choose to live internally, and hold ourselves accountable to achieving said potential is free will!

Dr. Shaun Stuto is a missoula chiropractor and owner/founder of Transformation Chiropractic. Transformation Chiropractic is a chiropractic wellness center in downtown Missoula, Montana. Visit our site today and learn more about how you can start creating a life of abundant health.

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