Chiropractic Care and Long-Term Health

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Whenever we think about long-term health and well being, we may also think of regular chiropractic care. In addition to periodic check-ups for blood pressure, laboratory tests, and other aspects of health care maintenance, regular chiropractic care helps ensure that your nerve system is intact and functioning effectively. Importantly, if your nerve system is not doing its job, other steps you're taking to achieve good health may come up short.

For example, regular vigorous exercise and a nutritious diet are key components of a healthy lifestyle. But if your nerve system is not appropriately coordinating the functioning of your musculoskeletal, cardiorespiratory, gastrointestinal, and hormonal systems on a moment-by-moment basis, you may not achieve the benefits you're hoping for from your investment of time and effort. By helping your nerve system function at peak levels, regular chiropractic care assists in the achievement of long-term good health.

The Long View

In general most people pay close attention to auto maintenance. Whether the concern is tires, brakes, transmission, or windshield status, people make sure that their cars do what they need them to do. People count on their cars to perform effectively. No one wants a surprise, especially in a critical situation. But in stark contrast, people often give much less consideration to their own physical functioning and capacity than they do to several critical performance factors related to their own automobiles.

The metaphor of machine upkeep standing in for health maintenance is commonplace but apt. To prove the point, most of us allow our physical conditioning to deteriorate far beyond that which we would ever tolerate relative to our cars or even our power lawnmowers. The immediate consequences of such neglect are the developed world epidemic in diabetes, the United-States-based epidemic in obesity, and the ongoing high levels of cardiovascular disease worldwide.

What redress is required with respect to our physical health and welfare? As with our cars, the long view is needed. If we lease a new car every year, upkeep is not an issue beyond an oil and filter change or two. But if we want our car to continue to perform reliably for three, five, or ten years, regularly scheduled service is necessary. Our cars need check-ups every 12 months or so. As flesh-and-blood organisms, we require a similar schedule of maintenance.

Importantly, feeling fine is not necessarily a good guide to how we're doing from a health perspective. High blood pressure, for example, is known as the "silent killer." There are no fully recognizable signs and symptoms of hypertension, until its too late. By the time a person has had a debilitating heart attack or stroke, high blood pressure has probably been in place for years. Similarly, the early symptoms and signs of diabetes are subtle and seemingly harmless. Fatigue and an inability to focus may be ignored or interpreted as mere symptoms of an overly stressed lifestyle. Frequent thirst and frequent urination might be conveniently explained away as side effects of poor eating habits. Again, serious damage may be done, possibly involving one's kidneys and one's vision, as a result of undiagnosed and untreated diabetes.

The solution to helping prevent such potentially serious health problems is to make sure you have regular check-ups. Operating on the long view, rather than operating as the proverbial ostrich (with his head buried in the sand) or the proverbial grasshopper (who fiddled all day), we will have annual or biannual blood pressure reading and blood tests. Appropriate scheduling for such check-ups will be specific to the individual, based upon age, past medical history,and family history. The critical takeaway is to practice preventive health care based on the long view. Perform personal maintenance and service checks as needed. 

Harness the Power of Hybrid Vigor

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Certain things in life just go together naturally. In the kitchen, peanut butter and jelly is a classic combination. Another such pairing is apple pie and ice cream.Other categories of life experience, such as human performance, prize the association of freedom and creativity. And in the field of health care, exercise and nutrition are two pillars of a solid foundation for long-term wellness and well-being.

The combination of exercise and nutrition makes intuitive sense, of course, but it's useful and informative to drill deeper into this relationship. Regarding exercise, almost any type of this activity is beneficial.¹ "Whatever works for you" is a time-honored principle in fitness. Swimming, running, bicycling, lifting weights, playing basketball, doing yoga, and walking all provide substantial benefit for people. What's best is to do the things you like to do. Hidden beneath the surface, however, is a very interesting fact. If you combine certain types of exercise, specifically, if you do both strength-training activities and cardiovascular exercises during the course of a week, you'll obtain enhanced results. Interestingly, both your strength and endurance will improve more rapidly compared to doing only one type of activity.

Beyond expedited improvement (and the great satisfaction many of us derive from lifting heavier weights in the gym and running faster on the track), improved strength and endurance are very closely linked to numerous important indicators of optimal health and well-being. It's the combination that makes the difference.^2,3

Similarly, good nutrition is not only a matter of making sure that every food group is represented in your daily diet. Choosing foods from the fruits, vegetables, proteins, grains, and dairy groups is the key first step in all nutritional programs that provide lasting value. But, again, there are hidden relationships. Combining proteins and carbohydrates at every meal causes improved digestion and improved absorption of all nutrients. By more efficiently breaking down the food you eat and more effectively absorbing valuable nutrients, you derive enhanced benefit from the calories you're consuming. You gain more energy to use throughout the day and are able to perform at a higher level. As a result, your sleep is more restful and you wake up refreshed, ready to engage with whatever challenges the new day brings.

The principle behind the power of these various combinations is that of hybrid vigor. The concept is derived from studies of genetics in the 19th century in which it was discovered that cross-breeding often produced hardier plants. We, too, can harness this principle to become hardier ourselves, enabling us to enjoy long-term health, wellness, and well-being.

¹Lackland DT, Voecks JH: Metabolic syndrome and hypertension: regular exercise as part of lifestyle management. Curr Hypertens Rep 2014 Nov;16(11):492. doi: 10.1007/s11906-014-0492-2
²Sigal RJ, el al: Effects of Aerobic Training, Resistance Training, or Both on Percentage Body Fat and Cardiometabolic Risk Markers in Obese Adolescents: The Healthy Eating Aerobic and Resistance Training in Youth Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Pediatr 2014 Sep 22. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2014.1392. [Epub ahead of print]
³Ho SS, et al: The effect of 12 weeks of aerobic, resistance or combination exercise training on cardiovascular risk factors in the overweight and obese in a randomized trial. BMC Public Health 2012 Aug 28;12:704. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-12-704

What are Symptoms?

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With gas prices through the roof, everyone hates to see that low fuel light come on!

As bad as the low fuel light is, it really is pivotal. It is a symptom of a low tank and a WARNING that unless you do something about it you will be "hoofing" it soon!

When it comes to health, pain or other symptoms are just the same. Symptoms are warnings! A "low health" light if you will.

Unfortunately, many people look for the quickest way to cover up the symptom and then move along. They ignore the warning and think that if the symptom is gone then the problem is gone. NOT TRUE! It would be no different than putting tape over the low fuel light and then just keep driving. It is no wonder that so many people are so sick and suffering.

Chiropractic addresses the cause not the symptom!

Health Statistics and You

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We are awash in numbers, thanks in large part to the proliferation of personal mobile devices and the wrong-headed use of so-called big data.¹ But applying statistical tools to the same set of data can support competing theories and lead to contradictory results. Such conflicting outcomes, known as antinomies if you remember Philosophy 101, cannot logically co-exist, and the field of statistics gets a bad reputation as a result. But big data can provide substantial value for people as individual patients. The key is to set some ground rules and understand the limitations of statistical investigation.

First and foremost, it's important to gain some clarity regarding the concept of false positives in regards to health. This statistical construct is familiar to all of us, although we may not be aware of it. If one of your doctors sends you for a laboratory test and the results are "positive", you'll be sent for follow-up tests until a final determination is made. If the final test turns out "negative", then the earlier results represented a false positive. The test results said you had the condition or disease, but in fact you did not.

False positives create numerous serious problems, not the least of which is the emotional toll of stress, anxiety, and fear experienced by the patient and her family and close friends. This is especially true when the suspected disease is a malignancy or other serious, life-threatening condition. It's useful and empowering for people to learn that 5% of all test results are falsely positive right from the start. Medical tests are designed this way. The 5% false positive rate is a necessary part of statistical analysis. It's built-in to the statistical design. In other words, test values that represent "normal" are obtained by cutting off the bottom 2.5% and the top 2.5% of a large sample of results from people who are "normal" for the thing being tested, such as white blood cell count or hemoglobin level.

Thus, 5% of normal people automatically have false positive results. Another way of stating this outcome is to consider that if you undergo a panel of 20 blood tests, one result (5% of 20) will be positive no matter what.

The vast majority of patients are not familiar with the statistical concept of false positive results.² With a basic understanding of this construct and its implications, patients could ask their doctors meaningful questions such as, "What do the test results mean?,", "Have you considered the possibility of a false positive result?," and "How will the additional tests you're recommending affect decision-making in my case?"

Posing such questions is tremendously empowering for you, the patient, and helps reestablish equity in the doctor-patient relationship.³ As a health care consumer, a little knowledge goes a long way. Gaining more than a little knowledge by reading articles on diagnostic methods and health care decision-making will further strengthen your own process as a patient. 

¹Bates DW, et al: Big data in health care: using analytics to identify and manage high-risk and high-cost patients. Health Aff (Millwood) 33(7):1123-31, 2014
²Paddock SM: Statistical benchmarks for health care provider performance assessment: a comparison of standard approaches to a hierarchical Bayesian histogram-based method. Health Serv Res 49(3):1056-73, 2014
³Stacey D, et al: Decision aids for people facing health treatment or screening decisions. Cochane Database Syst Rev 28;1:CD001431, 2014