Look After Your Health

Many years ago, dentists taught everyone that the best time to go to the dentist is before your teeth hurt and that routine dental care will help your teeth remain healthy for a long time. The same is true of chiropractic care for your spine. It is important to remember that, just like your teeth, your spine experiences normal wear and tear as you walk, drive, sit, lift, sleep, and bend. Routine chiropractic care can help you feel better, move with more freedom, and stay healthier throughout your lifetime. Although you can enjoy the benefits of chiropractic care even if you receive care for a short time, the real benefits come into play when you make chiropractic care a part of your wellness lifestyle.

Wellness Paradigm

Wellness is a concept or a lens through which to see the world at the core of which is homeostasis (balance) and holism. The body-mind-spirit is an ecosystem. It is self healing and self regulating and therefore always responds in the most appropriate way possible in any given time to any given environment. Illness results when we fail to supply the body-mind-spirit with the resources it requires.

What does this mean for us living in the developed world of the 21^st century?

Let’s first take a look at modern humanity. First, our genetic structure has not changed for 40,000 years. We are genetically designed to be hunter/gatherers, moving almost continuously and eating fresh food, primarily plant, and some animal. We are designed to be members of a tribe, sharing the duties and responsibilities of looking after the tribe. Does this sound like your life at the early part of the 21^st century? It sure doesn’t sound like mine.

Let’s take the simple act of sitting. The earliest evidence I am aware of our having chairs is a 4,500 year old statue of the goddess Inanna sitting in a chair. So we’ll round that off to 5,000 years ago that we first had chairs after 35,000 years of existence. And those chairs were reserved for the deities and royalty. Now fast forward to the present day and we have elevated sitting to an art form. We even have terms for experts at sitting/lying about – couch potatoes. Think about how much any of us sits with driving, work, TV, computers, pubs, and wherever else we get the chance. I think we can agree, we aren’t moving the way we were designed to do.

Let’s look at food. We did not start farming until 10,000 years ago. That means our genes were well established for 30,000 years before we tilled the soil. We ate fresh produce and wild fish and game. That’s it. Now go to any grocery store and look at what’s in peoples’ baskets. How much of it has a label? I’m of the belief that if it has a label it isn’t food, at least not food as would be defined by our bodies. Take a moment to think about that. How many apples have a list of ingredients? Heads of lettuce, tomatoes, fish, or beef? If it has a list of ingredients, it isn’t food, it is factory product. I won’t depress you by rattling off a list of ingredients of some commonly eaten product like biscuits, crisps, chocolate bars, you get the point. I think we can agree, we aren’t eating the way we were designed to do.

Let’s look at our community, at our network of support, sharing of responsibilities, our commitment to the good of our society. No let’s not look at that it’s already getting me down. But you get the idea.

So here we are in the 21^st century and we’re not living the way we were designed to. And guess what. It shows.  Chronic illnesses (heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, vascular disease, depression, etc.) are pandemic in modern society and getting worse. These illnesses and their increase are not the result of bad genes, they are the result of an environment that is toxic and deficient. Our genes have no choice but to adapt to the environment that stimulates them. What can you do about it? Change your personal environment. We’ll talk about that next.

My Intent

The intent of this blog is to provide my patients with information related to wellness and a wellness lifestyle that I have gathered over 30 years of study. I use the term 'wellness' instead of 'health' because the word 'health' has been co-opted and no longer refers to a state of well being in mind and body but more typically to an absence of symptoms. The state of our 'health' in Western society is such that we are becoming more and more ill with chronic diseases at younger ages.

With the economic situation of the past few years there has been a lot of talk about whether or not we are bankrupting future generations trying to get out of the economic mess we're in. That discussion should be had but in the context of what economic burden are we placing on future generations who will be called upon to pay for the 'illness' care of their parents and grandparents. Take a look at the cost of statins (cholesterol lowering drugs) on the NHS in the UK (I will often use statistics from other countries simply because the information is readily available). There are approximately 10,000,000 (that's 10 million!) people taking statins in the UK at a cost of about £1,000,000,000 (that's 1 billion GB pounds!!). A healthy sum for the pharmaceutical companies that make them, you say. Add to that the fact that people on statins are having there cholesterol levels monitored, typically twice a year. When you add up the cost of the GP, the blood tests, etc., you are looking at a twice annual cost of £50 for those on the statins. So that £100 times the 10,000,000 people on statins or another £1,000,000,000 for a total of £2,000,000,000 (2 billion GB pounds!!!) And that's for just one area of care delivering a drug whose benefits have not been demonstrated for the vast majority of those taking them! How many nurses would that money pay for? Maybe 50 - 70,000. Or we could build two university style, fully equipped hospitals PER YEAR!!

The diseases that we are suffering from and which are killing us - heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, etc. - are those of lifestyle. We do not have to sit back and become victims of these diseases or burden our children with caring for us but can be pro-active and take responsibility for our own well being.

This blog is meant to help you on your way. I welcome questions and comments and, if I write anything that you know to be untrue, I would ask that you bring it to my attention. But I would also ask that if you do bring mistakes to my attention that you are able to provide your source of information and that it not be from advertising that serves the seller not the public nor what is considered to be 'common knowledge'. 'Common knowledge' is often mythology.

I encourage you to look at my website under "Meet Dr. Chase Riley" is a section called "May I recommend". I'll be keeping a list of books there that I think may help you on your journey.