Good health is your most important asset.
Everything you do and everything you enjoy hinges on you being healthy enough to participate. You can’t be the spouse, parent, neighbor, friend, family member or employee that you are supposed to be if you are in poor health. Unfortunately, most people have no idea how to harvest their true health potential. And although there isn’t any one thing that you can do that will guarantee a life of good health, one of the most valuable things you can do is maintain proper head/neck alignment. So to help you better understand how your body works and how Upper Cervical Care can improve your health, we have outlined 8 things that you need to know about your health.
1. Your body is always trying to be healthy.
Your health is often one of those things that you take for granted until you don’t have it any more. In many cases those who wait that long will find that they have missed a wonderful opportunity to live up to their health potential. When asked “What is Good Health” the most common response has something to do with being symptom/pain free. Unfortunately, that’s one of those big hairy wives tales that has been passed down through the ages. Good Health just means your body is doing what it is supposed to be doing. Sometimes that means you will be uncomfortable or even in pain. But for those who truly want to experience good health, they need to stop fighting symptoms and focus all their energy on the things that will help the body function normally. Because if your body is working right, you’ll be healthy. That’s the way God designed you.
2. Your body will heal itself as long as nothing interferes with it.
One of the most amazing things about the human body is that it’s self healing. This means that when your body starts having trouble, unlike when your house, computer or car breaks down, your body doesn’t just collect dust until the repair man comes over. In every circumstance the body is doing its best to repair and heal you. This is why when you cut your finger you don’t have to hope and pray that it heals. It just does. Your body is self healing. But it also does the same thing on the inside to the parts of our body that we can’t see. Like we said before, being healthy is what your body naturally wants to be. But there are times that something interferes with that. Many people think that they can’t be healthy for one reason or another. Often these excuses are centered around things like age and genes. Although your age and genes do affect your health, it is your environment that most significantly impacts your health. Because of this, it is extremely important that you remove the things in your life that are interfering with the way your body functions. Identifying and eliminating the things that are interfering with your normal body functions is the key to unlocking your true health potential.
3. Your Nervous System is the wiring that controls your entire body.
There are 4 things that every person needs to live: Food, Water, Air and Nerve Supply. The first three are fairly common knowledge, but the last one is often overlooked. The nervous system is the most important system of the body because everything else hinges on it. If the nervous system is not firing on all cylinders, it is possible that the rest of the body will not be working correctly. We see the practical evidence of this with spinal cord injuries. People like Christopher Reeves not only experience paralysis from an injury to their central nervous system, but they experience damage to their respiratory system, digestive system and immune system as well. Because of the connection between the nervous system and the rest of the body, any interference or irritation to the nervous system makes it impossible for the body to function properly. This makes maintaining a properly functioning nervous system a top priority for anyone striving to regain their health or maintain optimal health.
4. Head/neck misalignment causes major problems throughout your body, not just your neck.
The purpose of Upper Cervical Care is to detect and correct head/neck misalignment. A lot of people have never even heard of Upper Cervical and many of those who have believe the care is only for patients with neck pain. But when you start looking into it, the variety of people and conditions that have reported positive improvement from Upper Cervical Care is mind boggling. The reason for this is because of how the upper neck relates to the rest of the body. When the upper neck misaligns, there are two main things that happen that will cause health problems: Body Imbalance and Nerve Interference/Irritation.
5. It is impossible to be healthy without a properly functioning nervous system.
Nervous system irritation/interference is the “short-circuiting” of nerves that happens as a result of head/neck misalignment. It is impossible for you to live up to your health potential without a properly functioning nervous system. The vast number of health problems that can result from nervous system interference speak to the importance of the nervous system. There are three types of nerves in your body: Sensory Nerves, Motor Nerves and Autonomic Nerves. When the upper neck misaligns and results in irritation to the nervous system, any of the three different types of nerves can be affected. When sensory nerves in your body are irritated, you will have sensory nerve issues like pain, numbness/tingling, or even loss of taste, smell or hearing. When a motor nerve is involved, the patient will have muscle issues like muscle tightness, trigger points, muscle weakness and muscle wasting. The autonomic nerves are the group of nerves that control all of the AUTOMATIC systems of the body. Your immune system, digestive system, respiratory system and circulatory system are all part of the autonomic nervous system and can be affected negatively by a head/neck misalignment.
6. Good health is Healing well not Feeling well.
Most people use how they feel to determine how healthy they are. If they feel well then they must be healthy. But the truth is that the diseases that you are most likely to die from (heart disease and cancer) exist in the body for a very long time before you will have any symptoms. More often than not, a person with heart disease will find out about it when they have a heart attack, long after the actual heart disease started. Cancer is the same way. Many people have cancer reeking havoc in their body for years before they have even the slightest symptoms indicating that something is wrong. The bottom line is, symptoms (how you are feeling) is one of the worst indicators of true health. Symptoms can be treated and covered up without ever addressing the real cause of the problem allowing the problem to get worse and worse. True health is about healing well. It’s about your body being able to adapt to every circumstance. Ultimately, when your body loses the ability to adapt to its environment, you get sick. And if you get sick enough, you die. So if you want to live a long, healthy life you need to focus first and foremost on having a body that heals well.
7. Holding proper head/neck alignment over time allows your body to heal.
One of our goals is to get all of our patients to hold their Upper Cervical correction for as long as possible. This means that we want them to be able to go for extended periods of time without the need to get a correction. For a lot of people who have never had Upper Cervical Care before, they will have to allow their body a little time to get used to the care before their correction will start to hold. But it’s not the correction itself that makes Upper Cervical patients well, it’s their body remaining free from nerve interference and body imbalance over a period of time that makes them well. Now I want to clarify that I’m not suggesting that Upper Cervical patients only get adjusted when they are having symptoms. Upper Cervical doctors have ways of detecting whether or not a patient needs to have a correction. Once a patient has gone through their initial care and it has been determined that they are holding their correction, their Upper Cervical check-ups will be scheduled accordingly. Even if our patients are completely symptom free we encourage them to continue to get an Upper Cervical check-up every 3 to 6 months to ensure that their body is holding the correction and that they are not falling back into the same pattern that lead them into our office in the first place.
8. Getting healthy and staying healthy is a lifetime of choices.
Good health is a journey not a destination. You can’t just get healthy and not worry about it any more. Just think about the last time you were on a diet and then went back to your normal habits. The diet didn’t stick, did it? The things that get us healthy are the things that keep us healthy. So if you want to be a healthy person, you have to commit to continue doing the things that make you healthy. It’s also important to remember that the most crucial pieces of the health care puzzle are often not the most urgent. Upper Cervical Care, exercise, eating right and a good nights sleep are not urgent in the sense that you are not going to die tomorrow if you do or don’t do them. But they are important. As a matter of fact, they are extremely important. Because just like brushing your teeth, changing the oil in your car, washing your clothes and cleaning your dishes, if you don’t do the things that are important but not urgent, they will quickly become urgent. Commit to be healthy for life by paying as much attention to the important things that are not urgent as you do to the important things that are.
