It is quite common for patients to seek out care from a Chiropractor for an ache or pain. It seems logical right? Patients come in thinking that as soon as their pain is gone, they will be better. The funny thing is, patients do not actually come in because of pain. They seek out care because pain is preventing them from doing something they love to do. So they aren’t motivated by pain necessarily, they are motivated to get back to a certain quality of life. As the wellness revolution continues to expand, we deepen our understanding of human potential and the expression of life. Studies of isolated populations have found members in those societies living between 120 and 150 years without evidence of disease. Dr. Eric Plasker 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.” Most people will spend more money on their “health” in the last two weeks of their life than they do their entire lives!
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.
According to the chiropractic model of health care, the body is a self-healing and self-regulating “organism.” We are more than the sum of our collective parts. Our cells, organs, tissues, and emotions work together dynamically to create a complex thriving being. We cannot be reduced to a double blind randomized control trial. The paradagm ignores the essence of our existence and dominance on the food chain. We have the capability of complex thought and emotions. We belong in a holilstic model of health because our the nature of holism is founded in the dynamic interaction of the three facets of the human creature. These include structure (cells, organs, bones, muscle, tissues, nervous system), biochemistry (chemical reactions within the body, the food we eat and air we breathe) and emotions (thoughts, stressors and “self-talk” which include the 2500 words per minute running through our brains that tell us who we are and what we are capable of). One system or facet of health cannot be considered without taking into account its effect on the other systems. Each system depends vitality of the other. When all systems are firing synergistically, the body thrives.
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?
It is the fundamental answer to the confusion associated with chronic pain and it is the title of the article. Pain is NOT your problem! It is not! Pain is an invaluable protective mechanism. It is a symptom which functions to prevent further damage from occurring in the body. Pain only makes up 10% of the nervous system. The majority of the nervous system operates silently and thanklessly. When the health of the body is threatened, pain is there to warn us to “listen up!” Society demands productivity, it is no secret. We have been methodically trained to ignore pain. We learned from an early age that pain equals weakness. Our mothers, fathers, teachers, preachers, coaches and big pharmacy told us to “suck it up, walk it off, be tough, don’t rub it, take an aspirin etc…”
We were LIED to! What if we were taught to be sensory acute to every little ache and pain and to question where they came from? Do aches and pains occur out of the blue sky? No way! They only seem to for an externally driven person. The externally driven person is always the victim. They blame circumstances, bad luck, bad germs and bad genes on the state of their health. Aches and pains are an expression of what is going on inside the body. They are progressive sirens that beep louder and louder the longer you ignore the primary cause of the alarm. If we were trained to appreciate and value pain from an early age, we wouldn’t get to the point of chronic pain. By living internally and being self-motivated, we would now comprehend that everything we get in life is an outcome of our effort and investment. Good or bad! If you are a person suffering from chronic and “unexplainable” pain, I would bet you have been poorly educated in regards to diet, proper exercise and the impact that emotional stress has on your body. You have almost certainly made a small investment and effort in accepting responsibility for your health. Most likely you live externally and have never recognized the root of your problems because nobody told you! I am telling you to start challenging yourself. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and make dramatic changes because you deserve to express life optimally just like your friends and family who do not suffer like you do.
Your pain is the wake-up call demanding that you change your life and take control. As you work to isolate the “why,” you will be forced to change your environment and your behavior. In doing so, your understanding of health will expand and it will never be able to contract to its original size. You cannot unring a bell! You become a stronger and more internally driven person the more you choose to embrace the process. This creates knowledge. Knowledge plus experience equals personal power!
The investment in your own health and in chiropractic care is a proactive and preventative action. By taking such extraordinary action and shifting your paradigm of health, you break free from an outdated belief system that has not been serving you. When you join a gym and they give you a membership card, does it come with a guarantee that you will get leaner and stronger by joining? Of course great looks and a clean bill of health not guaranteed. Their is an investment of your energy and effort required. No different than life, you must show up, sweat and participate! Keep this in mind. In life you are either the “observed” or the “observer.” Observed people live internally and consciously. Each and every patient in my office pays cash for their care for this reason. Practice members at Transformation Chiropractic choose to live optimally for as long as possible because they value life. My educated patients appreciate that they must be committed to their health and to their treatment plan to get the most out of care. They enjoy the journey that is wellness. There is no pinnacle to wellness or point where you have “made it.” As long as you remain on the journey, the value and results last. The only absolute destination in life is death. Human potential is how we choose to utilize the interim. When we hold ourselves accountable to achieving said potential and we choose to live internally, this is our free will!
Dr. Shaun Stuto is a missoula wellness 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.