I’m sure there are plenty of times when it’s easy for all of us to pat ourselves on the backs for being proactive in our health and wellness. When we go to the gym or eat a kale salad, we know we are doing something for ourselves that will help us not just now, but in the future. Similarly, by investing in care for your spine and nervous system through chiropractic, you get to feel good now and you are making an investment in yourself that research shows pays off in the long term, in terms of lower medical bills, medication use, and the like.
But what happens when the going gets tough? We wake up and find ourselves in extreme pain and don’t know why. We get a serious diagnosis from a doctor. We lost our job 3 months ago and find that now we’re stuck in a depressed and anxious state we can’t seem to get out of?
Is it ever just too late? Could the problem just be too big for a gentle form of chiropractic to possibly address?
To be sure, chiropractic, as a form of wellness care, versus medical care, serves different functions. The medical model, with it’s primary tools of medication and surgery, is there for us in an emergency, or in any health situation where we lack the current internal resources to really heal and must do damage control.
There is a prominent chiropractor named Dr. James Chestnut who likes to say that medical care is there for us when our metaphorical house is burning down. Medicine, with it’s focus on pathology, is like the fire department. When your house is burning down, the fire department is who you call. The chiropractors and wellness care practitioners, on the other hand, are the carpenters, contractors, and the like. When the fire is out but now your house is soaking wet, the windows are broken, and there is damage everywhere you look, the fire department is no longer the appropriate go-to. It’s the contractors; it’s the chiropractors.
It’s a great analogy, and has helped a great many people better understand the role of wellness care for a healthy life. One disadvantage of this analogy is that it doesn’t help us understand how to best help ourselves in the long term. If our metaphorical house keeps catching on fire over and over again, or if the firefighters can’t seem to completely contain the blaze, what next? Can we afford to abandon the routine home repairs and renovations (wellness care) in the meantime?
I have another analogy that may better help explain what to do when you’re going through something really tough and you can’t see your way out. This is where the “financial literacy class” comes in (you may have been wondering if I forgot about putting that in the subtitle!) Picture this. Throughout your life you have found yourself in continual financial struggle and difficulty. There are months and years where you rack up huge amounts of debt when disasters strike, because you have no savings. Now you find that you can’t save up money because you have so much debt.
You struggle along for years, sometimes barely scraping by on what you make and paying down debts somewhat. But every time something bad happens and there’s a big unexpected expense, you incur further debt. At this point you have credit card debt, student loan debt, money you’ve borrowed on good faith from friends and family, medical bills, and unpaid taxes.
Let’s pretend that one day, you finally realize that you can’t go on like this and there has to be another way. You enroll in a financial literacy class, and start learning strategies, tools, and mindsets to help you better your situation. You feel like things are on the verge of improvement with your finances.
Then, disaster strikes. You’re in an accident and now you can’t work or pay the bills. Your family offers you money, and at the same time you realize you may need to file for bankruptcy.
Does this mean the financial literacy class “didn’t work” or “isn’t working”?
Of course not! You’re laying the groundwork you need for a sustainable future, even if what’s showing up right now is another set-back.
IT TAKES TIME to overcome the problems that can develop after years of stress, injury, difficulty, and not having the financial know-how in the first place that could have helped you. It’s going to take time to turn things around, but the potential to do so is there. While the bankruptcy attorneys do their thing, you cannot afford to quit the very thing that holds the potential for you to make a change, so that this won’t happen again or get even worse. You cannot afford to quit the financial literacy class!
IT TAKES TIME to overcome the problems that can develop after years of not getting the care we need for the spine and nervous system. In the meantime, you cannot afford to quit the work you’re doing to help yourself get better. If it’s a surgery or medication you need in the short term because your system is bankrupt, just know that it is no substitute for the long term strategy. Get the short term help you need, be grateful for it, but do not neglect your wellness care.
All healing happens through activating your body’s in-born capacity to heal. No short-term intervention can substitute for that. Your nervous system– the brain and the nerves the run from your brain through your spine and out into your body– directs that healing process. Chiropractic, and specifically Network Spinal Analysis, has the power to help you by ensuring that your brain and body can work together, both now and in the future.
Has chiropractic helped you with something unexpected? Something that you or someone else might have thought was too big a job for wellness care? Or have you experienced an improvement through chiropractic that took longer than expected? Let me know by commenting below!
