Download What Is Health - Chapel Hill Chiropractic

What Is Health?
This should be the first question on your mind when you are looking for “health care”,
yet when this question is posed to most people they respond with an answer like “It’s when I’m
not sick”, while this is a fine answer, it seems to come up a little short, so lets start there.
According to Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, “Health is a state of optimal physical,
mental and social well being, not merely the absence of disease and infirmity”. Wow! Optimal
physical, mental and social well being, that sounds like something worth having. The next
question you should have is how can I get that?
As human beings we are all born with a certain genetic health potential. In order to get as
close to that potential as possible it is important to understand that there are certain things which
are essential for life and health. The four essentials for survival are Food, Water, Oxygen, and
Nerve Impulse. What makes these essential, is that if any of these were to stop you would die.
But also if any of these were interfered with, you would not be living at you optimal potential.
Lets take a brief look at each of these four, and see how we can improve our health by paying
more attention to each.
Food, obviously if you are deprived of food long enough you would perish. But if you
interfere with the quality and quantity of the food you eat you can adversely affect your potential.
For example if you eat a diet of nothing but high fat foods, you know that over time you would
greatly increase your risk of developing many health problems, such as heart disease and several
types of cancer. So a diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables is very important.
Water, seventy-five percent of your body is water. It is used in almost every body
reaction. If you stop drinking fluids you will die. If you drink unhealthy fluids such as soda,
caffeine containing beverages, and water containing pollutants you would expect your health
potential to decrease. Everyday the average person should consume 6-8 glasses of fresh, clean,
water.
Oxygen, obviously if we are deprived of oxygen for even several minutes we would
perish. But the quantity and quality of the oxygen you breath is also important. By exercising
you are increasing the amount of oxygen your body absorbs. And the quality of the air is also
important. You would not want to sit in the garage and read the paper with the engine of your car
running, this would have an adverse effect on your health potential to be sure.
Nerve Impulse, this is the most commonly overlooked of the four essentials for life and
health. Nerve impulse is an electrochemical charge transmitted by the brain through the nervous
system to the body. It is the life force that keeps us alive. All body function is dependant on this
life force, or brain impulse. Cells must be electrically charged in order to vibrate and function. If
your brain stopped (generating these electrical impulses) you would die. In fact, in order to be
legally dead, brain impulse must stop. If you severed the nerve to your heart, would it stop?
How about your stomach, lungs or hand? What if you just interfere with the normal nerve
transmission? Would these organs and tissues function at their optimum potential?
Misalignments of the spine are major causes of nerve interference, in chiropractic we call
these misalignments subluxations. If your spine is subluxated you cannot be at your optimum
health potential regardless of how good your food, water and oxygen is, because you are still
interfering with one of the essentials of life and health.
The chiropractor’s primary role is to locate and correct subluxations, thus removing nerve
interference and allowing the body to restore its normal function. It is not a treatment for
symptoms or a cure for disease, but merely a way of approximating the body’s optimum health
potential, through proper nerve integrity. This is why everyone should see a chiropractor from
the time they are born, and regularly throughout their lifetime. Maintenance of a healthy spine
means optimum nerve integrity and optimum health potential.