What Are You Waiting For?

My mother passed away from colon cancer in 2006 and my dad died from Alzheimer's three years earlier. It was a crushing blow to the family, especially for me, as an only child. In the last 8 years, Lisa and I have lost 6 close relatives to heart disease, cancer and diabetes, some of the nation's top killers. So my wife and I went on a quest. Are we doing enough, even with all the good health choices we currently make?

We originally made a decision to become vegetarians, about 16 years ago, because of a patient's husband who died of a heart attack one month after he retired. My patient said to me to be sure to live life to its fullest because you never know when it will be taken away. My wife and I decided after this conversation with my patient that if we ever got "sick", we would do a whole list of alternative life-style changes. Then we realized, "What are we waiting for?"

We started adding more health related practices to our life. We became strict vegetarians (no meat or milk, very limited sugar & white flour, no preservatives or additives), took no drugs of any kind, began exercising a minimum of 5 days a week, and of course, continued our weekly chiropractic adjustments.

We closely examined what my parents did, to make sure we were not doing what they did. Research shows that even if you have a genetic predisposition, you’ve got to do something to turn on the ‘bad’ genes. Hence if you do what your parents or siblings or aunts did, you’ll get what they got. Our goal was NOT to get what they got. My mom & dad never exercised and had a horrible diet. Yet they always took handfuls of vitamins every day since I was kid, because they thought that vitamins alone prevented cancer. Unfortunately that is not the case. One cannot ignore the triune of health (chiropractic, diet, and exercise), and expect vitamins to be the answer to poor diet and lack of exercise.

Your health grows the way a bank account does; the more deposits you put in, the more your "health" account grows. Your goal should be to find more ways to make health deposits to 'diversify' your portfolio, with Chiropractic as your foundation. Most of America waits for there to be a problem with their health, and then they scramble to fix it. Our thought is to get your health to an awesome place and then keep it there. Why wait for your body to fall apart until you fix it. You can always become healthier. You can always grow your health bank account. Aim to have a million dollar health portfolio rather than an overdrawn health plan. So here is the key question: What are the one or two things that are you neglecting in your life? If you can fix those items you are neglecting, with habits of daily discipline, watch your health account balance soar! What are you waiting for?

How Your Child Can be the Healthiest One at School

Our children are among the sickest in the top 100 industrialized countries of the world. The United States spends over $2 TRILLION per year (that’s $2,000,000,000,000, or 2 with 12 zero’s) on health care! That’s $100 BILLION more than in 1990.

Asthma is one of the fastest growing childhood problems. Ear infections run rampant through our pre-schools and elementary schools. Ritalin is being given to over 3 million boys under 10 years old every day for hyperactivity, and Prozac is being prescribed to children under 5 at ever increasing rates. Allergies are plaguing more and more of our kids today, with shots and Claritin becoming regular routines for millions of youngsters. Obviously, the United States spending more money on our health care is not producing a healthier society, and especially not producing healthier kids? What do we as parents do?

What health specialty are more and more parents turning to for relief of their issues and their children’s problems? Where did over 600 million Americans go to in 2004 for help with their health? The answer might surprise you: Chiropractic. Yes, we all know that most adults (over 80%) who go to chiropractors first visit this kind of specialist for lower back pain, headaches, whiplash or other injuries. But many of these adults learn something very unexpected about their new chiropractic lifestyle:

1. Since everybody has a spine, including their children, (only it’s a lot smaller), it is very important to have their kids spines checked because if the parent has a spinal problem, it’s highly likely that their kids may inherit it!

2. The nerve system does a whole lot more than control whether you feel pain (which is the most obvious reason why an adult goes to see a chiropractor). As a matter of fact, only 15% of the nerves’ function is to control whether or not you feel pain. The other 85% of the nerves’ function is to control the organs, the muscles, your balance, and YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM! That’s right. Your immune system, and as a parent, having a child with a healthy immune system can have a much different impact on your life than having a child who is sick every other week. Let’s investigate this impact:

Money A sick child costs you a tremendous amount of money since not only are you paying for doctor’s visits, but for prescription and non prescription drugs, and their side effects as well. A study recently done and mentioned in the Ladies Home Journal states that the average American spends over $4000 per person on their health per year. Hence an average family of husband, wife, and 2 kids spends over $16,000 per year on their health. All that money isn’t keeping them healthy, it’s spent trying to restore health. Health is not something you wait to find once you lose it. Rather it’s something you hold onto dearly everyday once you have it, so you’ll always have it.

Time A sick child costs you time. Time off of work, time for the child being out of school. This adds up to increase financial burdens too, since if your child can’t get to school, you can’t go to work, and that costs you your paycheck

The solution: If all the kids were healthier, the day care centers and schools would have healthier kids in them. Parents would take less time off of work. Parents could take all the money they used to spend on prescriptions and invest it. But how do we get our children healthy? Chiropractic care to first boost their immune system to normal, then to keep their immune system at peak performance so that they stay healthy.

Your health and the health of your children should be treated like a bank account. If you want your money to grow, you’ve got to keep on putting money in the bank. Then when you need to write a check, you’ve got money waiting there for you. Same thing with your health bank account. If you want to be healthy, you have got to do something for your health every day, and every week, to keep that precious commodity.

Many parents around the country are turning to chiropractic care not just for themselves, but for their kids too. The spine is the body’s foundation. If your child’s foundation is weak and they suffer from earaches, allergies, or asthma, you might want to try something different. Chiropractic unlocks the body’s ability to heal itself for both adults and kids alike. Add that benefits to savings of time and money, and you have an alternative for taking care of your family.