Prevention vs. Early Detection

Creating a proactive lifestyle that includes daily exercise, proper nutrition, sufficient sleep, effective stress management, dental hygiene and chiropractic adjustments is the most effective way in which to take care of your body. There are three levels of care in the health care system. The first is prevention. This is far and away the most effective level because it attempts to stop any problems before they start. Examples of preventative measures include annual physicals, dental hygiene, spinal check-ups etc...The second level is early detection. Early detection methods include mammograms, blood work, x-rays , MRI's, CT scans etc...Although this level of care is a good idea, the problems that may be found during this tests already exist in your body. The third level of care is sickness management. This level of care focuses on helping to treat the problem once you already have it. Again, although this is a good idea and necessary for many people, this should not be our primary focus in health care. Unfortunately, our government and the pharmaceutical industry have decided that this third level of care is where all of our money should be spent. In fact, only about 10% of the total health care budget is spent on prevention and education of the public. This makes absolutely no sense, because as we have just discussed, prevention is the most effective and most cost affordable way to create a healthy population. To find out how to create a proactive and prevention based lifestyle please go to http://www.powaywellness.com/ to learn more!

Creating A Balanced Lifestyle

The key to creating a healthy body is the same as the key to creating a successful life, BALANCE! All work and no play leads to depression and burnout. All healthy food choices and regular exercise over a prolonged period of time leads to lack of motivation and again, burnout. Make sure that you subscribe to the 80/20 Rule so that this does not happen. The 80/20 rule states that 80% of the time you stick to the plan of daily exercise, positive thinking, chiropractic adjustments and healthy food choices. The other 20% of the time make sure that you are having an amazing time regardless of the short term health consequences. After a great weekend with my friends at a beach house I am reminded that living life to the fullest is one of the healthiest things we can do for ourselves!

Extremity Misalignments

Just like misalignments may occur in your spine and pelvis, the joints in your arms and legs also have a tendency to become misaligned and restricted in their normal range of motion. This will often lead to the creation of inflammation, irritation, pain and premature degeneration of the joint. A skilled chiropractor has the ability to check and to correct extremity misalignments which will help to restore the proper alignment and function of the joint as well as reduce or eliminate symptoms. An x-ray of the suspected area to rule out other complications is indicated and is also you by your chiropractor to determine the direction of misalignment. This information is then used to determine the direction of the corrective procedure. To find out more about extremity complaints including sprained ankles, carpal tunnel syndrome, shoulder pain, tennis elbow, knee and hip pain please go to http://www.powaywellness.com/ to schedule an appointment.

How To Obtain A Healthy Body?

The ONLY way to obtain a healthy body is to allow the body's inborn ability to heal itself to be expressed optimally. This means that we need to limit as many environmental stressors as possible. Environmental stressors include; poor diet, negative thoughts, stress, sedentary lifestyle, lack of sleep, poor air quality, water quality and of course subluxations in the spine. When we keep these stressors to a minimum, the body, which is always striving for health, has no problem creating a health. As a chiropractor my job is to help people to do just this. We often call this approach to health an inside out approach. This means that health comes from within us rather than from taking a pill or having a surgery. These are outside in approaches to health as we are taking something foreign from the environment and adding it to the body. This outside in approach is only necessary when we are in a health crisis and must give up optimal health in order to live to see another day. At ALL other times, the inside out approach is more advantageous.

To highlight this approach to health, chiropractors remove misalignments in the spine and extremities which decreases the stress on the body and allows it to express health easier. For more information on how to create a healthy body please go to www.powaywellness.com

The Arc of Life!!!

Chiropractors often call the curve that is seen on an x-ray in a healthy neck "The Arc of Life". The curves that are seen when viewing the spine from the side are our primary defense against shock absorbtion. When we lose these curves, due to subluxations or trauma, our spine degenerates quickly because all of the forces are then transmitted to the bones and to the discs which can only withstand so much force.

In today's society in which the majority of the population is extremely sedentary and most of our time is spent in front of a computer, driving or watching television it is very common to see patients who have lost the arc of life. In order to let you know the importance of these spinal curves here is a stagering statistic; for every 7 degrees of lost curve in our neck, we lose 60% of the messages that normally travel between our brains and our bodies!!! Yikes. Luckily, chiropractic has been shown to at least maintain the current state of our spines and in many cases improve the curve. For more information on how to obtain and then maintain your arc of life please visit www.powaywellness.com

Positive Mental Attitude

In the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, he speaks of mental approaches to living a happy and productive life. The four agreements that one must abide by include; always tell the truth, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions and always do your best. Each of these agreements takes time and practice in order to use in your daily life, however when living your life by this code, you will sleep better, function optimally and experience a calm that the vast majority of people will never experience. This book takes about a 1/2 hour to read so please check it out. For more information about living your life at an optimal level please check out www.powaywellness.com

When Do Symptoms Occur?

A symptom is a sign from the body that it has reached the end of it's adaptive capabilities. When we are talking about chronic health problems and lifestyle diseases, symptoms are one of the last stages of the process. Think about what the first sign of a heart attack is, what about the first sign of cancer, what about the first sign of a stroke? By the time you are actually experiencing a symptom from one of these problems you have probably been working on creating that problem for years and years. This same idea applies to the creation of subluxations in the spine. Most commonly a subluxation will be created due to either a trauma or a repetitive trauma, such as poor posture, when someone is very young. Because they do not have a regular chiropractic check-up this problem lies dormant for years and years until it creates so much degeneration in a persons spine that when the person bends over to pick up a pencil, their "back goes out". This pain is unfortunately their first symptom and so they believe that it was the picking up of their pencil that has caused their problem and that their problem just recently occurred. We know now that this could not be farther from the truth. This is exactly why it is imperative to be checked for subluxations throughout your life, starting from the day you are born. For further information on subluxations and their dramatic effects on health please go to www.powaywellness.com

Spinal Anatomy Made Simple

As a chiropractor I work with the bones and joints in your spine as well as your nervous system. There are three regions of the spine and they each have a different proper name. The neck region is known as the cervical spine, the midback region is known as the thoracic spine and the low back region is known as the lumbar spine. There are typically 7 bones in the cervical spine, 12 bones in the thoracic spine and 5 bones in the lumbar spine. The proper name of the bones in your spine are called vertebra. The main job of the spine is to protect our nervous system. The spinal cord runs through a hole in each of the vertebra and connect our brains and the rest of our bodies. The nervous system to the human body is like the telephone wires that connect people over the phone and allow them to communicate back and forth with each other.The spine also allows for flexibility which enables us to flex, extend, laterally bend to either side and rotate to either side. Unfortunatley, because of this flexibility our spinal bones can become misaligned and stop moving properly. The misaligned bone causes irritation to the nerves that come off of the spinal cord and cause them to dysfunction. This can lead to a number of different symptoms with the most common one being pain. A chiropractors job is to find that area of misalignment (we call these areas subluxations) and correct them. This restores the proper spinal alignment and communication between the brain and the rest of the body. For more information and an amazing visual program that highlights spinal anatomy please go to http://www.powaywellness.com/ and click on the patient education center!!!

Motion Is An Essential Nutrient For Creating Health!

The latest research is proving that motion is a required daily nutrient for creating a healthy body. This makes sense because if you think about humans from an evolutionary perspective, our ancestors were constantly moving in order to hunt and gather food. This trained our bodies over time to become not only used to moving, but actually need it to maintain body-wide functioning. Movement deficiency syndrome occurs when a person does not take part in total body daily exercise. The cerebellum, which is located at the back of the brain, is responsible for coordinating all aspects of input into the brain. This includes balance and coordination, emotion, cognition, learning, affect and most importantly motion. Individuals who have injured their cerebellum expereince memory loss, changes in personality, balance and coordination problems and mood swings. A subluxation in your spine (this is the problem that chiropractors help to fix each day by adjusting the spine) is actually a segmental movement deficiency syndrome. Subluxations act as a stressor to the body and cause all sorts of symptoms including pain, muscle spasm, fatigue, numbness, tingling or weakness and many more. When a chiropractor adjusts a subluxation he or she is creating motion at the restricted joint and encouraging healthy body functioning! To learn more about subluxations, please visit http://www.powaywellness.com/