Why is alternative healthcare important?  First of all, it is because our current healthcare system is ranked 37th in the world by the World Health Organization.  This is not the result of under spending, because we are second in the world in terms of the dollars spent as a percent of our economy. 

Why is this? In my opinion, it is because our current traditional healthcare system is set up to treat disease or injuries.  It costs the same to get one MRI as it would to get one year’s worth of chiropractic adjustments.  (This is just one example of how it is much more expensive to treat disease than it is to prevent the problem in the first place.)  Only 3% of the money we spend on healthcare (or sick care) is spent on prevention.  I’ll take it even one step further and say instead of focusing on prevention we should focus on WELLNESS. 

What does WELLNESS mean to you?  Tell me what you think and we can discuss this in future blogs.

If we truly want to be healthier, then we need to look at diet, stress reduction, exercise, and chiropractic.  Let me first introduce you to chiropractic and how it fits into a healthier lifestyle.  In future months we will discuss diet, how stress affects our body, exercise and many other topics you choose to ask me to address. 

From my experience, when the subject of chiropractic comes up most people think about back pain, neck pain or maybe headaches.  Again, we take the approach of treating a problem.  In reality, chiropractic in simple terms is about making sure your body is communicating properly.  Your brain is constantly sending messages to every cell, tissue, and organ through your spinal cord and miles-worth of nerves. Then that muscle or organ has to send a return message to the brain.  The “lines of communication” run through your spine.  If your spine is twisted, tilted or shifted, it causes the messages to become faint, blurred, blocked or magnified.  And this shows up as your body not working properly (i.e. muscles spasms, pain in your back, neck, or head, breathing problems, stomach problems, etc). 

Getting back to WELLNESS -- if we can make sure our bodies are communicating well, then our bodies will work well; more on that later. 

Thanks for reading and let me know what you think.  Email me at Dr. dwallacedc@peoplepc.com. In the meantime, stay healthy.