Health & Medicine
2007-02-01 16:23:00
Being healthy or just pain free
Which is better - being healthy or just being pain free?
Would you rather be healthy or just not have any complaints? Seems like a silly question doesn’t it? In the United States we spend more per capita on health care than any other country in the world, yet we ranked 12th in overall health by the World Health Organization’s list of industrialized countries in the world in 2005.
How can this be? It is a shocking statistic, but it is reality. We have lost focus on what it means to truly be healthy. We have become a society dependent on drugs to alleviate complaints, versus determining a cause and correcting it.
As a chiropractor, I see a multitude of joint and spinal conditions in my office every day. For most, there is a common pattern that is troubling. Many of those patients have a long history of recurring back problems that have been continually swept under the rug until one day it happens. The pain has become more “severe this time” or “this time it; won’t go away”. The negative impact that back problems have on our health has been greatly minimized by society, and modern medicine, -Yet it is an epidemic in our country. Back pain is the most common cause of lost time from work. Back pain is one of the most common reasons to be hospitalized. We spend billions of dollars on back problems every year. In fact it is a cash cow for drug manufacturers. Since we have medications that can make us feel better, what else do we need? It is that line of thought that has created this epidemic. I am not against medicine. In fact there is a time and place for pain medication. But, when medication is the sole source of treatment, I take issue with that. If you were having a heart attack, would you want a pain reliever for that chest pain? If you went to your dentist for a tooth ache and he told you to take some tylenol to see if that takes care of it, you’d think he was crazy? But when we have back pain, then that solution seems to be OK! It is completely illogical, but it happens every day.
The problem lies in the perception of the problem. Because we have become a very symptom oriented society, we see the pain as the problem. In fact it is not. We hurt for a reason. It is our body’s way of telling us there is something wrong! Yet we continually try to numb ourselves to relieve ourselves of the warning signal our body is telling us. In nearly all cases of spinal pain, the cause is a break down of the mechanics of our spinal joints. Over time, the stresses from gravity begin to change the function of our joints. As we lose proper mobility and alignment to our joints, we become ripe for painful episodes to occur. Each time we experience a painful episode, the joint becomes more unsound. Ultimately, over many years, a problematic joint will deteriorate and become arthritic. Everyone knows of someone that has a “bad back”. If you look into that persons’ past, you will likely find that they have a long history of back problems that slowly worsened over many years. It’s not that one day things were good, and the next day it was bad. It is a process that occurs over years from poor back mechanics that go unchecked. Its time to start thinking logically regarding the health of our backs. People who invest in the health of their spine earlier in life will reap the benefits later.
If you would like to know how healthy your back is, even if you’re not currently in pain, contact our office. We utilize state of the art technology to assess joint, nerve, and muscle function. The testing is non-invasive, and can be completed in less than 20 minutes.
