Going to the Chiropractor for Life
Sat, 06/07/2014 - 15:20
"Going to the Chiropractor for Life"
This is a comment I’ve heard countless times over my career: “People say that once you go to a chiropractor, you have to go for the rest of your life. Is that true?” My playful reply is always something along the line of: “Of course it is true. In fact, we learn a secret form of hypnosis in school that brainwashes people into coming in forever.” After a giggle, we chat about how silly such a comment is and discuss where this notion came from in the first place.
The truth is that everything we do as humans is for life, including taking care of or not taking care of our spine and nervous system. The question is, WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR LIFE? Will you eat healthy for your lifetime or will you eat recklessly? Will you exercise regularly throughout your life or will you only work out occasionally or even not at all? Will you actively work on strengthening your mindset, character, and emotional integrity with each passing year or will you passively let stress, overwhelm, and outside influences gradually erode your sanity? Will you brush your teeth, maintain good hygiene, and have preventative health screenings throughout your life? Do you see where I am going with this?
Perhaps the funniest thing to consider is how most people are willing to be put on prescription medications for life without ever once questioning that recommendation. In fact, the number of drugs a person takes increase proportionately with each decade of life. Is that part of your life plan? (Incidentally, people who proactively visit their chiropractor regularly take little to no medications and spend less money on crisis care. Just saying:) )
Specific to taking care of your spine and nervous system, which is what chiropractors do, it is important to understand that there are different levels of chiropractic care to choose from, ranging from relief to correction to wellness and peak performance. Some people never advance beyond relief care. They utilize chiropracticcare as a short term strategy to overcome an ailment or to help their body workthrough an injury or crisis. Others see value in restoring, stabilizing, and strengthening their body beyond a level they could achieve on their own and choose to advance from relief to correction. And a rapidly growing number of people see their health and well-being as their highest value and priority in life, knowing that their health is the foundation to everything else, such as their relationships, career, and quality of life. These people strive to advance to wellness care, with the goal of peak performance, optimization, and never-ending improvement. They know that they control their destiny and that if they take care of their body it will take care of them. They visit their chiropractor regularly (weekly to monthly), not to keep fixing the same problem over and over again, but to continually expand their health year after year after year.
Here’s the deal: how you care for your body is your choice. You can be proactive or reactive, consistent or inconsistent. You can mask symptoms or create solutions.
What will you spend your life doing?