Everyone is built differently. Something that my listeners know, and any of my patients know, is that I am always saying that we are as different on the inside as we are on the outside. Understanding that really gives some good basic criteria about health, because what’s good for one person might not be good for another person.
You can give 25 people antibiotics, or you can give them a shot of penicillin, and when you give it to patient 26, they go into anaphylactic and almost die. So, what was the difference? How come all those people who got the treatment before were fine and then that single person had a really bad reaction to it? We need to understand that our immune systems are different, and our nerve systems are different. We can’t say “health” as a blanket statement. There are many things to consider in order to determine if someone is healthy.
An important question to ask is “What is your definition of health?” We understand that when we look it up in the dictionary and we talk about health, there are different definitions out there. The one that I like the best is that health is a state of optimal physical, mental, and social wellbeing, not merely the absence of disease or symptoms. That’s taken from Dorland’s Medical Dictionary. So, the criteria for someone to being healthy is making sure that all of their systems are running correctly, without interference, and that their nerve system is controlling the circulatory system, the digestive system, and the immune system.
So, when all those systems are working in concert to keep you alive and your body is able to adapt to all the stresses and strains that we throw at it, and doesn’t break down, that’s truly the definition of health. Being able to deal with physical, chemical, and emotional stresses, and make sure that your body comes out on top, and your body has the ability to regenerate and heal, is truly what health is. It’s the body’s ability to regenerate, to replace damaged cells or old cells with healthy new ones. And that’s what allows us to keep going on. And all of that is controlled by your nerve system.
In chiropractic, the thing that we focus on is making sure that the nerve system is connected, and the communication goes from the brain to the end user, who is a tissue cell, and it might be a liver cell, or a kidney cell, or a muscle cell, but whatever the brain tells the body to do, those messages flow across the nerve system.
If there are misalignments in the spine that cause a damning back of that nerve impulse or there’s pressure on the nerve that excites it, when that nerve impulse gets to that end using cell, it’s not going to do the proper thing, because the message has been changed or different.
It’s like that game of telephone, when you tell the story to someone else and it goes around the room to 10 people, and by the time the story gets back to you, it’s completely different. Well, when that goes on in the nerve system, it creates confusion and dysregulation and then the body can’t heal, run, and regulate as efficiently. And again, if it slows down, we move more towards that state of dysregulation or poor health.
So, we can talk about all the basic criteria for health, and you can be considered healthy if you don’t have symptoms, but we know that’s not true, because you can be in a lot of pain and be healthy and you can have no pain and be gravely ill.
We are all different and we understand that different people need different needs and different amounts and different quantities. Some people need more food, some people need less. Some people need more rest, some people need less. It’s all individual. This whole idea that it’s one size fits all is what gets medicine into trouble, because they make the assumption that we’re all the same on the inside and on the outside. For example, some might say “If we put this treatment into patient A, I’m going to get that result every time,” but it does not work like that.
Chiropractic allows the individual to express their optimal health, and their optimal health might be different. They might have different abilities, they might have different facilities to keep themselves healthy and make sure that their body heals. But generally speaking, if we understand that we’re all different and we need to exercise differently, eat differently, and rest differently, that’s the criteria for someone to be considered healthy.
And again, I love those definitions of health, where it talks about the state of optimal physical, mental, and social wellbeing, not just merely the absence of disease or symptoms.
Photo Credit: Rido81/Bigstock.com
Dr. Gregg D. Rubinstein, D.C., is a midtown Manhattan chiropractor with over 30 years of experience providing customized chiropractic treatment services to a wide range of clients in the Midtown Manhattan/West New York City area. Dr. Gregg Rubinstein and 57th Street Chiropractic can be reached at (212) 977-7094 and is located at 119 West 57th St. in New York, NY.
Click here to receive more information & to schedule your consultation.
