A Healthier You in the New Year

A healthier, happier life, what could be better as we move into the new year than that?  Perhaps the best place to start is at the beginning, with our basic function.  Functioning well, first and foremost, is the basis for our health and an essential element in happiness.

As a chiropractor I see the evidence of this truth every day in the people I work with.  Yet many people go through life experiencing mediocre health and never receiving the benefits of chiropractic care.  We tend to believe that we have the best technology and that our health care providers know what’s best for us. But the reality is that we live in a time when health care itself is in crisis.  

Unfortunately the answer doesn’t seem to be coming from spending more.  In the United States we spend far more on health care than people in other countries, yet our health outcomes are deteriorating.  It may be that we need to examine some of our basic attitudes and beliefs about health.  This is underscored by a recent study that looked at people who had spinal surgery compared with those who received safer, conservative care.  The estimates vary, but we know that more than 250,000 patients have discectomy (a type of spinal surgery) annually and thousands of other types of spinal surgery.  The study suggests that many of these would not be necessary if appropriate conservative treatment was provided.

The study published in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics showed that 60% of a group of patients with a particular diagnosis of sciatica (with pain radiating from low back down into leg) who underwent chiropractic care reported a successful outcome.  This suggests that only 40% of the group actually needed surgery.  Another way of looking at the data is that chiropractic care saved 60% of these patients from needless surgery.  http://www.uschirodirectory.com/index.php/patient-information/item/281-sciatica-leg-pain-a-lumbar-disc-herniation-surgery-vs-chiropractic-care-

This is common and we chiropractors see evidence of this regularly in our practices.  But the real message is that we need to take control of our health as consumers; avoid dangerous medications; and get checked regularly by our chiropractor (don’t wait for something to hurt). http://www.youneedchiro.com/joomla/healthy

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