It’s your own fault:

Why your health isn’t getting better with prayer requests and drugs.

Why is this Chiropractor throwing stones?

I know I’m not the picture perfect example of ideal health. I admit, I’ve let the modern day, first world problems of small business bills, overwhelming student debt, marital discord, etc. take priority in my life. I can complain about how my student loans are bigger than most house payments despite the fact that my doctorate is far less likely to allow me the earning potential of a medical doctor, or how spending literally 24 hours a day 7 days a week with my wife, who is also my employee, raises the odds for relationship issues. But you all have your problems, just like I do. They’re different but still the same.

Yes, I know that I should exercise more and avoid “self-medicating” with desserts. But one thing I won’t do is fail to take responsibility for my own health.  Good or bad, this is my temple that I’ve been given to maintain and even though there are times that I, like all of us, fail to keep it clean I won’t put my head in the sand or put the blame on someone else or just bad luck when it comes to my health.

You’re doing it all wrong.

In life, there are a few questions of existence we all ask. Why am I here? What is my purpose in life? What happens when I die? How do you determine right from wrong? The Bible seeks to answer these heavy hitter questions very clearly. Sadly we don’t always agree on the answers and the smaller the question the more likely for dissonance among believers, which is why we have so many denominations. However, some questions fail to even get asked.

How do I stay healthy? How do I avoid disease and pain the way God intended?

This is where the VAST majority of Christians fail miserably and often become martyrs for their lifestyle instead of their faith. You often take a stance of ignorance and just push the problem on God, like He’s a genie in a bottle.

“Please, God heal me of this diabetes and gout while I gorge myself on cake and cheap Walmart steaks every night. I’m sure that if I just have faith and the church deacons anoint me with oil, that my chances of You curing me will increase.” WRONG!  This is like asking God to fix your marriage while continuing with your addiction to pornography and having multiple affairs. You have to take some responsibility for yourself and stop doing what is causing the problem. Maybe ask for help changing your habits and, here’s a novel idea, TRY TO FIND WAYS TO FIX IT! God does answer prayer but sometimes you need to look a little harder or that cancer and heart disease will kill you, just like adultery can kill your marriage.

For those of you who claim to be devoted Christians, it’s time to extend MORE than prayer and faith towards your health if you really want it to improve. If you have a problem with liver disease from drinking a fifth every day, I hope that you’re not dumb enough to ask God to heal you and then continue to throw back a bottle or two of sacramental wine with each meal. Use your head. I didn’t say stop praying I said DO MORE. By “more”, I mean not the same thing that rest of the world does. Just like trying to learn and understand the Truth found in scripture, there is more to your health than the world and Satan wants you to believe.

I remember a little parable of a man who was convinced that God would save him from a flood. The story goes, the police came to warm him to evacuate, then a boat came and then a helicopter came to rescue him and each time he said he was staying because God would save him. So he drowns and asks God why he didn’t save him. God replies I sent you the police, a boat, and a helicopter.

Help from God is not always easy discerned because we have people looking to make a profit from “saving” us when in fact they are watching us try to swim for our lives. Instead of a boat or helicopter, they sell you a pair of children’s arm floaties so you don’t drown. They might help a little bit but you’re likely still going to drown if you rely solely on the floaties instead of just getting out of the water the way God intended.

Drugs and Christianity: who’s the real addict?

Most of you may be thinking I’m going to start bashing heroin and cocaine and marijuana. You are so wrong. The drugs that are a scourge on society and the church are the ones most of you have in your cabinets. Here’s where it’s time to get real.

I became a chiropractor because I sought to help people improve their health by Godly means. So what does that mean? The best way to understand health is to look to how God originally designed us to function. Genesis tells us that we were intended to be vegetarian, however, post flood the environment changed drastically and we were then allowed to eat meat (Genesis 9:3). Scientifically, it makes sense that the nutritional quality and overall quantity of the food would suffer in a post-flood world with a drastically different environment. As a result, God allowed us a new source of food, meat.

Interestingly, Genesis also tells us that herbs are for the service of man (Genesis 1:29). My understanding and impression of this is that God is telling us to use herbs the way that many people use drugs now. While food; organic fruits, vegetables and ethically raised meat and organ meat, are the ultimate source for optimum health and function, herbs can be powerful tools in addressing physical ailments we may be struggling with.

There are limitations to matter and as such, there are diseases and trauma our bodies may not be able to heal from completely. For example, despite popular belief, mutations are bad, always. We are not going to be X-men. In fact, the reality is quite the opposite. After thousands of years copying our genetic code via baby making, the copies may have some flaws from time to time; or maybe the health of your parents was just terrible and as a result your lot in life is now one of less than perfect health. Maybe you just got shot in the spine on a random drive by or hunting accident. Whatever it may be, there are certain things in life that can put your health in a state that it may never be able to recover from 100%. Herbs are great at helping with these issues and so much more.

A great example of this is in fact marijuana. There is a vast amount of research showing that it has an unparalleled effect on helping with many types of seizures as well as a multitude of other symptoms and diseases processes. YouTube and PubMed are full of these cases and evidence. An encyclopedia could be written on the topic of herbs with numerous books being dedicated to the amazing benefits of this one plant.

The problem is that man thinks he’s smarter than God. We take something like the coca leaf which has been chewed or used for tea safely for centuries and we make cocaine out of it. Willow bark is another example. In its whole and natural form, it’s a safe pain reliever. Chemically separate the acetylsalicylic acid from it and you now have aspirin, which can cause epigastric pain, heartburn, nausea, ulcers and use can increase your risk of a bleeding stroke and gastrointestinal bleeding.

What’s the difference?

Now, I’m not saying that all drugs are bad for you. Well, actually yes, I am. More specifically, pharmaceutical drugs are poisonous.

According to dictionary.com, poison is “a substance with an inherent property that tends to destroy life or impair health.(emphasis added)”

Wikipedia states “poisons are substances that cause disturbances in organisms (emphasis added), usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when an organism absorbs a sufficient quantity. “

Mmmmmm… what would an example be of a substance impairing health or causing a disturbance in an organism? All together now… side effects! And how common are side effects? It shouldn’t be hard to ascertain the fact that they are pretty common given the laundry list of potentials that are rambled off during EVERY drug commercial.  And that’s just what they are required to tell you about. Consider also how many FDA approved drugs were later removed from the market after they got done using the public as guinea pigs and end up killing the people taking them. Outside of an immediate health crisis, pharmaceutical drugs have little value aside from profit.

I’m just not saying that they should never be used. Most drugs are VERY powerful extractions, derivatives of, or attempts at chemical copies of compounds found in plants. Why don’t they just use plants then? HA! Pay attention to the world around you. Money! Just plain and simple, money. I cannot scream or yell loud enough or obscenely enough to exclaim this point. Drugs should have ONE purpose; EMERGENCIES and only emergencies. Only a very small percentage of medical care is used for real emergency care when compared to chronic health problems that slowly kill you or destroy your quality of like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, spinal degeneration etc.

To be honest, I’d venture to say that there are whole foods or herbal options available that are more effective and safer when used in acute emergency health crises if we would just look. That’s not going to happen on a large scale though because you can’t make a lot of money off of something everyone can grow. Patten a drug and you’ve got yourself a money maker. Especially because you can make it illegal for others to have and make, you know, because it’s for their own good and you know best when it comes to what people should do with their own bodies.

Drugs are both very concentrated and unnatural. They are isolated components that are not found in nature. This makes them very powerful and also poisonous. Not a big deal if your choices are take this poisonous drug that might save your life now but will certainly reduce your ability to function normally if you continue to take it for the rest of your life.   Having a heart attack? Aspirin and nitroglycerin can open up those arteries real quick to keep that blood flowing. Keep taking them, however, and there will be physiological prices to pay for them or the blocked artery that you never fixed. And no a stent or bypass surgery is NOT fixing the problem of why the blockage was there in the first place. FYI diet, exercise, chiropractic, and good mental health are enough 99.9999% of the time despite what the drug commercial says.

The problem is you think that there are no other options for that cancer or heart disease which will eventually become an emergency. The easy choice, since it is literally the ONLY choice medical doctors present to you, is chemo or blood pressure meds while your cross your fingers and pray that the poison you’re taking is going to somehow make you healthier the way God intended, but it won’t. Your best hope is that you don’t die. That doesn’t sound bad when it’s the only choice next to dying, but many of us know better.

Stop the hypocrisy.

Let’s cut right to it. Drugs should always be for short term use or not at all. That cabinet full of orange plastic bottles and over the counter symptom killers is not improving your health. Drugs will remove symptoms, usually. Of course, you’d have to be rather daft to miss the glaring reality that drugs come with side effects. Typically, these side effects are not immediately significant enough for you to notice. The statistics tell a much different story, however, in that properly prescribed drugs account for many thousands of deaths each year.

You can shake your hypocritical finger all you want at the pothead hurting not.  All the while your prejudices have allowed you to believe the rantings of government officials when they say that only “losers” and “criminal” take drugs. Meanwhile, you’re loading up yourself and your kids on drugs that tell you not to operate heavy machinery and have killed more people that marijuana ever has.  But hey, that cough and fever is mildly annoying and screw building a natural immunity to bacteria and viruses the way God designed you to.

It’s very common to stereotype and demonize people who use an illegal substance to feel. Yet, we do it all the time. Have a headache, take a pill. Have a fever, take a pill. Have a cold, take a pill. Pancreas not working right, get a shot.  Thankfully, likely because of social media, the truth is easier to get out to the public, who is now seeing what many people have known for decades or even centuries.

Herbs and plants are powerful remedies that are extremely safe. They can be used to improve our quality of life and overall health. Only when they are corrupted via heavy processing, are the properties of originally safe plants dangerous. This is as true with high fructose corn syrup and corn as it is with willow bark and Aspirin. I’m not saying that all plants are safe. I’m saying the ones that are and can be used to improve our health and treat our symptoms safely when chemically altered, are always dangerous.

Chiropractic and Christianity

Bear with me non-believers. We can have a difference of opinion and still learn from each other. For those of you that are self-proclaimed Christians, allow me the opportunity to guide you towards safe and effective health care that, in my opinion, has foundational qualities shared by the Christian faith far more than our current Western medical paradigm.

Chiropractic is based on the FACT that your nervous system is the master system in which all other regulatory systems are controlled and balanced to function optimally. Just like with Christianity, there are some “denominations” or groups that take them out of context to some degree. E.g. the KKK is really not a Christian based group in the same way that some chiropractors go overboard with statements that claim you only need to adjust C1 (atlas) to fix ALL back problems or that you only need to adjust a patient to correct ALL disease.

There are many facets to someone’s health and ignoring the other 23 vertebrae, skull, sacrum, pelvis and all other moveable and adjustable joints in the body is foolish. Denying the need for medical care in emergency situations or that nutrition, exercise and appropriate mental balance may be necessary beyond just an adjustment makes the whole profession look bad and gives people justifiable reasons to be skeptical. The same way other religious extremist do when they question Christianity.

To be clear, Chiropractic at its foundation is very scientifically supported and is easy to understand using common sense. The human spine has a normal or optimal structural alignment that will allow the vertebra to move and function without stress or restriction to the joints. Physical (most common), chemical and mental stresses can cause a shifts or fixations (abnormal movement) in these joints. This can in turn cause neck pain, back pain, headaches (most commonly) as well as inflammation (chemical stress) or pressure (mechanical stress) on the discs and nerves. This can result in spinal degeneration (chronic) and improper neurological function (acute) which can lead to symptoms that most people, including some medical doctors, don’t association as spinal problems i.e. numbness, tingling, muscle weakness, and organ dysfunction. There is often a missed connection here where people fail to take that next step to see how and why chiropractic is so important to your overall health.

Ultimately, a chiropractor’s goal is to find the source of the dysfunction and correct it so that it removes the CAUSE of the symptoms. Typically this includes a chiropractic adjustment, traction, and exercises to correct the abnormal spinal shift or abnormal joint movement in the spine. However, because our education is so focused on holistic treatment we may look to nutritional or exercise (not just specific postural exercises) prescriptions to help our patients.  This is significantly different that the symptom-based model of western medicine which seeks first to get rid of the symptom. This is why there is a pill or surgery for essentially every symptom and questions like WHY do you have that headache or back pain or neck pain are not always addressed.

I became a chiropractor because this holistic approach can be applied with a Christian foundation in that the problem of poor health can often be attributed to moving away from God’s originally intended design. I.e. Your spine was designed with a specific idea in regards to its structure and your diet should be as closely in tune with the fruits and veggies and meats found in nature, not in packages processed by man to last on the shelf longer or genetically modified to withstand toxic pesticides.

This philosophy carries over when you consider drug use as well. First, I would consider anything chemically altered to be a drug. That doesn’t mean that all plants are “safe” but all pharmaceuticals are, in my opinion, poisonous. While they may be used to get you out of an emergency situation, taking poison regularly is NEVER what God intended and certainly not going to make you healthier.

Now, what?

The next time you look at a “drug” addict in disgust, look in the mirror first and ask yourself if they’re not the only ones being “lazy” or “taking the easy way out”. You don’t know what stress God has put in their life and it might be a lot harder than a cough or cold or even high blood pressure. Maybe it’s time to ask whether or not you’re in fact honoring the temple God gave you by eating, moving and thinking poorly and using surgery and drugs to make it easier on you instead of going to a chiropractor for a more holistic and potentially more Godly answer to health.