The Price of Health
By Dr. Bob Braile
I'm sure most of you realize the costs of so call "health care" has been rising steadily over the last few years. We hear figures ranging from between 6 to 16 percent inflation rates per year for health care services. It is presently estimated that 16 percent of this country's Gross National Product goes into medical related costs. These figures are not only startling, but compared to the rest of the civilized world, these numbers are shocking.
These figures are more than just numbers. From a personal level, think about how many people today cannot afford medical care without some kind of government program or other insurance. Think about yourself having to go to the hospital without having any insurance. Would you be able to afford a week long stay in the hospital with a few tests if you had to pay for it out of your own pocket? Consider the fact that insurance and government health programs are getting more expensive and covering fewer services. Add to this the fact that eventually insurance of any decent type will be priced out of range for most people, and the picture is starting to look pretty bleak!
So what is the...REAL PROBLEM?
The real problem, is that the health care system we have today is not "health care". What we really have today is "crisis care" or "disease care". Think about it for a minute. Is the focus of our system the enhancement of health, or merely the treatment of various diseases, pains and conditions? If this concept is a bit confusing, you're not alone. To help clear this up, ask yourself this question. What is health? The answer to this question is vital to understanding the solution to our present dilemma.
Just what is....HEALTH?
If you choose one source, "Dawland's Medical Dictionary", you will see health defined in the following way: "Health; a state of optimal physical, mental and social well being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." This means that for a person to truly be healthy, the various parts of their body must be functioning at their optimal, or full potential. In other words, everything working the way it is suppose too. What this definition does not say is, "Health is feeling good and having no diseases." This is because feeling good or being free of disease, does not mean that you are healthy. The easiest example of this, is the cancer patient who develops the cancer long before they ever feel any pain or sickness. In more common terms, ask yourself this question. Do you get a toothache the minute you got a cavity? The point here is that health is much more than feeling good or having no diseases. Health is "optimal function" of your body, which in EVERY case is lost long before you ever start feeling sick. In order to solve our "health care crisis" we must start promoting HEALTH!
How can we....PROMOTE HEALTH?
To promote health one must do the things that enhance the function of one's body. When we consider this approach, a lot of the procedures commonly done in the practice of medicine do not fall into this category. This does not mean that these procedures or practices are bad, but merely that they are only designed to treat specific conditions, and not designed to promote health. For instance, if a child has a case of tonsillitis, and the doctor removes the child's tonsils, what has been accomplished? In order for the child to have gotten tonsillitis in the first place, the child's resistance must have lowered. If the resistance were not lowered, the child's own defenses would have prevented the infection in the first place. Removing the tonsils got rid of the immediate effect of tonsillitis, but the child's resistance was never changed. The key once again is "Proper Function". The way to "Promote Health", it to obtain "Proper Function".
What can you do to get....PROPER FUNCTION?
To get "Proper Function" it's not only what you "DO", its also what you "DON'T DO". In a lot of people those "don't do's" are just as important as those "do's". Probably the biggest item in the "don't do" category has to do with pollution. This does not only mean the types of pollution, such as air and water, that we are most familiar with. The worst type of pollution, the one that has the biggest effect on your health, is the one that most people know the least about if they know anything about it at all. The most dangerous pollution of all is "Blood Pollution". The type of pollution we suffer from every time we put any kind of a drug into our bodies. "Blood Pollution" is the most wide spread form of pollution because we get it from so many sources. To go into all the ways you get "blood pollution", and cover all the effects would fill up volumes of books. Take a moment and consider what your doing every time you take an over the counter drug, or even prescription medications. Think of all the poisons in our food when it's treated with chemicals, or the soft drinks we ingest. Each time we add any man-made chemical into our body, regardless of how important we think the reason, we must understand that it is a foreign substance to our body and is therefore treated as a poison or pollution.
If those are some of the "don't do's", what can one...."DO"?
Most of the things we can "DO" we already know about, but don't always "do". We know we must exercise regularly, and we know we must eat right. Most of us know that proper sleeping habits are important. And probably, we all know that having a good mental attitude is very important. But knowing these things does not mean we understand them fully, or that we practice these at all. And while it's a sure bet that we could all use some improvement in these areas, this is not the time or the proper forum to go into each of these. There is, however one other "DO" that is probably the most unknown and most ignored of all the things mentioned so far. This one "DO", if neglected, can have the most devastating effect on your health of all the things we've discussed so far. The thing you must "do" to obtain proper function, is to have a properly functioning nervous system. In order to "do" this you must make sure that your nervous system has no interference!
How can you make sure your nervous system has...."NO INTERFERENCE"?
The best way available today to make sure your nervous system has "no interference" is to correct whatever interference is present. And the best way to accomplish this is through specific chiropractic adjustments. For nearly 100 years, the principle of chiropractic has been that a healthy body can only be fully achieved if there is no interference to the nervous system. For those same hundred years, the chiropractic profession has been improving the skills and technology needed to correct the biggest cause of nerve interference, the "Vertebral Subluxation". For when "subluxations" are reduced or corrected, your nerve system functions free of interference, and the result is a better "functioning" body!
So back to the beginning...."THE PRICE OF HEALTH".
What this all comes down to is this. In order to reduce the cost of healthcare we must focus less on the treatment of disease or pain, and focus more on how to obtain "health". In order to obtain health we must strive for "proper function". In order to obtain function there are certain things we "don't do", such as polluting our blood stream, and certain things we "do", namely correcting subluxations through chiropractic adjustments. For if we keep our nervous system functioning properly, our body will function better. And if our body functions better, we will truly be "HEALTHY". It is then all to obvious, that if more people were healthy, there would be fewer expenses for treatment of sickness, and the health care crisis we currently find ourselves in would "cure" itself.