PDF | Print | E-mail

Understanding Wellness

The term wellness was actually coined in the year 1654 by a Scottish physician, the true meaning has evolved beyond what they both intended.

Defining Wellness
Chiropractors are the originators of the wellness movement, being the only health care professionals who recognize the body's natural ability to heal itself. This is why they have spent more than 50 years educating their patients on the benefits of a wellness lifestyle.

Proper nutrition, exercise and routine chiropractic care help the body to perform at maximum efficiency, resulting in improved function.

Wellness: Improving Function
The term improved function has been used by chiropractors for years to help patients understand the benefits of chiropractic care and the role it plays in true wellness. The body is made up of muscles, organs and glands that are controlled by the nervous system, and the nervous system consists of the brain, spinal cord and nerves.

The brain sends signals down the spine and to the nerves, which tell the heart to beat, the lungs to breathe, the stomach to digest, the glands to produce necessary hormones, and so on. It's when the signals don't get from the spinal cord to the nerves and then from the nerves to the muscles, organs and glands that the body begins to lose proper function and symptoms begin to occur.

Mainstream medicine doesn't recognize these symptoms as simple alerts from the body that there's something amiss, but instead as something that must be eliminated through chemicals or pharmaceuticals. They don't seek wellness, but rather a lack of symptoms.

Medical vs. Wellness Care

The biggest difference between mainstream medicine and wellness care is just that: medicine. Today's medical professionals are still treating symptoms instead of the cause of the problem. The bigger problem lies with the fact that the medicines usually begin to create their own list of symptoms that must be treated with more medicines. It's a domino effect leading not to health and wellness, but to illness and dependence.

By focusing on symptoms instead of body function, they avoid having to look at the root cause and can ignore the lifestyle habits or outside influences that are the underlying problem. A drug-induced lack of symptoms leads to a false sense of security and avoids the lifestyle changes truly necessary for wellness.

On the other hand, the wellness chiropractic practitioner recognizes that the symptoms are there for a reason, an alert from your body that something isn't right, and begins to seek the cause of the problem.

Finding True Wellness

True wellness is achieved when all of the body's systems are receiving their signals from the brain and are properly providing the body with what it needs to not only survive, but thrive. Too often, we mistake an absence of symptoms as the presence of health, when the reality is that the two are not even related.

Think of wellness in terms of promoting better health and preventing disease. In that context, you don't wait until symptoms appear - back pain, a stomach ulcer, fatigue, shortness of breath, etc. - or a disease process takes hold (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer) and then react; you proactively engage in behaviors that promote optimal health and reduce your risk of developing disease in the first place.

Chiropractic adjustments, smoking cessation, a healthy, balanced diet, regular physical activity, and stress reduction tactics are among the many lifestyle modifications that can promote health, prevent disease and contribute to lifelong wellness.

Truths About Wellness Care

Symptoms are not the problem, but an alert to an underlying cause and should be heeded, not silenced with chemicals.

The body has an inborn ability to restore itself and will adapt to outside stressors, whether they are physical, emotional or chemical. When these stressors become too much, the body will eventually wear itself down trying to maintain balance; this results in an absence of health and wellness.

Wellness care focuses on improving function rather than hiding symptoms.

Doctors of chiropractic recognize the value of preventative care compared to symptom-based care. With regular adjustments, spinal health is maintained, encouraging proper nervous system function and allowing for the body to perform at its best.