Patients who are new to natural healthcare can be a bit finicky. I can say this with love and respect because I was just like that as a new patient years ago. I grew up in the “medical model,” where any symptom was undesirable and should be immediately suppressed with the latest medication. I was hooked on the idea of the “quick-fix,” “pill for every ill” concept of health.
When I first started as a chiropractic patient, I’d heard several amazing stories from people I knew who’d been happy patients before me, and I fully expected that I would have a miraculous experience of my own. It didn’t take long after my first adjustment to realize that, while it made me feel a bit better, it didn’t solve every one of my problems immediately.
I could have drifted back to the bottles of pills to help me feel different a little faster, but I hung in there. All those stories from other patients had to be true. Maybe I didn’t do it right? What if there were other factors I didn’t know about? I was perplexed.
A lot of time has passed since then, including over 15 years of training and clinical practice, and I still see this sort of thing play out on a nearly daily basis among my patients.
One common statement I like to deal with is when someone says:
“Make it a good one, doc! I’ll be gone for a month!”
Or my favorite:
“Why do I have to keep coming back? Can’t you fix it? Can’t the adjustment hold?”
Again, I understand these statements in the context of the quick-fix medical model. We want to do one thing, and we want it over with as soon as possible so we can return to our normal lives. We also want someone else to pay for it!
But then I have to go and ruin it by asking critical thinking questions.
“I’d love to give you a permanent adjustment, but let me ask you this: would you trust a mechanic who claims they can tune up your car so well that you’d never, ever need it to be serviced again?”
Or I could ask:
“Can you brush your teeth so well that you’d never need to brush them again?”
“Can you eat a meal so filling and nutritious that you’d never need to eat another meal again?”
“Can you clean your house so well that it would never get dirty again?”
The reality is that health takes work. We need to consistently do the right things to encourage the best results. Health is not an accident, and it’s not just for the “lucky.” It is the natural result of living in a way that is congruent with our natural bodies.
After years of practice and thousands of patients, it’s clear to me that the most fundamental actions that support and maintain good health are eating a proper diet and maintaining a fully functioning nervous system. While several strategies use these approaches, the most reliable and applicable we have found are Nutrition Response Testing (utilizing the nutritional principles of Dr. Weston A. Price and Dr. Royal Lee) and chiropractic care. You should include plenty of other positive lifestyle attributes, but they will be ineffective without these two pieces in place first.
This simple yet profound idea was the motivation behind my patient education booklet The Night Before Wellness. To learn more about how these strategies can help yourself and your family, reach out to your local practitioner and get started today.
The best time to work on your health was years ago. The second-best time is now. Lastly, once you achieve the health you desire, how long should you continue the work to keep it that way?
Image from iStock/Wavebreakmedia.
Dr. David Kolowski is a chiropractor, speaker, and author in Loveland, Colorado. His booklet The Night Before Wellness gives the Big Idea of natural healthcare to readers young and old. Dr. Kolowski describes his mission as helping people ask better questions while seeing the bigger picture. You can find him at Inside Health.
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