Archive for the ‘Chiropractic’ Category

Thanks to everyone who watched my first video and shared and dropped me a line or sent me an email.  When Tobin showed me the first edit from our 2 days of filming at the Westgate Wellness Centre in Maple Ridge, I knew we were onto something fun.  Your comments were funny after some of you saw my picture on my facebook page after makeup and were horrified.

Nothing gives me more fulfillment than teaching people an important message of health and healing, while getting a few laughs.  As a pathological exhibitionist, I like to know that my “acting a fool” doesn’t go to waste.  Please feel free to share this 2nd installment of “Dr. Nima Chiropractor/Spinal Therapist”.

Thanks for watching, laughing, sharing, tweeting, liking and cringing.  Prepare to be a little bit uncomfortable (again).

Warning.  This may offend some.  Those that have no sense of humor, no charm, wit, sense of playfulness (or good looks)– please do not watch this video.  Those that have problems watching others promote to the world in a fun way what they love to do should avoid my website, facebook, twitter posts with every fiber of their being.

I’ve been criticized by some in the profession for not being professional or too “self-promoting”.  Good.  I’m glad I’ve pissed a few people off.  I’ve watched dozens of my peers do their best to put up videos promoting their practices– first off– Good for you, I applaud you for your courage.  You can’t do or say anything without your critics.  I know– because I too, am a critic of the way we are approaching our health.  I just want to put out videos that make people smile, laugh, and like you will see in this case… cringe.  Please stay tuned for Part 2.

Please enjoy.  Thanks for watching.  And thank you to Tobin for his creative genius and Maria for her great work.

I’ve been frustrated at work lately.

“Doc, it hurts, please fix my________ and make it go away.” (enter Pain, Anxiety, Depression, Cancer, Diabetes, or whatever symptom or disease).

Old Model: Doc assesses with expensive tests, gives diagnosis, and provides some sort of medical therapy (drugs or surgery or “nothing cuz we don’t know what to do for you”).

New Model: I’m not concerned only with your pain/condition. I’m concerned with teaching you first what you need in order to be healthy in the body and mind, and fulfilled in life.
Now I admit, I’ve been beating my head against a wall lately. Imagine trying to practice this “new model” method in an “old model” world.

Imagine people are so used to McDonalds cheeseburgers, it’s no longer satisfying anymore— and it’s making them sick…. So they come to a steakhouse… asking for the same cheeseburger bullshit and expecting a different result. Welcome to my life lately.

I used to call myself a Chiropractor, but the negative connotation associated with it can be a challenge.  I don’t label myself anything anymore. I’m a Wellness/Lifestyle Doctor (becoming an expert). If you’re in any state of less than 100% well-being, REGARDLESS OF YOUR DIAGNOSIS and whatever toxins they are having you take…. You can’t live at 100% if you don’t follow these simple rules:

1) Innate Body—Sufficient Movement, Sufficient Nutrition and Spinal Balance and 100% function. Any imbalances, toxicities or deficiencies with the body must be corrected if the person’s goal is to get healthier.

My biggest challenge? Knowing that patients are coming in to see me for physical complaints, and they happen to be on anti-depressant or anxiety meds not knowing the truth: That in order to start to bring the mind/mental/emotional aspect into balance, you’re wasting your time and energy, effort, money, and compromising your health in a very serious manner— if you haven’t started with #1 described above. They’ve been fed lies about why they need meds.  Without a healthy functioning body, spine and nervous system, sufficiencies in movement and nutrition, and removing the toxicities— your mind will not function in a normal, healthy manner. PERIOD.

2)Innate Mind—Once the body has been sufficiently nurtured (through lifestyle and chiropractic care), most mental/emotional conditions tend to become lessened. You start feeling better emotionally. You handle stress more resiliently. But if there are still “incomplete stories” from the past or present—it makes sense to start working on them now that your body is moving towards balance. Getting help with your social or family network, classes, books, seminars, coaching, or guidance from a therapist or counselor who doesn’t promote your story of victimhood is the way to go. I happen to love this aspect of my job. I’m noticing that I have been looking more and more forward to the classes and workshops I teach at my office more than seeing new patients walk in off the street.

Why is this critical? Because nowhere in school do we learn how to properly deal with adversity. Nowhere in school do we learn how to have a healthy relationship with ourselves and our money, or proper expectations in a relationship. Nowhere in our school do we learn the importance of having a healthy level of self esteem and connection with a community. It’s mentioned, but never really taught. Where did YOU learn these things? Who are YOUR role models?

Wayne Dyer: One of the teachers I would recommend learning from on how to deal with adversity and "emotional subluxation".

WHAT IS AN “EMOTIONAL SUBLUXATION?”

One of my biggest Aha moments was that an emotional subluxation can exist. It is any thought or perception you may have that creates a state of ingratitude. Emotional subluxations are epidemic. I get them every day.  I’m actually going through a big one right now as we speak.  They need adjusting exactly the same way that spinal subluxations do.

An adjustment of an emotional subluxation is as simple as looking at your situation in a completely different way.
Yesterday a patient of mine came in for her regular adjustment. Mind and body she is 180 degrees from where she was 6 months ago… but she came to me with an emotional crisis. After her spinal adjustment (nurturing body)… I started adjusting her emotional subluxations (Mind).  It’s way easier than you think.

Gratitude Deficiency and your emotional well-being.

Over the past year, she has been battling a long term disability claim from some work incidents that created a state of “Post Traumatic Stress” in her life. She was off work, tumbled into worsening anxiety attacks and depression and it was impacting her life enjoyment and her marriage. She was looking for compensation, and naturally, the company she was working for was covering their ass by telling their own version of the story.
After reading their reports this past week, she was almost in a fit of rage inside, which we know creates all sorts of chemical changes that produce states of dis-ease in the mind and body. We had been working diligently with her over the past few months to the point that she was almost pain free, and her anxiety and depression had completely vanished. This last letter she received with those reports were almost enough to bring her back to that state after the main incident.

Emotional subluxations are not cleared by doing something magical or waving some wand or taking some pills.  They are cleared by asking a different set of questions.

The questions I asked her:
How has this incident at work helped you heal emotionally and physically? Were things just perfect with your life, health and marriage, and social network before it all happened? How has this helped your all of those things?

She responded with no—things were definitely not perfect before. Then she started telling me about how this incident made her see who her TRUE friends are, had got her introduced to chiropractic care (she met me at a community screening) which has her neck moving normally and pain free for the first time in ages, and by coming to my classes she has learned more about herself, her mind/body health and the way we respond to stress, how to cope with anxiety and depression, and in her marriage, she saw how her husband was sitting by her side until 2 in the morning to help type out the legal stuff despite being tired from work.

Because she is of Christian Faith, I asked her if she’s aware that God has truly given her everything she has ever wanted, but done it in “mysterious ways”—working the way He is infamous for?

Pause.

She never really thought of it that way.

I believe that gratitude is the ultimate healer, accessible to all of us if we ask the right questions. I was lucky enough to be taught the right questions to clear out an emotional subluxation (disconnection). It only took a matter of minutes for the subluxation to clear. How do you know it’s clear? Tears of gratitude were streaming down her face.

And mine.

And when the body is alignment innately, the lifestyle is in alignment innately, and you’re in a state of gratitude for things just as they are…. Your life starts moving in a flow which can be best described by watching an expert surfer stand effortlessly riding a wave.  That’s the starting point many never reach and they go looking for the perfect doctor to give it to them from the outside-in……When it’s been inside the whole time.

It’s true. My adjustments are changing. My vision is expanding. I’m riding one massive wave here. Where it will go—I really couldn’t give a flying hoot. I’m deeply connected and finding that time stands still when I help people see and feel their truth in their lives.

Thank you for reading and being a part of my journey.

Hey gang…. a couple of years ago, my buddy Tobin from phoTobin Photography came to my office and with the help of another buddy, one of Vancouver’s top hip hop instructors, performers, and choreographers– Richard O’Sullivan, we threw together a cute little commercial on “The Power of An Adjustment” that is on my website’s home page.  Little did I know that little day at the office would get such feedback.  I still get emails and calls from chiropractors around the world commending me for the fun portrayal of what we do.  Since I’m a bit of a ham, and I love to dance, we just took an idea, threw it together, and it seemed to work. I’m pretty surprised to see that it’s now climbed to over 47,000 hits! I now go to chiropractic seminars throughout the world and still get a kick out of people coming up to me and asking me if I’m the guy from the commercial.
Well… after being stumped on how to top this… we’ve come up with a new “adjustment” video we’re launching this week.  I’m pretty excited about it.  For those of you who haven’t seen our last one yet– please enjoy and share!

"Sorry Dr. Nima... I completely disagree with what you say"

I just received an email from an angry reader/viewer of my blog. I’ll address it at the end of this post.

As with any person who has a strong point of view and is on a mission to change a prevailing system–I have my fair share of critics.  In fact, I know I’ve done a really good job in my lectures and seminars, and blog only when I see people jumping up in support of what I teach– inspired and empowered, and some who stand up and disagree– sometimes quite passionately.  If everyone agreed with what I said, then I know that I’m not making enough of an impact.  Those lectures are quite boring for me.  But let me tell you– I’ve been a part of some really fun and let’s call them “spirited debates” as well.

I speak about controversial topics.  I talk about health, stress, diseases, it’s causes and it’s solutions.  Telling someone they are responsible for their health is a no-no in some circles who promote the idea that we are a victim to our genes and our lifestyle choices don’t matter.  I’ve never been accused of being politically correct.

I recently spoke to a group from the British Columbia Medical Association– a room filled with people responsible for turning Medical Offices in our province to high tech, paperless offices.  The topic was about Stress, and in the talk, I connected the dots between our stressful states of mind and the specific chemical changes that happen in our bodies in response to our “fight and flight” stress response.  Why?  Because it’s the most fascinating thing to me, and my audiences are simply BLOWN AWAY when they realize that their disorders that they might be taking medications for are actually examples of their body working properly– it’s the environment they put their body in that’s causing the problem.

I promised myself I would be good, political, on my best behavior, and resist the urge to be too vocal about the way the system is set up is actually doing more harm than good for chronic illnesses.

For the most part, I was quite diplomatic.  I praised the system and it’s dealing with crisis care and management.  But I couldn’t resist to take it further and tell them my truth– that chronic illness rates are on the rise, medication and surgery use is increasing at alarming rates, and we continue to get sicker, and the answer is NOT MORE DOCTORS AND NURSES AND HOSPITALS.  Throughout my entire talk, I could see this one woman (who turned out to be a nurse) sit quite uncomfortably, fidgeting, looking down, avoiding eye contact… She waited until I was done my talk and spoke up and said that my talk was quite polarizing, and that many doctors ARE teaching what I have been talking about and that she “doesn’t use chiropractors,” and that all in all, she wasn’t impressed with what I had to say.  Her face was beet red the whole time.  She was pretty stressed!   She had some supporters who agreed and didn’t like many aspects of my talk.

At the same time, I had a majority of the room say they were right behind what I was saying.

Mission accomplished.  Here are the facts:

Chronic Illness (Lifestyle related) are on the rise.

Despite the fact that as she said there are many doctors who are talking about lifestyle first, medication prescriptions for these illnesses have increased by 50 times since the 1950′s in the name of science.  Doctors are being marketed by Pharmaceutical Reps to prescribe these drugs in unethical fashion.  Not only that, but Doctors are now being approached by the patients themselves requesting drugs that they have been marketed directly to by the drug company.  There are people in suits and ties right now strategizing on how to get more drugs into more people.  I just want to shed light on these facts.  So even though there are a few who are doing it right– THERE’S NOT ENOUGH OF THEM DOING IT RIGHT.

Correct me if I’m wrong– even if we disagree on the appropriate course of action for a particular patient with a specific condition– you may say painkillers and I may want to correct the cause with chiropractic adjustments– we can not disagree on the fact that drugs and surgeries, especially in North America are HIGHLY over used, and many cases unnecessary, and are killing hundreds of thousands each and every year.

So, pardon me, but in order to change this unconscious insanity, DON’T WE NEED TO STIR THE POT A LITTLE?  Shake things up, ruffle a few feathers and wake people up?  If I offended you– then GOOD.  At least someone is speaking up and saying we can’t keep going on this way.  If I don’t do it– then who will?  My intention is to create a healthier society.  Doesn’t positive change always start out with someone challenging a current system that is crumbling at it’s foundation?

One person in the audience got up and asked why there aren’t more doctors saying what I’m saying.  The answer is this:  Any Medical Doctor in the history of medicine who has stood up to challenge the current prevailing system has been burned at the stake.  It means being ridiculed by your peers.  They won’t let them “join in any reindeer games”.   Who wants that?  Unless the doctor is on a healing mission, most of them just bow down their heads and carry on, and collect their paychecks.  I can’t blame them, that’s why I’m not criticizing doctors per se.  Most of them do great work that can save lives.  I’m talking about the system of fighting disease rather than understanding why it’s there in the first place and correcting the cause.

Some of these doctors have quit medicine and gone and written books about what they have observed to be the sources of TRUE healing.  Can you guess what conclusions they came up with?  You guessed it:  Proper exercise, proper diet, and becoming free of disempowering emotional states of mind.  (And a clear nervous system.)  These doctors are my teachers and it’s their work I use as my inspiration.

Back to the email I got:

“Dr. Nima, I agree with most of what you say, but why is it that at the end of your stressbusters videos you say that I should ‘be careful for what I wish for because when I get it, it will present a whole new series of challenges in my life that will also suck’?.  That’s negative thinking, and if you think negatively, you will have negativity in your life… I disagree completely and think it’s rude.”

The intention is not to be negative.  It’s to be realistic.  Most of us live in this fantasy world that “if only I could____” or “I’ll be happy when_____” only to reach their goal and discover that it’s got it’s drawbacks too.  I’ve hit my head against a wall over and over again with that one.  We seek pleasure and avoid pain, and we assume that somewhere else is where this illusive “happiness” is going to be.  The unattainable promised land.  I’m here to break your illusion.  Wake up from your fantasy, people.  Life won’t be any better than it is in the Now.  Making more money means more responsibility.  A bigger home means more expenses.  A fancier car means more probability of break-ins and expensive repairs (I lived that one many times).  The promotion means higher expectations and pressures on you.  Does that mean we shouldn’t desire or set lofty goals or go after these things?  No.  It means that no matter what, you will have benefits and drawbacks.  Wisdom is recognizing this duality and not getting so emotional about it– high or low.  And be grateful for what you have now.  That will increase your probability of getting more anyway– as a bi-product of gratitude.  This would be cool for a disclaimer for a new drug called “Gratitude:”  Side effects include the attainment of more things to be grateful for.

That’s why I’m so grateful for my critics.  And as my supporters increase in numbers– so do my critics.

Thank you!

photo by www.photobinphotograpy.com

It’s not Rocket Science. If you are under a great deal of stress (which most people are), then being under the care of a chiropractor has been shown to remove tension from your nervous system.

Nobel Prize recipient Dr. Roger Sperry says that the spine is the motor that drives the brain. According to his research “90% of the stimulation and nutrition to the brain is generated by the movement of the spine.” Only 10% of our brain’s energy into thinking, metabolism, immunity, and healing. Sperry demonstrated that 90% of brain energy goes into processing and maintaining the body’s relationship with gravity.

Why this relates to you.

It means that every day your body not only has to cope with the stresses of your hectic day and family and work issues, but it now has to deal with the arduous task of having to adapt to the postural habits of sitting improperly and being out of alignment.  This makes your body have to adapt to EVEN MORE stress.  It makes you miserable. It gives you headaches, back pain, stomach issues, problems with balancing hormones, anxiety, depression, and anything else that is a dis-ease.

So here’s the strategy with my patients and students in my workshops:

1) Teach ‘em what stress does to the body

2) Keep their nervous system functioning at maximal levels to cope with physical and emotional  and chemical stress through chiropractic care.

3) Give them lifestyle tools on proper exercise and how to gain control of their eating habits and food addictions

4) Teach them how to change their thoughts and perceptions about their life stories and situations so they can let go of their past, and overcome fears about the future and have lives filled with purpose, gratitude and unconditional love.

It’s a strategy that’s changing lives.  It gets people connected to their purpose.  It’s making our community healthier.  It’s taking people’s reliance off of medication.

Stay tuned for episode 3!  As always, we welcome feedback, suggestions, as well as re-tweets and facebook recommendations.  Feel free to drop a comment about your experience as well.

A "Post-Adjustment" smile was the typical gift we would receive after sharing our gift

After returning from our ChiroMission trip in the Dominican Republic, I felt compelled to share our photos and videos to help raise awareness for the need for all of us to get out of our environments from time to time and look at the big picture in our lives.

We all go through our ups and downs.  We have anxieties, depressions, joy, pain, and it seems that we are in an endless pursuit of happiness.  This desire sometimes can keep us from being present and grateful.

I have a confession to make.  I had the busiest summer of my life.  I was working so hard at the office, doing so many talks, that it left little time for me to do other things I enjoy– researching, writing and traveling.  I was getting bogged down by the daily grind of running an office, managing patients, and staff, and there were some moments when I felt that I lost my connection to my purpose and mission.

So, selfishly, I decided to volunteer my time and my wife’s time to helping others.  The confession is, I did it all for my own benefit.  I did it so I could uproot myself from my current daily activities as a Chiropractor in Maple Ridge, and go somewhere that was extremely different than where I live, and experience life in an entirely different way, and get some perspective, and become an observer, and pay attention and be present.

It worked.

We went to remote villages, schools, and even villages with Hatian refugees that were displaced there after the earthquake.  We were working in areas of poverty that most only see on television.  And as we “touched” the lives of these people– we realized that they were touching our lives even more.

I’ve now returned with a rejuvenated sense of purpose for the work I do each day in order to educate, to inspire, and to grow and develop in myself to assist in the transformation of the lives of others.

Here’s the video that Maria put together along with some of the fantastic photos she has taken which many of you have already seen on Facebook.  I wanted to thank her publicly and acknowledge what a huge part she had to play in the entire experience.  Without her there snapping photos and taking videos, I wouldn’t be able to share my experience with the world.  Thanks for all your comments and support.  More videos will be up shortly regarding a little orphanage we saw and were so inspired by– so please share this blog with others who would be interested, leave comments, and if you want to receive more blogs and info on health, diet, and stress management, enter your email on the side, and don’t for get to click on the “Like” and “Follow” buttons on the right hand panel.

I sit here in the Emergency room waiting for a doctor for my wife.  It appears that she’s having a severe bout of appendicitis or an ovarian cyst rupture.  Persistent, worsening pain in her right, lower quadrant, pain that comes in waves.  Touching her abdomen sends her through the roof.  She’s cursing at me like a sailor.

How ironic is this?  Me, one who is extremely critical of the medical system is knee deep in it—and turning to it for help.

Medicine’s genius is in FIRST Aid.  Emergency care to prevent impending doom is where the magic of the profession is.

People come from all walks of life in to see me, and a lot of them are in acute care… sometimes even emergency situations… A great majority of them, we as chiropractors help them along, make them feel better, teach them to live in better ways, and sometimes miraculously after an adjustment, or a series of adjustments, they feel like a new person.

But in this case, I feel powerless. My wife, now resting, was screaming, writhing in pain, so I have no choice but to turn to the First Aid experts to do what their major strength is—help prevent impending doom.  And I humbly step aside for them to work their magic.  This is likely going to be a surgical case.  Ironic that I make my living provide the means for my patients to avoid drugs surgery at all costs.

As I sit here in the Emergency unit, I’m surrounded by people who are at their worst.  As my wife is now high on morphine, she’s fast asleep, and I’m constantly interrupted by beeps and coughs and sounds of vomiting and moaning patients.  The staff here appear to be miserable.  I don’t blame them.  The long hours, the suffering they are surrounded with.  Our environment does have a great deal to do with our pain.

From my research, I know statistically that 75-90% of all problems that people are in here for are lifestyle related.  These are conditions related to how we eat, how we move, and how we think.  The major killers?  Diabetes, Heart Disease, Cancer, and Adverse Reactions to Medications.

I can’t help but think of how that means that about 8 out of every 10 people who are in here could have prevented their need for being here. What’s worse is that the majority of people who are around me are already on copious amounts of medication—I overhear them listing all the medications they are on.

Our doctor’s offices are jam packed every day because people aren’t taught the why’s and how’s of what keeps them healthy and what makes them sick.   That’s because the system isn’t equipped for that.  While there are many places to go to get a diagnosis and a treatment, there aren’t too many places that will teach you why you got there in the first place and what role YOU have to play in getting yourself out.  That is too time consuming, and it’s not very profitable for the drug industry.

Doing research, attending health conferences, changing my own lifestyle habits… I was made aware that the only way our healthcare system can survive is to have LESS SICK PEOPLE.

This, fortunately, is not in the hands of the sickness care “health care” system.  It is entirely in your hands.  It is in the choices that we make every single day in how we eat, move, and think that will determine if you will be dependent on the system (drugs and surgery) or you will leave the system to what it is really there for:  First Aid.

My focus has now changed from “treating symptoms” to “teaching and helping the individual create health.” Using the logic of turning on light to remove darkness instead of focusing on the dark, I teach classes now in my office about lifestyle—how to eat, how to move, and how to even think– because people still live under the illusion that their genes control their health.  Even though it’s now been proven in science that your genes are not your destiny (as was the “Central Dogma” of Medicine).  It’s now undisputable in the literature.   Your environment, (how you eat, move, and think), not your genes, determine how your body expresses health or disease.

Let me give you an example:  When you are under any stressor, from family, to work, to even dietary stressors like too much processed foods; your body goes through a “fight or flight” response, liberating a great deal of energy triggered by the lower brain into an emergency protective mode.  Like a tiger chasing a gazelle, the only thing on the mind is survival for both lion and gazelle for that temporary time—just until the chase is over, and the gazelle returns to safety.

The gazelle, 20 minutes later, returns to grazing, and the tiger returns and rests shortly after, but we humans are so intelligent that we have the ability to re-live that lion attack

over and over again, day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade.

Now, we don’t have to worry too often about being chased down by a tiger here these days—unless you’re on a safari… But we are programmed to react exactly the same for our own version of tiger attacks—Family stress, work stress, lack of feeling of control of our environment, insecurity, divorce, financial pressures, low self esteem, resentment, anger, victimhood.

We re-live these emotions and repetitively wire our nervous systems with this damaging biochemistry, year after year, and our health falls apart—and we run to the doctor for an answer.  We line up in hospitals and in doctor’s offices.  And we end up spending more and more money, year after year. We’re reaching a breaking point, and simply can not sustain what we’ve created.   We call them chronic “medical conditions”, it’s but I can show you beyond the shadow of a doubt that 75-90% are simply the body making a

normal response to our lifestyle and thoughts.   And the system is designed in such a way that the only solution is in the form of a test, a pill or a knife, which has been proven to do a little to deal with the symptoms, and NOTHING to deal with the cause.

So what’s the solution to our long hospital waits (it’s now been 6 hours already and we haven’t seen a doctor—let’s hope her Appendix doesn’t rupture in the meantime–if it’s appendicitis)?  Simple:  LESS SICK PEOPLE.  And that, my friends, is not in the hands of a doctor.  It’s in your hands.  Everyone knows they should drink less alcohol, stop smoking, exercise more, eat more veggies, control our stress, etc.  But the problem with our system is that it doesn’t teach us the why or the how.

When you realize that you simply can’t express your health potential without exercise, and you are taught how to slowly incorporate it in your sedentary life, change becomes easy.

When you realize the processed foods we are eating are toxic, and how our cells respond to the deficiency of proper nutrients in our fast-food diets, and then we are shown how to overcome our food cravings, change becomes easy and the pounds start to fall off.

When you realize that just as your thoughts have the capacity to make you sick, your thoughts also have the capacity to help make you well—once you’re shown how to get out of survival mode and into creating the life you want, change becomes easy.

Sitting and talking endlessly about our problems re-creates the emotions, biochemistry, and physical illness patterns.  When we are taught how to overcome our fears, guilts, anxieties, and depressive patterns of thinking with some simple tools, we can heal the mind (and then the body) from all sorts of dis-eases.   Instead of blaming our current misery on what happened weeks to decades ago, we can learn to be grateful for what we have NOW.  And our biochemistry begins to change.

Far less costly on the system and far more effective than anything the system could offer, If these lifestyle changes could be bottled and sold in pill form, it would be the next blockbuster drug.   These changes have been shown to cure diabetes, reverse heart disease, and heal cancer.

But they’re not available in pill form.  They’re choices that require empowering yourself rather than being a victim to your environment or heredity.  A difficult choice for most of us, but without taking action personally on this STARTING TODAY, our collective physical, mental, and financial health has ZERO chance of survival.  It’s that serious.

It’s the reason why I’m dedicating my life to teaching how to create wellness and avoid the use of drugs or surgery, rather than treat disease.   The biggest challenge my patients face is not how to change–  It’s making the time to do it.  The hopeless cases are all the ones who “never seem to have the time”.  Even though they have all the resources I may offer at their disposal, from wellness chiropractic spinal care, to exercises, to attending classes on posture and stress:  “I’m just too busy.”  And then eventually their body seems to force them to make the time.  And I watch them deteriorate year after year.  So it fuels my passion to teach.  “Doctor” in Latin doesn’t mean “pill pusher.” It means “Teacher”.

Side note:  It’s now 2 in the morning, and the doctor has just come in and narrowed it down to 3 possibilities:  Kidney stone, or Appendicitis, or Ovarian Cyst Rupture.  Since CT scans have high levels of radiation, we’ve elected to do an Ultrasound in the morning.  Took us 8 hours to get to this conclusion—and now we have to wait another 7 hours for another test to determine the next course of action.  I’m staying with her in the hospital and I write this amidst the moans and screams of other suffering people.  My heart goes out to them because I know many of their problems are preventable if they only took the time to learn how. Here’s a list of how most of them could have avoided being here in the first place:

1)   If you want to be more alive than dead, eat foods that are more alive than dead.  Find resources to teach you strategies how to overcome your food addictions.

2)   When you wake up in the morning, don’t get out of bed without first thinking about all the things that you are grateful for, and what you would love to create in your day.  If you don’t take time to do this, your day will be filled with things you will be ungrateful for.  Guaranteed.  Re-program healthy brain/body biochemistry by THINKING WELL—Think better than how you feel.  Learn strategies to deal with the inevitable adversities of relationships and of life.  Everything begins with a thought.

3)   Keep your spine moving with exercise.  50% of all body movement nerve pathways are in the spinal joints and if it doesn’t move sufficiently, or it gets stuck, you could be in a great deal of trouble.  See your chiropractor regularly to keep it moving properly.

4)   Balance your movement and rest.  If you don’t get enough movement and exercise in your day, or you don’t get enough sleep—your cells become resistant to insulin—which has been shown to be the underlying root cause of all chronic degenerative illness—diabetes, cancer, heart disease, aging, osteoporosis, even mental disorders like Alzheimer’s and depression.

The hospital is a horrible place to be, but thank God it’s there in emergency cases like the one Maria finds herself in right now.  Doctors and nurses can be heroes.  But when we turn to doctors and nurses to treat diseases caused by poor lifestyle choices—we are playing with fire, and it’s a game we can’t win.  I’ve dedicated my life to teaching strategies on how to dramatically reduce our need to ever play.

P.S.  Turned out to be a ruptured ovarian cyst, and Maria is home recovering beautifully.  We elected for no surgery, and it turned out to be the right decision.  Many thanks to the doctors and nurses and Paramedics at Burnaby Hospital, and to our friends and family for their support.