What Is Health and How Can You Improve Yours?
Learn what the Health section of Affolter Academy is all about.
The health section is based on my experience as a chiropractor. My father was also a chiropractor. Traditional Doctors of Chiropractic think differently than medical doctors and alternative medicine. I say traditional because some chiropractors now practice with an objective to treat musculoskeletal conditions with manipulation. Some use nutritional supplements and medicines to improve patients’ conditions. Now you understand my possible cognitive bias. I’ll give you my basic understanding.
I memorized a definition of health from Dorland’s Medical Dictionary. Health is optimal physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Look at that definition closely. Health is not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. You are not healthy just because you feel good. I’ll give you a few examples.
You have a headache. You take a pain reliever. You feel better. The cause of your headache was not lack of pain reliever. If your headache was a signal of a loss of health, you are still sick even though you feel better.
People who seem to be healthy have heart attacks and drop dead every day. Sometimes they are even athletes. Most don’t suddenly go from healthy to dead. Something was wrong. Yet, they appeared to have an absence of disease or infirmity. Why?
Most of the people who died during the Covid pandemic had other conditions. Many were old. Many were obese. Some appeared to be healthy. Why did the people who appeared to be healthy die?
D. D. Palmer discovered and named chiropractic. He adjusted (aligned) a bone in the spine of the janitor of his building and the janitor’s hearing improved. He thought he had discovered a cure for deafness. Then he had a case of heart trouble improve after adjusting the spine. How could cases as dissimilar as deafness and heart trouble get better after adjusting the spine?
He reasoned that there is a universal intelligence in all matter keeping it in existence. He further reasoned that all life is maintained by an Innate Intelligence, a portion of universal. Some animals have nervous systems. The nervous systems are used by Innate Intelligence to control and coordinate the functions of the body. In animals with vertebrae, the bones house and protect the nervous system. The bones can become misaligned. The misalignment interferes with the nervous system. Chiropractors call the misalignment that affects the nervous system a subluxation. Due to the subluxation, the nervous system does not respond to Innate properly. The result is a loss control and ultimately to disease.
D. D. also postulated that we have an educated intelligence. The internal workings of the body are controlled by innate intelligence and educated intelligence is used to learn to adapt to our environment after we are born. Breathing, heart rate, and digestion are examples of functions under innate intelligence. Making clothes, building houses, and learning occupations are examples of functions under educated intelligence.
From a chiropractic perspective, a key requirement for health is a properly aligned and functioning spine. The nervous system must be functioning appropriately to respond to innate intelligence.
Now return to the definition of health. The word optimal is important. Optimal implies intelligence, the ability to adapt to new and trying situations. For example, optimal heart rate while you are lying down and taking a nap is much lower than if you are running. How fast is fast enough? Who or what decides?
Is it merely programming? Do the sensors in your blood vessels detect the level of oxygen, relay that to your brain, and your brain changes heart rate based on the signal? That, or something like that, is the medical model. There is no innate intelligence, no YOU, to take control of your brain. Your concept of yourself as having control is an illusion manufactured by your brain.
Okay. Maybe that is true.
The alternative explanation, the chiropractic explanation, is that innate intelligence chooses what is optimal based on input from the nervous system. Function is not merely programming.
Consider a subject under hypnosis. The subject is told that they will be touched by a lit cigarette. The subject is touched by a pencil. Pressure from the pencil would usually leave a red mark that would last a brief period of time. The subject develops a blister as if touched by a cigarette. Why?
We are all aware of the placebo concept. Patients can be given something and told it is a medicine. Many will get well. In fact, so many get well that medicines must be compared to a placebo to prove the effectiveness of the medicine.
Many people are not aware of the nocebo effect. Just as we can get will from placebos, we can become sick from noceboes. Why? How can our beliefs help us become well or sick?
Notice that the definition of health includes mental and social well-being. We need optimal thinking and social interactions to be healthy. Can that be explained by our programming? Is intelligence involved?
Those are some of the questions and ideas we look at under the Health section. I find it fascinating.
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