Y’all heard this…it’s even become a cliche-
“Prevention is better than cure.”
But is it, really?
Today, we’re going to talk about why prevention is not your best option. That may be something that you think is surprising to hear, but the truth is prevention is at a lower level than really what we can even be at. We actually want to be optimizing our health and wellbeing. And by optimizing, we’re not trying to avoid something, we’re trying to live at the highest state of wellness and of wellbeing and highest expression of life and ourselves. It’s bypassing something that is looking at it from a condition standpoint, and really we’re looking at creating wellbeing.
Optimizing our health…Bypassing potential conditions through addressing 6 aspects of overall health-
- Central and Autonomic Nervous System
- Cell Health
- Elimination and Absorption
- Emotional
- Spiritual
- Nutrition and Physical Activity
There is actually a lot that people can do to try to optimize their health.
And if we’re optimizing, we’re looking at this health spectrum and life spectrum. And on one side of that is optimal wellness and wellbeing. The other side of the spectrum is death. And we want to be trending in the right direction. Everything that we build into the health pyramid is intended to try to help you trend in that wellness direction. The fact is all components of our health pyramid are going to help us not only prevent problems but optimize our health and wellbeing. So just if we look through some of those pieces and parts, things that we can pick out, one of those things that are often overlooked.
People will say, they get routine testing, mammograms, blood work, blood pressure check, do the general blood work that maybe you do from a primary care doctor like people regularly do those things and think that that is somehow preventing. Or, people say they were healthy until they developed an ailment… so what’s the difference?
Your general physical blood work can either be just the usual blood work or can help identify what medication you need, what it’s doing, or if it actually does what it’s supposed to do follows these general guidelines that the lab has labeled to these numbers to these tests, and, if you fall in this large scale of the average range, somewhere in there, you’re normal until you’re not. Once you reach either too high or too low, there’s typically some kind of medication involved to get you back in the range.
Now that range is not person-specific and optimal where when we do functional medicine, our ranges are much more specific to where your body should be if it’s functioning well as it should be, not just if you’re already sick and we can diagnose you with something. Our ranges are different than what your lab would give or your primary care doctor might go over with your general physician.
What we want is to be in the OPTIMAL range. What does that mean?…..
Oftentimes, we find that our blood work is FINE, now fine may not necessarily mean WELL. Remember, there are so many things that surprisingly are not tested regularly because it’s not covered by insurance. Your Yearly Physical has 4 or 5 tests that are typically covered by insurance two times a year, and that’s generally what’s run- cholesterol, blood count, liver enzymes, etc. that your doctor would want to look at, especially if you’re on medication for that.
But there’s no more extensive looking at Vitamin D levels or inflammation levels, or even in people that have symptoms. So our blood work has a lot of things run and it’s a highly extensive panel and we don’t use insurance, therefore, you can’t come back and tell us,” you can’t run this test because we don’t find it medically necessary.” The insurance company gets to tell us that it was not medically necessary. And then the patient gets a bill for that lab if we had used insurance.
They don’t know what’s medically necessary necessarily or not. It’s not their patient. They don’t know what they need to run. They don’t know what supplements we’re trying to see. If they’re working or not. So, we like the way that we’re able to just do one extensive lab panel, not have to deal with insurance companies that have our optimal ranges.
It’s a way deeper dig into what your health is doing. Not only that but there’s also specialized testing too. So things like food sensitivity testing can help with the prevention of irritation, right? Because if somebody does have foods that they’re sensitive to, that can be an issue we can test for heavy metals in the person’s blood, hormone levels, salivary hormone levels, which is more sensitive than, blood levels for hormones We can do that over a 30 day period. Sometimes we can do it over a 24 hour period. Again, those are much more detailed. A lot of times, the level of depth of testing is important too. But just as a thing by itself, doesn’t give us any benefit other than to know what problems we should be working on.
For example, in Chiropractic- our spine is our foundation. Our spine protects our nervous system. So when we have bad alignment in the spine, it’s disrupting signaling from the brain to the body or from the body to the brain. That message gets distorted. It decreases our overall wellness, and when talking about optimizing, that doesn’t even have to do with pain. It just has to do with the signaling being disrupted because of dysfunction in the spine. There are things that a person can do with that. Doing the spinal hygiene exercises that we give our patients based on what their x-rays look like utilizing the technology.
We brought in things like frequency, specific microcurrent, pulsed electromagnetic field, vibration with oxygen, infrared sauna, infrared light, red light therapy. All those things have actually been shown to stimulate mitochondrial function, increase circulation, improve energy production, which by the way, if we’re doing that, then we’re not just preventing problems, but we’re optimizing our overall health and wellbeing.
We also got into nutrition, vitamins, and supplements. Again, from the detailed testing, we can give detailed recommendations. And then lastly, we’re trying to take all things to an advanced level. We also look at, physical activity. So, Dr.Brown, his programs are looking at the individual, looking at resting metabolic rate through our cardio coach testing, looking at VO two max and exactly, being able to be specific about the type and the ways that people eat and their exercise. Again, those are all just advanced ways to level up our health, and really that’s what we’re going for.
Especially since we’re now wrapping up two years of being in a technical pandemic. So if you haven’t already thought maybe I should become the healthiest version of myself, I possibly can, might be a good time to do that because that’s, apparently it’s not going anywhere. Not any time soon, but we do know that your best defense is being at your HEALTHIEST!
If you’re looking for a more natural way to manage your health, please contact us HERE for a discovery call to see if our approach would be appropriate for your situation.
DISCLAIMER: The information in this email is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content is for general informational purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor/health professional
