If you ask 100 people to define health, you’d likely come up with 150 different answers. How could something that ranks in the top three New Year’s resolutions and personal development goals be so hard to define? With a destination as elusive as “health,” how do you start your journey?
Many people believe they are healthy. But how do you know for sure? First, we need to define health.
What is Health?
Simply put, health is function. Is your body functioning properly? We’re not just talking range of motion, digestion, or any single system. Your body operates like a Swiss watch. If one gear is out of sync, no matter how small, function is off.
The root cause of all disease is inflammation. Inflammation tends to get a bad rap, but in reality, it’s the immune system’s response and signal that something is off. It’s not generally the problem; it’s the sign that there is a problem. The challenge is when we don’t support the body in that response to help aid in restoring health. How do you do that? The bigger question is, what triggered the body in the first place?
The Root of Dis-ease
If the body is functioning properly, it’s likely you are at a state of ease. Life is good, you have all the energy you desire, sleep well, eat well, and are thriving in all areas. If inflammation is sending signals, the path to dis-ease is being paved. The root of all dis-ease, either acute or chronic, is inflammation. If this inflammation isn’t discovered and corrected, symptoms may pop up right away or remain under the radar until they become apparent in ways that seem unrelated to the original injury.
Sometimes people feel fine, but those symptoms are burning embers laying low, yet sending smaller, possibly less detectable traces of inflammation. Those signals may be undetectable because they’ve become such a regular part of your day and life that you don’t even notice them anymore or discredit their more meaningful impact. Those cases can be more difficult to pinpoint and correct, but there’s hope and answers if you are willing to dig and find them.
Past Traumas and the 3-T’s
Thoughts, toxins, and traumas can all cause inflammation, and disrupt the body’s function. Whether encountered last week, yesterday, or ten years ago, the impact on your body can be significant and have either acute or chronic consequences. Sometimes we just chalk them up to “how things are” and continue to ignore the consequences on health. These impacts must be addressed so that that inflammation can be eliminated.
- Thoughts- what is your internal voice telling you? Are you taking your thoughts captive and making them work for you or against you? How are you handling the daily challenges that come your way? Mental stress can also contribute to inflammation. Once this significant part of health is under control, many others are more easily remedied.
- Traumas- were you in a car accident? Take a tumble on the ski hill? Bump your head getting out of the car? Sleep funny and have a twitch in your back? We encounter physical traumas probably more frequently than most people think about. This is one of the reasons even the healthiest kids should be adjusted by a chiropractor frequently.
- Toxins- we all know the chemical toxins we encounter daily from air fresheners and scented candles to non-organic foods, household cleaners, body care products, air pollution, water pollution, even good, healthy foods can be a toxin if your body isn’t functioning properly!
Revealing the Pitfalls
The only true way to get a reading on where your health stands is to run some tests. Symptoms alone cannot reveal all that is going on inside the body; especially if the symptoms go unnoticed! Powerful, proven laboratory tests can fill in the blanks left by missing pieces.
One of the most common ones we run is a food allergy test. Many doctors test for IgE immune responses, which is an important, yet smaller part of the immune response (only 1%!) that can trigger anaphylactic responses. The Wellness Way also tests the other responses that make up the immune system and can trigger those reactions that may not be thought of as links to a food allergy of the specific food they are connected to. They are occasionally referred to as “food sensitivities.” This misnomer can allow these allergies to be reduced to mere nuisances and allow chronic inflammation to continue. These IgG responses can cause significant damage if not addressed and are allowed to continue.
Food intolerances relate to the body’s inability to properly digest food, likely due to enzyme deficiencies. Food sensitivities aren’t allergies and won’t be represented on an allergy test. These food sensitivities can cause discomfort and irritation and should be addressed so that proper function can be restored.
Sometimes other tests are needed to get a clearer picture. For some it could be a hormone test, a stool test, a neurotransmitter test or a full immune panel. You may be feeling but are you healthy? The only way to truly know is to test and take a good, deep look at how your body is truly functioning.
Plotting the Journey
Once you know what the pieces are, you can work with a doctor who knows how to use all of them together to put together a map for your journey to health and wellness. This part sound like it should be pretty easy and intuitive. However, with today’s mainstream medical approach and so many specialties, the Swiss watch approach is the only one that can bring all of the pieces together for restoration and proper function.
At The Wellness Way, we take the time to hear our patients, get to know their story and their challenges. Then we properly test. Not just to a generalized guideline, but to each specific patient with their unique body. Our cutting-edge testing protocol fills in the gaps left by many mainstream “standards of care” tests that come back as “normal” even when a patient continues to feel symptoms and dis-ease.
We don’t settle for “normal” and tell our patients they are fine until we discover the root cause and help them correct it. Once we discover the challenges and build a map and journey to wellness, we guide you. We are there to answer questions and help course correct as needed.
Stay the Course and Complete the Journey
What supplement do you recommend for my condition? Do I need supplements? If so, how long will I have to take them? These are questions our practitioners hear frequently. Once again, the one-size-fits-all (or none) approach would lead you to believe you take one prescription and you’ll have instant results.
The reality is that each person’s journey is unique. A better question would be “what does the path to restoring health look like?” That’s why our clinicians act as a guide along the journey. Sometimes adjustments need to be made. As the body heals, it may reveal deeper issues, or it may quickly go through several processes more rapidly than anticipated. You didn’t get here overnight, and you won’t completely restore health overnight either.
Your path may look differently than someone else’s, even for a similar condition. What works for one person may not work for another. Your Wellness Way practitioner will know your path after reviewing your labs and creating your roadmap to health uniquely designed for your health.
Comparison and guessing don’t get the results we hope for. Testing and looking at the body as a whole, vital, functioning, combination of intricate systems can lead to true health. Does that sound unique and revolutionary? It shouldn’t, but after all, we do health differently.
