What do I mean by wellness care?

It's different than the kind of medical care my parents chose to use. When I was a young child, my parents may not have known there were choices for medical care for themselves and for their children. When we were sick, we were taken to the medical doctor.

Obviously it's important to address illnesses in the best way possible for the situation at hand, but without the knowledge of alternative medical options, the choice was always to take a trip to the medical doctor. Usually a medication was prescribed and sometimes the symptoms disappeared and sometimes they didn't. Was the real problem causing these symptoms really addressed or were the symptoms merely treated without targeting the cause of these symptoms?

Wellness care seeks to turn on the natural healing ability, not by adding something to the system, but by removing anything that might interfere with normal function, trusting that the body would know what to do if nothing were interfering with it. Standard medical care, on the other hand, seeks to treat a symptom by adding something from the outside - a medication, a surgery, a procedure.

Let me use a common problem for many to further explain the difference between standard medical care and wellness care. High blood pressure is a common ailment for many and is usually treated by the medical community with medication. This may serve to lower the blood pressure but is ignoring the problem that caused the blood pressure to become elevated in the first place and runs the risk of the medication causing side effects, which could complicate the patient's recovery process. The cause could be any number of things from a nutritional issue, stress, or a misalignment of the spine not allowing the nervous system to work properly.

By seeking wellness care, the issue causing the high blood pressure would be investigated instead of merely treating the symptoms. Standard medical care will be much more effective by incorporating wellness care by a chiropractor to insure that the body is given all opportunities possible to heal itself.

Our spines are made up of 24 bones that protect the spinal cord. The spinal cord and nerves carry messages to and from the brain and to every cell, organ and tissue in the body. Through the stress of daily life and activities, one or more of the spinal bones can shift out of position and place pressure on the delicate nerves that enter and exit the spine between those bones.

When this shift happens, the ability of those nerves to carry messages to their destination can be greatly reduced thus hampering the function of different parts of the body.

Chiropractors refer to this shift of a bone in the spinal column as a subluxation. When a subluxation is present, the nerves are then not able to carry the important information to the area of the body that needs this information. We may have pain when this subluxation is present but in most cases, pain is not present when we are subluxated.

Damage may be occurring without our knowledge...without symptoms occurring. This means then that the body is not working at its best when we have a subluxation and our health suffers.

A chiropractic physician practices wellness care! We look for the underlying cause for the disturbance and make whatever adjustments are necessary for the body to heal itself as it was intended to do. When the body is working properly, it tends to heal effectively, no matter what the conditions!

That is why the first step to living a healthy and vibrant life is to have your spine checked by a chiropractor thus insuring proper alignment of the spine and optimal health of the body. No matter what your age or your condition, the foundation of your health lies in having a healthy spine.

If you would like to learn more about wellness care or chiropractic, you can reach us at (208) 762-1414 You can also find us at www.CDAHealth.com or Twitter and Facebook by searching "Spoelstra Family Chiropractic."