Life Will Find a Way

Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies. For a lot of reasons but it was the first R rated movie I ever saw. My grandfather took me to see it in the theaters. I was 5! So, to say it impacted me is a grand understatement. But that one line, “life will find a way” has been a defining principle in my life. If you recall, the scientists were describing how they were able to bring dinosaurs back to life. They use the DNA and they breed all of the dinosaurs as female so they cannot reproduce in the wild. Then Jeff Goldblum expresses his concerns about “playing God” and he closes his argument that “life will find a way.” Truer words have never been spoken. Without spoiling the movie too much, life did find a way, and 6 movies later there’s dinosaurs running wild all over the world!

I am often in awe of nature. God truly made a miraculous world. It seems like every day we discover some amazing aspect of the natural world that we previously thought impossible. We used to think that germs like viruses and bacteria were all bad and deadly but we now know that they are essential to life on earth. And recently we found that plants communicate with animals via their genes. Plants can sense when the environment is changing, they alter their genes, the animals eat the plants and gather the information from the genes, and next thing you know, a million wildebeest are migrating across the plains of Africa because some grass told them to! But the most impressive part of nature is its ability to adapt.
Earth has gone through a lot since the beginning. It’s been hot, it’s been cold, there’s been floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, dinosaurs, humans. The Earth has seen it all. Yet it’s still here, because through it all, nature has adapted. It doesn’t matter what is thrown at it, nature adapts to survive. In our arrogance we humans think we are destroying the planet. It’s not true. We are definitely CHANGING it but we cannot destroy it. Life will find a way! Think of all the ancient civilizations. The people that lived thousands of years ago. They made a huge impact on the plant. They cut down forests, slaughtered animals, and built massive structures. Yet today there is barely a trace of them. Some are buried under layers of earth, some are under the sea, some are encased in cooled volcanic lava, and some are hidden deep if forests. Nature persisted long after the humans because it adapted.

2020 showed us Nature’s ability to adapt and survive in real time. Since we were forced to shut down our world, it shut down travel, shipping, and reduced pollution almost overnight. In just a few short months, without humans making matters worse, nature sprung into action. Rivers and lakes started clearing up, animals migrated across the planet freely, forests and animals started coming back from near extinction. Without humans to interfere the Earth was able to get back on track. Life found a way.

Its nice to know that the Earth will be just fine without us but what does that have to do with health? It has everything to do with health! That same incredible ability to adapt lives inside each and every one of us! And just like the Earth, if humans would just get out of the way our bodies would heal and thrive exactly how God intended them to. We live exactly the opposite of how we were created. We were meant to be upright, moving around, eating God made food, and breathing fresh air. Instead, we fill our bodies with man-made garbage and chemicals, sit all day, staring at screens under artificial light. BUT your body is so incredible that it adapts to all the harm you do to it. Life finds a way! So next time you feed yourself that toxic chick fil a sandwich and a coke laden with sugar and chemical colorings, while sitting on your iPhone, thank your body for adapting and keeping you alive for another day! See you in the bay!

In Health and Faith,

Dr. Marc

Survival of the Fittest

Humans by nature are survival experts. I’m not talking about the Survivor Man or Bear Grylls type of surviving. I’m talking about getting through the day type of survival! We are hardwired for self-preservation. Our minds are always on guard trying to protect us from harm trying with all their might to get us from this moment to the next with all limbs intact! That was very helpful when our biggest threats were bears attacking us or running out of food before winter was over. But times have changed. We no longer need to fear bears (at least not daily!) or lack of food. But our minds have not changed. We are still hardwired for survival.

The simplest example of self-preservation is our fight or flight response. When our minds perceive a threat, we go into either fight or flight mode. Our bodies quickly adapt to the threat. All nonessential processes are turned off. Things like, digestion or sex hormones are not very helpful when a bear is chasing you. Your immune system, while extremely helpful most of the time, does no good when your house is burning down. So your brain shuts off all non-essential activities! Ever heard of someone pooping their pants from fear?? It’s real! And it’s because your body is getting rid of all excess baggage so it can flee faster.

At the same time your body ramps up all of the lifesaving processes! Your heart rate and breathing shoot up sending loads of blood and oxygen to your muscles to run or fight. Your brain becomes hyper focused on the problem at hand. You don’t want to be worrying about what’s for supper while your car is spinning out of control. Your eyes dilate to see better. Adrenaline is pumped out to give you what seems like superpowers! Think of a mom lifting a car to free her trapped child.

The problem is that our threats in life no longer come from bears or avalanches. They come from emails from your boss or unpaid bills. They are the daily stresses of life. But your brain doesn’t know the difference. It senses a threat and takes immediate action. Your babysitter cancels on you! Stress! Your brain, not knowing any better still turns off digestion, reproduction, immune system, all “no essentials” and still ramps up heart rate, breathing, brain activity, adrenaline! It starts to make a lot of sense why chronic stress is so harmful. Instead of living in a state of rest and digest we live in fight or flight all because of our hardwiring.

Our minds are so good at self-preservation that we’ve even developed a search engine for things that are harmful. Your brain constantly scans the world for threats. That’s good when you’re in the woods picking berries and you don’t want to be eaten but not so good in daily life. Your search engine is 3 times better at finding negative bad things than positive good things. We are wired to see all the bad things in life! Ever had a day where lots of great things happened but there was that one small negative comment that some stranger posted on your social media? Despite all of the good, the one tiny bad ruined your day! It’s just your brain looking out for you!

Then there’s your comfort zone. We’ve all dealt with it. It’s uncomfortable stepping outside of the box, trying something new, talking to a stranger. Your mind builds up this barrier. It looks at all of your past experiences and says “these are the things that we’ve done that went well. Let’s keep doing those things. If we try something new it could be harmful. Let’s not risk it.” Your mind holds you back from acting because stepping outside of your zone of comfort is a major potential threat! Your mind resists anything that is potentially uncomfortable. Ever had a hard time getting out of your comfortable bed? Now you know why.

“Great, not only do I have to worry about my to-do list today I also have to fight my brain to get it done!” That’s kind of true! We do have to deal with our hardwiring but just knowing how your mind works can be empowering! Just knowing that when you wake up at 5 AM to work out your brain is going to try and stop you, can be helpful. It’s not that you’re lazy or unmotivated. It’s your brain trying to keep you in its “safe” comfort zone! Or when you get a stressful email, and your heart rate goes up and your stomach churns you can acknowledge what is happening. Or when you feel like you’re having a bad day you can remind yourself that there was probably way more good than you saw that day. Just knowing how you work is very helpful.

But there’s a few more things you can do!

To see more good: start every morning by writing down 3 things you are grateful for. This will help you focus on what is going well in your life, not wrong. Also, when you feel yourself thinking negative thoughts or complaining, quickly say 3 positive things. This will start to retrain you negative search engine!

To feel less stressed: if you can minimize the stress in your life that’s great but often you can’t. You can’t make your boss be nicer to you. But you can change how your body reacts. When you feel stress rising and your body going into fight or flight mode take a step back and breathe. Research says that if you breathe in for an equal amount of time that you breathe out it lets your brain know that you are safe and there is no need for fight or flight. I like “box breathing”. Breathe in for 4 seconds, hold it in for 4, out for 4, hold it out for 4. Repeat till you’re chilled out. Also, every adjustment resets your nervous system. Ever feel flushed, have a rush of energy, or have sweat on your brow right after an adjustment? That’s your nerve system switching from fight or flight to rest and digest mode!

To get out of your comfort zone: your brain will always hold you back from taking action to keep you “safe”. But often we want to act! We want to talk to that stranger or wake up and work out. So, to push through your comfort zone give yourself a countdown. Start at 5. 5-4-3… and by the time you hit zero you better be on the move. This does a few things. By counting you are silencing your inner voice that’s telling you no! It is also giving you a very short deadline to act. Get moving now! Try it next time you’re about roll over and NOT wake up or the next time you want to speak up or say hi to a stranger. Just start the count down and go.

Just knowing how your brain and body works can be very empowering but with that knowledge we can build tools and tricks to get the most out of our lives! And before you blame your brain for all that is wrong in your life, just remember that without that hardwiring that God put inside of you, your ancestors might not have survived to enable the day that you were born!

In Health and Faith,

Dr. Marc

                                                                                                                Your Most Important Adjustment

Chiropractic has been around for 125 years. The very first adjustment was given in 1895. Since that time there have been some changes as to how the public views chiropractic and exactly what the purpose of the profession is. Most are shocked to find that it started as a way to restore hearing! It was quickly found that when people came in to get adjusted for their lack of hearing those with heart issues noticed an improvement in their heart health. Through decades of detailed study and hard work by the leaders of the profession, we soon found that an adjustment has absolutely nothing to do with hearing or heart disease and it has everything to do with the spines influence on the nervous system (it should be remembered that the nervous system controls hearing and heart health). Thus, the chiropractors of the early 1900s went out to the masses declaring how an adjustment could restore your body’s innate ability to heal and through that healing remove disease. Those chiropractors were put in jail. The powers of the world did not like the fledgling profession preaching that the cure for disease did not come from a bottle or knife. Thousands of early chiropractors were imprisoned for practicing medicine without a license. The battle went all the way to the Supreme Court where it was determined that chiropractic was not medicine, it was the opposite. Whereas medicine is the study of disease and what causes man to die, chiropractic is the study health and what causes man to live. But the damage was done. The majority of the profession had been beaten into submission through fines, jail time, and public humiliation to the point that instead of boldly telling the world that there is a better way to health than drugs and surgeries, they backed down and began adjusting to help low back pain.

Time and again chiropractic has been shown to be the absolute best, safest, and cheapest way to remove pain! It is not always the easiest way or even the fastest way, but it is the best. The world caught on to that fact and so did chiropractors. Soon, instead of chiropractic being talked about in the light of health and healing and was banished to “pain relief island.” If you’re a member of NGFC you know that pain is merely a warning that something has gone wrong and your body is trying to tell you that you need to fix it. But your adjustment is not to make you feel better! Your adjustment is to remove what caused the problem letting your body heal on its own. So, whether you’re in pain, are losing your hearing, or have heart disease, your adjustment is to restore your body’s ability to heal. Nothing more, nothing less.

I love the word “restore”. It instills in me so much hope! It even gives me pride just thinking of how incredibly wonderful our bodies are! In all the efforts and study of anatomy and biology, human knowledge hasn’t even scratched the surface of understanding how the body actually works. We arrogantly think we know but every decade or so we are reminded that we don’t have a clue when we have to pull certain drugs and procedures from our repertoire because we learned they actually harm people (ex: bloodletting and leaching were still being done 80 years ago).

Even in human performance we still haven’t found the limits of human efforts. Almost regularly these days, records are smashed, things presumed impossible become common place, and a whole new world of possibility is opened up. So when I think of an adjustment “restoring” your body I don’t see your pain going away or your high blood pressure going down, I see you being “restored” to the unlimited potential that God has placed inside of you! Which is why I always recommend lifelong chiropractic care for everyone (animals too).

All health, all healing, every feat, every experience you have here on earth comes to you by way of your nervous system. So for you to experience the fullness of life and health your nervous system has to be flowing freely to every part of your body! If that flow is diminished even a fraction – you experience less. Compound that decrease by years or even decades and you can see how we start seeing our bodies as broken and weak. That is where the vast majority of our society lives. Sick, broken, and lacking the fullness God had intended for you.

Now what if the opposite was true? What if your nervous system could freely flow to every one of the 70,000,000,000 cells in your body for years, decades, or even from the time you are born! Imagine how life could be! Imagine your body’s potential. Imagine YOUR potential! That is what an adjustment does. It restores and opens up the channels of your nervous system so that you can experience life and health the way you were designed. Turn that one adjustment into lifelong adjustments and you keep those channels open, you keep life flowing, you keep your potential limitless.

So which adjustment is your most important one?? It’s your next one! See you in the bay!

In Health and Faith,

Dr. Marc

Chiropractic Freedom

To me chiropractic means freedom.  To most, that means freedom from pain!  Which is a wonderful thing!  Pain, especially chronic pain, day after day, year after year, changes a person.  It’s hard to put on a smiling face and enjoy life while experiencing even the smallest amount of pain!  Time and again chiropractic has been studied and shown to be the absolute most effective way at eliminating pain.  Which is why society and even most chiropractors think of neck pain, headaches, etc when they think of an adjustment.  But chiropractic is more.

Many see chiropractic as being free from and preventing disease!  If you’re in our office and you’ve heard us talk even a little bit about how your body is designed, how it heals, and functions you know (or at least have an inkling) that when your spine is out of alignment your brain cannot tell your body how to function properly and a malfunctioning body ALWAYS leads to symptoms and sickness.  So from that understanding, an adjustment means restoration of your body’s innate healing.  But chiropractic is more. 

Chiropractic seeks to find and correct subluxations.  A subluxation is any dysfunction of your spine creating interference to your nerve system.  Subluxations are the ultimate cause of your pain, your symptoms, your disease because a subluxation makes it impossible for your nerve system to function properly and heal your body the way God designed.  That in and of itself is a powerful statement but the question begs to be asked, what is the limit of chiropractic?  The scope of chiropractic is only limited by the limitations of your nerve system.  What then is the limit of the nerve system??

Your nerve system dictates your entire experience as a living being.  All of your senses; touch, taste, smell, hearing, seeing are all enabled by the NS.  Every emotion from love and joy to sorrow and hate is brought about by your NS.  Your thoughts, ideas, your memories, all of it, good, bad, or ugly is brought about by your NS!  So what happens when your NS isn’t functioning properly?? We’ve all seen versions of this – where spinal cord injuries lead to inability to walk, or organs to function, brain injuries lead to mental impairment.  Chronic abuse and toxicity of the brain lead to memory loss and autism.  Wherever there is damage to the NS there is a decrease in life.  But what if the damage is minute?  What if it is “merely” a subluxation in your spine?  Can you experience life to its fullest??  The answer unfortunately is no.  A simple misalignment in your spine directly impacts your experience here on earth. 

So to me, chiropractic means freedom.  Freedom to live a full life that God designed me for.  A life free of chronic pain.  Freedom of sickness and suffering and along with it freedom from FEAR of DISEASE knowing that God placed inside of every one of us an incredible intelligence that keeps us alive and well from the time we are born to the time we die.  An intelligence so amazing that science and human minds cannot possibly grasp or understand its workings.  But most importantly it means being free of subluxations that pull me away from experiencing the wonders of the world that God created for all of us to enjoy to their fullest.  So today, lets remove our pain, restore our health, and reclaim the lives God intended for us!

In Health and Faith,

Dr. Marc

The Blessing Building

One day I died.  How it happened I cannot recall.  Perhaps I was hit by a car, slipped on some ice, or maybe I was subluxated!  Either way I found myself at the pearly gates.  I knocked and no one answered.  From the sound of it, there was an entire host singing somewhere in the distance!  I knocked again, still no answer, so I sat down not daring to play the “hot or cold” game looking for a different entrance least I find myself somewhere too hot!  Finally, a man walked up.  He was a saintly looking fellow.  He introduced himself as Pete.  He quickly apologized explaining he has lost track of time.  I thought this an odd excuse being that I didn’t see any clocks but I assumed he had his cell phone on him so I let it be.

After letting me through the gates he ushered me to a changing room where a very cheerful lady issued me a white robe.  I complained that I often drink black coffee and green juice and that white simply would not do! She said nothing and smiled ever so nicely.  I relented and donned my new attire.

Having changed, Pete said, “let me show you around.”  As we toured the grounds he pointed out many amazing wonders!  Literally, he showed me where all of the wonders of the universe were kept on display.  He showed me where all of the dogs were kept.  I inquired about cats.  He glared at me and said nothing.  He pointed to a small house and said, “There’s your mansion.”  He saw my puzzled look.  “It’s roomier than it looks.  Your crown is inside.”  In excitement asked how many jewels were on it!  Again, he glared and said nothing. 

As he finished the tour I thought to myself “This will be a fine place to spend eternity!”  But then I noticed a large building.  I asked Pete about it.  He told me that it was not part of the tour.  I pressed him.  He relented and said, “Fine.  I’ll show you but you wont be happy.” 

As we approached the building I was in awe of its size.  It was far larger than any earthly building I had ever seen!  We stood outside and I watched as thousands of containers were hauled in.  Pete said, “Welcome to the Blessing Building.”  Thrilled, I said, “The Blessing Building! That sounds amazing!  Can we go in?” “Yes, but again, you’re not going to like it.”  He led me in.

Inside the building was somehow even more massive than outside.  There were countless storage containers, each larger than a house.  More and more containers were being added every moment.  Each container had a name written on the outside.  As we walked the infinite corridor, I read the names one by one.  I asked Pete if I had a container.  Reluctantly he said yes and pointed.  I looked and saw one of the biggest ones in the building!  In shock I asked, “what is there??”  Solemnly he looked at me and said, “These are all of the blessings that God had in store for you, for everyone.  But you quit.  You lost your faith and you turned your focus away from God.  You put your hopes in things of the world instead of hoping and trusting in Him.  Because of your insecurities and your fears, you turned away right when He was going to give you these blessings.  So here they sit, collecting dust, never realized.”

Feeling a bitter sorrow for what my life on earth could have been, I asked what I could have done differently.  He said, “You already know.  God puts it on every person’s heart, what they SHOULD do.  But very few act according to what they know is right thus they miss out on God’s blessings.  Most people seek the easiest way while on earth not the way that they know is right.  And the path of least resistance make crooked both rivers and men.”

In Health and Faith,

Dr. Marc