Be Still and Know

 

Have you ever wondered what people did before TV or radio? How did they not lose their minds from boredom?? Better yet, what did people do before electricity and lights? It’s hard to even conceive of living that way given our current society! We live in a world in which our minds are constantly distracted. We go from distraction to distraction without ever pausing to reflect and process. Here in lies the problem. We require stillness!

When was the last time you sat and did nothing? I’m not talking about vegging out in front of the TV for hours or mindlessly scrolling through social media. I’m talking about sitting and doing NOTHING. Setting your mind free of distractions allowing it to wander and reflect. To some who have been around long enough this idea isn’t completely foreign but to the younger generations many have been distracted for their entire lives! Many children these days grow up staring at screens day in and day out. There is a reason every religion on earth talks about quiet prayer or meditation. It’s because we all need stillness to be the best, most whole versions of ourselves.

We are living in the most informed time in history. Any information (right or wrong) is available to us at our fingertips. We can search any question and get an answer. But we need not search for it because we are constantly being bombarded with information every moment. From your TV, phone, and radio to billboards and marketing galore we are being told what to think and who we are constantly, and that way of living has turned us into people who are no longer able to think for ourselves but instead blindly follow along with the mainstream thoughts of the moment. It’s time to take back control of our thoughts and our minds and the first step is to do nothing.

I believe that God lives in our stillness. So often we pray for answers or solutions in life but then we rush off to find them in a book, a podcast, or a Facebook post from some famous pastor. Imagine asking a teacher a question then instead of listening for the reply we jumped on google for the answer. Even if the teacher did respond we’d be too distracted to hear. Now don’t get me wrong, God works in all sorts of ways, but we can always find Him in our still moments. This is evident in how He designed our minds to work. Pauses and breaks from input are required for proper mental health and processing. For memories to go from short term to long term requires input breaks. To truly learn something requires time to reflect. To fully understand ourselves and the world we live in, time to sit and ponder is absolutely necessary. You might be aware, but desperation and anxiety are skyrocketing in our world today largely because we never stop! It’s always go go go, jumping from distraction to distraction. When we live that way, of course we feel stressed an anxious!

It’s an easy thing to want to be still, it’s another thing to do it and that takes practice and effort! The easiest first step is to be still while you are driving. When you’re alone in your car turn off the radio. It’ll feel weird and awkward at first but soon you’ll start noticing the world around you. You’ll think deep thoughts and reflect on your day. The fact that you’re still doing something (driving) makes it a much easier transition.

The second step is to take a walk or a jog again with no music. Even better than driving you’re moving your body (and there’s no other people zooming around in their cars). Let your mind wander but also try to notice the things you see and hear.

The third step is to sit and notice. I love sitting with my eyes closed and using my other senses. Notice every sound that you can hear. Then notice everything you smell or everything you feel, even the weight of your clothes or the different temperatures you feel. Our world is so much more beautiful than just the things we can see. Try to quiet your thoughts and just sense the world.

From there you can go deep into the world of meditation and prayer but for most of us just turning off the TV or radio or putting down the cell phone for 15 minutes is a good first step. As you get better and better at it, you’ll be able to use stillness as a way to find answers or to process and understand the world we live in for ourselves or even just to find peace in your crazy life. So do your mind some good. Take time today to simply be still and know.

If you live in the Colorado Springs, Monument, Palmer Lake areas and you are ready to start your health journey, give us a call and let us help you and your family! 

In Health and Faith,

Dr. Marc

Northgate Family Chiropractic

12245 Voyager Pkwy

Colorado Springs, CO 80921

The Principles of Health: Part 3

Then there was one! It’s been a journey but as we come to the final part of the Principles of Health it is important to remember WHY any of this matters.  It is all about FREEDOM!  Think back to when you were a child.  You didn’t know much of the world.  You ran around without a care!  You had adults around to tell you what was right and wrong, what was dangerous and safe.  They took care of you because you couldn’t take care of yourself.  In that scenario you had very little freedom because you had very little knowledge of the world.  You see, the more you know about HOW the world works the more freedom you have because you can make better decisions about your life!  If you start playing chess and don’t know the rules, you will make bad decisions and likely lose.  BUT if you know the rules in and out, you can start to strategize and master the game.  Just like chess, when you know the rules of life (and health) you can use that knowledge to your advantage! 

Most people have no clue how health works.  You know you should eat more salads and less sugar but you don’t know why.  You know you WANT to be healthy but you don’t really know HOW.  Then, when you inevitably fall into sickness, you become a slave to the medical system all because you lacked the knowledge to free yourself.  With that in mind, let us free ourselves with knowledge!

 

Principle 6: The Primary Cause of Malfunction

Subluxation of the spine is ALWAYS the primary cause of malfunction in the body.

“One cause, one cure” has been a motto in chiropractic since the early 1900’s.  Back then chiropractors weren’t viewed a back poppers and neck pain specialists.  Chiropractors were known for getting sick people well even when medicine couldn’t.  The reason being was that chiropractors found and removed subluxations and were VERY good at it.  If you’re not a patient at NGFC let me catch you up to speed.  A subluxation is an area of the spine with dysfunction – that dysfunction of the spine interferes with the nervous system resulting in the body’s inability to function properly. 

Most people are woefully unaware that the spine’s job is to surrond and protect the spinal cord, which is your brain’s only way of communicating with your entire body!  Seems important.  That is why God protected it with bone!  More than that, every nerve in you body exits from the spine to go out and run/ heal your body.  But, when outside forces come in and damage or misalign the spine, that dysfunction will either interfere with the spinal cord itself or any one of the trillions of nerve fibers that exit through the spine.  NOW, all because your spine is misaligned, your brain can no longer tell your heart, your lungs, your immune system, your gut how to function and heal the way they were designed.  This then is the PRIMARY cause of malfunction in the body. 

Think of it this way, you can eat nothing but kale and broccoli for every meal, but if your digestive system cannot properly break down and use those good nutrients its all a big waste.  Or lets say you exercise like a mad man but your lungs and your muscles only have 70% nerve supply from the brain, your body is still breaking down!  The flip side is true as well.  If you do everything wrong!  If you are stressed to the max, never exercise, eat nothing but processed sugary junk, BUT your brain and body are fully connected, you will still be healthy!  How is that possible?? Because it doesn’t matter how many bad decisions you make, if your body is FUNCTIONING at 100% it will HEAL from the damage.

So, if you have headaches, stomachaches, irritable bowels, hormone imbalance, neck pain, back pain, numbness, tingling, asthma, eczema, high blood pressure, diabetes, what ever ails you, the PRIMARY cause is subluxation.  Because, if your body could have healed it, it would have healed it! 

Please hear this well.  There are an infinite numbers of secondary causes.  I am NOT saying that you can get adjusted and then live like a slob and expect to be healthy!  Like we saw in Principle 4, the body has requirements and if you are missing any of those requirements you cannot be healthy.  What I AM saying is that subluxation is ALWAYS a factor with any malfunction or lack of health. 

One interesting point to bring up is that when harmful forces come in from the outside, they impact the spine and cause subluxation.  When we think “outside forces” we often jump to falling on your back, or a car accident.  But outside forces can also be too much sugar, toxic chemicals, lack of fresh oxygen, a sedentary life, micro traumas from bad posture, even emotional stress can subluxate the spine!  So, while your excess stress is bad, it is not the cause of your tight shoulders and headaches.  Your stress is the cause of your subluxations, and your subluxations are the cause of your headaches.  The same is true across the board.  Your poor life choices lead to subluxation and subluxation leads to sickness, pain, and disease ALL because your body is not able to heal the way God intended.

 

Principle 7: Correct the Cause, Restore Function

When you correct the cause of malfunction, the body restores itself to full function

Principle 7 is the key to health.  If we all understood this we would be living in a different world.  We would no longer be living in a world where 5 out of 6 people die of chronic disease, where fathers forget their children’s names due to mental impairment, where young families lose loved ones to cancer or heart disease.  Children wouldn’t have diabetes, asthma, eczema, and autism.  We wouldn’t waste trillions of dollars on harmful drugs, vaccines, and surgeries.  We would live in the world that God intended for us.

Bold statements but its true.  By now hopefully you understand that you are designed for health!   Your body is constantly fighting for you to get back to health when you make bad choices.  When you are functioning properly your body always heals, BUT your body requires certain things to function properly, PRIMARILY to be subluxation free.  When there is enough malfunction, your body warns you through symptoms to make a change! 

It all seems so simple when you put it in those terms but without this basic understanding we become slaves to a system that does not utilize these principles, these laws, these fundamental truths about where health and healing comes from. 

Back to our car!  You ignored wisdom.  You didn’t take care of your vehicle.  It’s breaking down slowly and finally it warns you.  Check engine light comes on.  You are too busy.  It’s too expensive to fix.  You cover up the check engine light.  You cover the warning instead of fixing what caused it.  The problem can only get worse!  A short while later down the road and your car is ruined! You have to buy a whole new car! 

This is the problem with our “health” system today.  Every drug, every surgery, every vaccine is a cover to an underlying problem.  There is no correction of what caused the problem.  Every time you cover as opposed to correct an issue, it leads to a break down, a crisis later on.  BUT unlike your car, you only get one body. 

But, no matter how bad it is, how long its been there, when you find and correct the cause; you remove subluxations, you give your body everything it requires and eliminate the garbage from your life, your body goes back to functioning properly and it will be restored back to health.  Correct the cause and the body heals, every time.  This is the way God made you, and it is the second most freeing thing I know of.  Jesus is the first 😉

In Health and Faith,

Dr. Marc

The Principles of Health: Part 2

If you will recall from part 1, in the first 3 Principles of Health we learned that the normal state of the body is health, that the body heals and repairs itself in an attempt to restore health when forces come in from the outside, and for there to be 100% health the body must be functioning properly.  Let’s resume!

Principle 4: Requirements of Proper Function

For there to be 100% function certain requirements must be met.

For your car to work properly, it has a ton of requirements. It needs gas. Not just any ‘ol gas. It has to be the exact right type. Ever tried putting diesel fuel in your gasoline engine?? What if there’s water in your fuel? It gets ugly quickly. What if one of the bearings in your drive train is busted? Or if you have a flat tire? Even the timing of the engine has to be perfect or else it won’t run! There are 10,000 things that your car requires to run at all much less run perfectly. Now, your car with its 100,000 parts is nothing compared to your body with its 70,000,000,000 parts! To say that your body is more complicated than your car is a wild understatement BUT the concept is true. Your body has requirements to run properly, function at 100% and be healthy!

“Dr. Marc, what does your body require??” I’m so glad you asked! Humans have been investigating this question since Adam and Eve got themselves booted out of the Garden. And while science and research have over complicated the subject the answer has been the same since the beginning.

You require, oxygen and movement, proper nutrients, zero toxic chemicals, full nerve supply from the brain to the whole body, and a healthy understanding of WHO made you and HOW. More on these later on!

When your body has all of its requirements met it can function at 100%. If any one of these requirements are NOT met malfunction occurs. Next thing you know, your heart is only functioning at 70% because you chose sleep over exercise and you ate donuts instead of a healthy smoothie. Here lies the problem. People think that living the 5 Essentials is extreme. Eating zero sugar or grains is radical! Exercising 5 days a week is too much! Getting adjusted 3 times a week “doesn’t fit my schedule.” I’ll tell you a hard truth: living the 5 Essentials is THE MINIMUM! The 5 Essentials are called essential for a reason. They are plain and simply the starting point to health. You MUST do them to give your body everything it requires just to function properly. They aren’t “good” for you. They are “required” for you.

 

Principle 5: Signs of Malfunction

When function in the body has dropped below a certain threshold, warning signs are utilized to provoke a change in behavior.

Back to our car. This poor guy has been through a lot! We put the wrong fuel in it, didn’t change the oil or replace any filters, we have 2 half inflated tires, warn out bearings and belts all over, and we are now using starter fluid to get the engine going every morning! He’s had enough! The check engine light comes on.

People have come a long way when it comes cars. It used to be that you had to wait until the thing started smoking or a wheel fell off to know if something was wrong. Now a days there are sensors everywhere! If the washer fluid is low: boom – light comes on. Tire is flat: boom – light. Need an oil change – lights galore. Your car will even let you if it’s in a bad mood! Maybe not just yet but there are sensors and warnings for every important thing in your car. Your car lets you know if any vital thing is off even just a little so that you can fix it right away to ensure your car lasts as long as possible.

The same is true of the human body. Your body is so smart that it warns you when something is wrong! Dehydrated: boom – headache. Pinched nerve: boom – pain. Hormone imbalance: boom – low energy. Your body is constantly warning you of malfunctioning parts! But what do we do? Either we ignore the warnings, or we cover up them up. What happens if you ignore your cars check engine light or even worse, you cover it up?? You are way too busy to deal with such things! Places to go, things to do. And if you do get a free moment you are just too tired. Eventually you find yourself on the side of the road calling for an emergency tow truck! You wait until you’re forced to take action. The same thing happens with our bodies. The body gives us warnings signs and symptoms. Doctors call them “symptoms of disease”. They are NOT symptoms of disease they are symptoms of NEED. Your body needs you to do something different! Either start or stop something, often both. Gut issues? Stop eating donuts and start eating kale. High blood pressure? Cut out sugar and grain and start exercising. Headaches? Fix your spine. Your body is warning you to make a change or else things are going to break and you’ll find yourself on the side of the road calling for an emergency tow truck to the hospital!

It makes sense! Thank goodness for signs and symptoms so that we can make changes BEFORE emergencies strike! But most people still wait for the warning. Isn’t it better to maintain your car BEFORE the warning lights come on? Give it the right fuel, change the oil, keep air in the tires. It’s called preventing instead of reacting! This is so important for your health! Guess when your body warns you? When function has dropped to only 90%? Nope, that would be nice though. 80%? Yeah right. 70%? No dice. Your body gives you symptoms only when you drop to 60% function. You’ve lost 40% of your body’s proper function all because you waited until you FELT the warning!!  So, it seems wise to take care of your body and your health BEFORE the warnings come because once you’re being warned, the issue has been building a long time and the longer you wait the harder and more costly it will be to correct.

One more week of the Principles of Health to come!

In Health and Faith,

Dr. Marc

 

Principles of Health

I was traveling recently and while sitting on the plane waiting for takeoff, I started talking to the fella sitting next to me. He asked me what I did for a living. To tell him that I adjust babies and save lives didn’t seem appropriate! So, I simply told him I’m a chiropractor. He immediately said, “oh, no offense but I don’t believe in chiropractic”, as if chiropractic was a religion! It probably seems odd to you especially if you’re a patient at NGFC, but the notion that chiropractic is an unscientific “cult” is relatively common. But chiropractic and taking care of your spine and nerve system is based on principles not theories.

By definition, a principle is a comprehensive and fundamental law (think laws of physics, not running red lights). A law cannot be broken. If it is ever broken it is no longer a law! Take the law of gravity for example. When an apple detaches from a tree, it falls. Sometimes? Nope, every time. If an apple ever floated up to the sky the law of gravity has been broken and it’s no longer a law!

Chiropractic is founded on the Principles of Health. Over the next two weeks we will be diving into these principles so that you can better understand how God made you and how to take care of yourself so that you can be the best version of yourself possible! Here we go!

Principle 1: The Normalcy of Health

 The normal state of the human body is a state of health.

This is huge! Because it means that you were designed to be healthy and pain free! You were not designed sick, broken, in pain, or lacking ANYTHING. God created you to be healthy and well all the days of your life! That goes directly against what we are taught. From day one we are taught that babies and fragile and weak and that they require drugs and vaccines just to stay alive. Even birth is treated as a medical procedure in our country. Instead of seeing birth and babies as two of Gods most incredible creations we view them as problems that need human intervention. Principle 1 is a statement that you were created perfectly and lacking nothing. The notion that God’s perfect creation would require the feeble knowledge of man is ludicrous.

Principle 2: The Healing Nature of the Body

 The human body adapts and heals in reaction to outside forces.

This one is huge too! (I think they’re all huge) This means that when “forces” (traumas, toxins, even harmful thoughts and stresses) come into the body, it jumps into defense mode! Your body heals itself! Simple examples: if you cut your finger, your body heals it. No band aid, no disinfectant, nothing heals that cut except your body. Broken bones mend. Skin, organs, cells all replace themselves. Your body even fights disease through your immune system. Your immune system fights and kills germs, viruses, bacteria. Even chronic disease. Your immune system seeks out and kills cancer cells, heals clogged arteries, saves you from high blood sugar. Your body is constantly on guard from the moment you are conceived to the moment you pass away, fighting for you to keep you alive and get you back to that normal state of health!

Principle 3: Health Equals Function

 For there to be 100% health there must be 100% function.

Based no principles 1 and 2 we know that the normal state of the human body is health and wellness. When your body is anything less than healthy (sickness, pain, disease, imbalance) your body does everything within its power to heal, repair, restore, and balance you to get you back to being healthy. But that can only occur when your body is FUNCTIONING properly.

Think of the tires on your car. When the tires are properly inflated, and they are in alignment your car runs nice and smoothly. Everything is great! But if just one of your tires is flat your car will still drive but it will not drive very well at all! And it’ll lead to further damage to other parts of your vehicle! It will certainly screw up your alignment, the shocks will wear out. It’ll stress the transmission and engine. All because of that “malfunctioning” tire, your whole car has issues! But even if that tire wasn’t flat it was a just a little low, the damage won’t happen as quickly but sure enough the exact same issues will occur.

It’s the same with your body. If any part of your body is malfunctioning it simply cannot do what it’s supposed to do (repair, restore, rebalance). So slowly but surely that malfunctioning part of your body is breaking down leading to sickness, pain, disease. Ever wonder why smokers get cancer in one lung but not the other? Both have the same genes, are the same age, have been breathing the same air (and smoke). Why does one build cancer? Because one is malfunctioning worse than the other thus it cannot heal and repair!

So, to be able to adapt and heal from all of the outside forces of our world and to have perfect health, every part of your body must be functioning perfectly.

These principles are the foundation of how God made man.  We can use these principles to help guide us to make better decisions concerning how we view and manage our health!  Next week we will continue on with the remaining Principles!  Until then, I’ll see you in the bay.

If you live in the Colorado Springs, Monument, Palmer Lake area and you are ready to restore your health and reclaim your life, head to our website or give us a call to schedule you and your entire family an opportunity to start your health journey with us!

In Health and Faith,

Dr. Marc

Northgate Family Chiropractic

12245 Voyager Pkwy

Colorado Springs, CO 80921

 

Don’t Forget to Live, Too

When I was a kid, my parents built a house up in the Rocky Mountains on a hill of granite. I do not know about you, but what seems the perfect recipe for a dusty and dirty house is a hobby farm full of animals and four children constantly running in and out of the doors. It would have made perfect sense if our house was always a little dusty and a little dirty. The interesting thing is, I cannot remember our house ever being dirty. My parents liked having a clean house and every day they would sweep and vacuum, instruct us to take our shoes off, clean the dogs before they came in, and designate various household cleaning chores to us on the weekend. Living in a clean house was nice. But it was a lot of work – especially for my mom. Over the years, us kids grew up and became teenagers and young adults, we moved, we had a bigger house, my mom started working outside the home and going back to school– and cleaning the house became less of a priority.

My mom shared some wise words of a family friend with me – her friend told her that it was okay that she didn’t clean the house as often and that it was a little more “lived in” because the “house was there to serve my mom, not for my mom to serve the house.” Now, my mom still keeps the house clean, but she is not living to keep her house clean. Instead, she allows the house to serve her while being a good steward of it. So often we can get caught up in the motion of things we often forget the why. We keep immaculate houses, prioritize clean cars, lose sleep over the next job promotion, and obsess over being fit. And in the process, we can forget the reason why we started doing the things we do in the first place.

I have found that this can easily happen on a health journey; we become more focused on serving health, than health being there to serve us. We pursue health because it enables us to live our best lives, love those around us, and serve those we are called to serve. We like to call this our big why. The “big why” is the reason why we chose and continue to choose to do something and prioritize it. For example, I really love doughnuts. I love getting a doughnut from time to time on a special occasion – but I choose not to get them very often because it does not align with my life and what I want for it. I want to be healthy – for myself, for my family, my future children, and my community. And eating a doughnut every day does not align with my health goals. But from time to time, I forget my, we shall call it a little why, and become obsessed with eating healthy because I feel like “I should,” “I must,” or I failed myself if I did not. The reality is, most days it is serving your health and thereby serving you to eat a nutritious breakfast rather than a doughnut – but sometimes, it serves your emotional and mental health more to enjoy having a doughnut, or a piece of cake for a special occasion, or a bowl of ice cream.

Now, by no means am I suggesting you give up on eating healthy or any of the other essentials we teach in our office– only that you look at your decisions and see why you make those choices and if they are serving your goals and ability to love and serve those around you. Here are a few ways to evaluate health decisions and help you discern if those decisions align with who you are and your goals.

Ask yourself:

• Is this serving me and those around me?
• Is this giving me life and energy?
• Is this draining me and taking away from my goals?

I whole heartedly believe in our office and the 5 essentials – I think everyone should get adjusted frequently, eat whole nutritious food, move and exercise, grow a beautiful mindset, and reduce toxins. It takes wisdom and discernment to understand how to apply these concepts to you and your family’s lives. For instance, if you can never enjoy a piece of cake at a birthday party because you are so worried about it affecting your health, I challenge you to step back and ask yourself if you are able to enjoy those moments and have a healthy mindset surrounding special events. After all, anxiety about not doing well enough can be just as detrimental to your health. But if you really do not like how you feel after eating a piece of cake or know if does not align with your health goals, then never eating another piece of cake might be the best decision.

I want to encourage you – pursue health. But let health serve you. Make choices that are sustainable long term for your body, mind, and soul and adapt; as one season shifts into another, look forward with grace on yourself and with a desire to grow. As my mom’s friend said about the house “The house is not there to be served, it is there to serve you,” so is true about health, “Health is not there to be served, it is there to serve you.” Live healthy, but do not forget to live, too.

 

Anna