Keys to good health

The following is exerpted from my recent Spinal Column newsletter, which is posted on my website at www.drmhaatma.com.

This month, April 2009, marks the 30th anniversary of the opening of my first chiropractic office. From the very beginning of my practice I had the privilege and blessing to witness first-hand the remarkable power of chiropractic care to transform the health of many patients and allow them to move, sometimes with startling speed, towards a more healthy, balanced, pain-free life. But there were also some patients who didn't react as quickly or as fully to my sincere and enthusiastic efforts to help, and I was sometimes puzzled, occasionally disappointed, and often uncertain why some people did not respond as well as others to chiropractic treatment.

Over the past few decades I have learned a few things. Here's a quick summary of some of my discoveries:

1. Doctors never heal patients. The human body heals itself. What a chiropractor can do is to coax your body into a better balance that releases your innate ability to heal and function properly.

2. Achieving and sustaining good health has a lot to do with the circumstances in which we live and the way we treat ourselves. While some things are beyond our control, there is a lot we can do to cultivate and support good physical and emotional health. As a doctor, I can't do that for any patient, although I can strive to inform, inspire and support folks to take better care of themselves.

3. Most symptoms that drive people to see a chiropractor or a doctor are caused at least in part by their diet. Most people eat too many pro-inflammatory foods (refined sugar; refined grains; meat, poultry, dairy and eggs from animals that have been fattened on grains; bad vegetable oils; trans-fats) which increase pain and inflammation in the body. With that kind of diet, response to chiropractic or any treatment is limited. When a patient eats better, chiropractic treatment works better.

4. Doing the right exercise is often an essential ingredient for solving the back, neck and joint problems which so often bring people to the chiropractor. Chiropractic treatment restores function to the joints of the spine and extremities in a way that exercise never can, but without an ongoing effort to mobilize joints and stretch and strengthen muscles through consistent exercise, folks never get to feel as good and stay as good as they would like to.

5. Perhaps most important of all to healing is an attitude of and commitment to self-nurturing. As we learn to value and respect ourselves, to forgive our own shortcomings and treat ourselves with kindness, it becomes easier to do the same for others and to shed self-destructive habits and activities and replace them with ones that create and sustain a healthy and productive life.