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The post We are open again for all care! first appeared on Martin Chiropractic.

While we were watching a small chunk of ice fractured off the front of the iceberg and it was amazing how quickly the berg began to tilt off level. Have a close look at the water level marks in the second picture compared to the first. A very small change created an immediate and very significant shift in the balance of the whole iceberg.

Once out of balance a much larger piece of the iceberg fractured off the back of the iceberg as seen in the next image which ultimately proved fatal for the iceberg. In fact a few hours later we watched this majestic iceberg fall apart into pieces. Within twenty four hours it was gone.

While watching the demise of the iceberg I was reminded just how important balance is. How fragile it is; not just for icebergs, but for us too.

Subluxations are small misalignments of vertebrae in the spine and they always create imbalance, which over time (less than most think) is devastating to health. Subluxations cause the body to physically break down and they interfere with the nervous system, the master control system that controls every aspect of life and body function.

So how is your balance? Are you subluxated, out of balance and at risk of falling apart because of it….just like the iceberg?

If you haven’t been checked for a while, the answer is yes and it’s time see your chiropractor for an adjustment. If you have not yet seen a chiropractor, now is the time to make the call – your health is in the balance.

The post How Is Your Balance? first appeared on Martin Chiropractic.

Making decisions that contribute to overall good health and well-being have to come from an underlying, lifetime approach to health that goes beyond simply feeling good or looking good! We must come from the truth that our bodies are designed to heal and that we can enjoy an extraordinary level of good health when we simply look after what we have been given.

In previous entries, we have explored how sickness is either a result of our body not getting enough of what it needs, or getting too much of what it doesn’t need. When was the last time you asked yourself, “what do I need to add or what do I need to remove in order to improve my overall health and wellness?”   A patient recently told me that he was on the ‘3C diet’ – no cookies, cake or Coke!  Now that might be a good start, but we have to think in much broader terms. Overall health and wellness incorporates the physical, social, mental and spiritual.   Each of these areas of life may require some significant additions or subtractions in order to improve our overall health.

Health and wellness is a lifestyle. Good nutrition is a lifestyle. Exercise is a lifestyle. Stress management is a lifestyle. Prayer is a lifestyle. Spending time with family and friends is a lifestyle. Chiropractic care is a lifestyle.

Engaging in short-term activities (i.e. diet) that may make a measurable change (i.e. lose 10 pounds) for a period of time in any of these areas really has no lasting value.

Please join us most Tuesday evenings at 5:30 for a 30-minute workshop where we explore some of the great things that we can do in order to stay healthy and be well.

The post Wellness is a Lifestyle first appeared on Martin Chiropractic.

We all know resolutions fail.  They last a few days, weeks, or maybe months, but they eventually fail.  Resolutions in and of themselves are not a bad thing, they just don’t have any lasting power to change the way we live.

Instead of making resolutions, we need to make real decisions, real choices, that will have lasting impact and these will only happen if we have a driving force behind the change – a purpose driven by understanding WHY we want to change.

What we need to be is resolved.  My wife Jenn defines resolved as admirably purposeful, determined, unwavering, steadfast, full of conviction.  And, conviction is a belief of which we are thoroughly convinced, something that is essential and life changing.

How does this apply to our resolutions?  Suppose we make a resolution to loose some weight.  That’s great, and chances are we will loose some.  But chances are even better we will gain it all back!  Why?  Because we didn’t have resolve.

Now let’s suppose we were resolved to take much better care of our body, because we came to the realization that we are fearfully and wonderfully made by a creator God, and our body is an amazing organism that is designed to function at a level of complexity we will never understand and has an incredible ability to heal – and as such, we have an obligation to give our bodies all it needs and eliminate what harms it – for life, with the best of our ability.

Once you grasp this, wellness becomes a lifestyle, choices come from a place of conviction, and with resolve we implement changes for life.  And that’s how we make resolutions stick.  It has nothing all to do with the resolution, and everything to do with the WHY behind it.

So, this year, and every year hereafter, let’s become resolved to take the best care of our bodies that we can.  Eat well, sleep well, get some exercise, manage you mental, social and spiritual life well. Don’t be quick to reach for the pill bottle.  Get adjusted.  If you don’t have a chiropractor on your healthcare team, get one.  A healthy nervous system is vital to a healthy lifestyle.

From all of us at Martin Chiropractic – Happy 2017!!  And, lets be resolved to take lifetime care of our bodies.

The post Resolved in 2017 first appeared on Martin Chiropractic.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given;

 and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

and his name shall be called

 Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

  Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end,

 on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

  to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness

  from this time forth and forevermore.

 The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.

With Christmas only a couple days away, we are reminded of this passage from Isaiah 9, where the prophet Isaiah records the promise of God to one-day send Immanuel to deliver His people – and now we celebrate that great day when Jesus was born, fulfilling this prophecy and changing the course of human history.

Christmas is not only a time to reflect on the birth of Christ, but it’s a time we celebrate family, friends, and all the blessings we have – and we are so grateful to have been able to serve our family of patients over this past year.  We have the privilege of serving many families, adjusting patients of all ages, and we look forward helping even more families in the new year.

We are fascinated by the fact that the same God who made Christmas possible is the same God that created and designed each one of us, and we are humbled by the responsibility we have as chiropractors to help our patients achieve optimal health and wellness through a nervous system free of interference.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for another great toy-drive this year, the Salvation Army filled their truck full of toys donated from our family of patients.  The challenge to give back to our community was once again met with great success!

From all of us here at Martin Chiropractic – Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The post Merry Christmas! first appeared on Martin Chiropractic.

Perhaps you have done something the same way for years, only to find out the way you were doing it wasn’t the best, or realized that there is a more efficient, practical or less expensive way to do something simply by utilizing a bit of common sense that was previously blinded by habit.

Over time, we can get so engrained in habits and ideology that make no common or scientific sense, yet we continue to believe them, usually because it seems everyone else does.

Have you ever wondered what your starting point might be if you could just erase all the preconceived ideas you have about how things apparently work?  Maybe start by applying some common sense and going from there?  If so, I think there are two main paradigms that we would want to revisit.

First, when you think about the miraculous marvel of life, and the amazing intricacies of the human body (not to mention everything else in the world!), it’s hard to believe that life is a result of random chance and that we crawled out of a swamp at some point in our ancestral past.  It just seems to make good common sense that we are the product of Divine creation, fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God.

Secondly, considering the amazing design of our body to be self-regulating, self-sustaining and self-healing (see this post), doesn’t it make good common sense to invest in what will allow our bodies to function optimally, concentrating on achieving and maintaining wellness as opposed to engaging in symptom based sick care?  Believing that we need a host of drugs in our system to be healthy, from birth onwards, defies common sense.

Both of these lines of thinking go against popular opinion, and both are influenced by our worldview.  Sometimes we need to give the Etch A Sketch in our head a shake and start over with a clean slate.

The post Time to Clean the Slate first appeared on Martin Chiropractic.

According to the World Heath Organization, health is defined as ‘A state of optimal physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.’  Now, I must admit that we don’t often agree with a lot of things that the WHO says, but in this case I think they came pretty close to getting it right.  Before we take a closer look at this definition, let’s think for a moment how our bodies work.

Our previous blogs have talked about how God designed our bodies with something called innate intelligence, which simply means that your body has the ability to look after itself.  This innate intelligence functions optimally as long as you give your body what it needs, and avoid things that it doesn’t need.  As an example, a cut will heal all on it’s own, you don’t need to take a pill, or apply some type of treatment to make a cut heal.  It just does – because your body is designed to repair itself.

Think about it this way – your body produces over 2 million red blood cells every second – that’s amazing.  So, that means we are also eliminating over 2 million per second, and the lifespan of a red blood cell is about 100 days.  Imagine if that process was to break down even a little bit at the production or removal of red blood cells, it wouldn’t take long for us to become very sick.  And yet, it’s very rare for that to occur, because your brain is designed to make sure that doesn’t happen.

What’s this have to do with our definition?  Well, the key words in the health definition are optimal and not merely the absence of disease.  But, don’t forget we can have disease and not have symptoms; we can’t fall into the trap of thinking that symptom-free means disease-free.  And, there are millions of things your body is doing right now (like making red-blood cells) that you can’t feel, yet that activity is vital to life.  The key word is optimal.  When it comes to health and wellness, our goal should be to do whatever it takes to allow our bodies to function optimally, all the time, allowing our bodies to express God’s given ability to heal.

When you get adjusted you will have a healthy spine and nervous system, and your brain’s ability to communicate with every part of your body, instructing it to function optimally and allowing you to experience optimal health, and not merely the absence of symptoms.

The post What Does it Mean to be Healthy? first appeared on Martin Chiropractic.

Recently, my wife’s website fell victim of malware, and because we had not done enough research and preparation to prevent the attack, her account was suspended until it could be shown that the foreign and malicious files were completely eliminated.  It took many hours and a lot of frustration to get things back to normal.  If only our computer systems had some sort of built in mechanism that was just there, all the time, free of charge, preventing web page sickness!  Now, we have taken measures to enhance her site, by making investments in time, energy and money so that the risk of future attack can be minimized.

Our bodies are a lot like that webpage, with one big difference – we come designed with an innate, God given immune system already in place to prevent body sickness; we don’t have to buy it, install it, set it up or update it.  But, like the webpage, we do have to invest in it to keep it functioning optimally by giving it everything it needs and preventing it from being poisoned by what it doesn’t need.  Unfortunately, we often neglect the care of our bodies until it’s either too late or we have suffered a significant health setback that forces our hand – and even then we may not do a good job.

Don’t wait for a malware attack to start looking after yourself!  Start now!  Eat well, think well, move well – and get your nervous system in shape by getting adjusted.

The post Preventing Malware! first appeared on Martin Chiropractic.

Perhaps one of the most common questions we ask people when we begin a conversation is, “How are you?”, to which the answer is almost always “I’m fine thanks, and you?”  Perhaps the best reply should then be, “now tell me the truth!” We can learn a lot from this little conversation starter, because everyone who feels fine will always assume they are fine – the problem is, that is simply not true.

The biggest myth in healthcare is, “If I feel good, I must be healthy”, and it is also the primary focus of most healthcare providers – get people feeling good again, and while that is not a bad thing, the simple alleviation of symptoms does not mean restoration of health.   This thinking also applies to test results – if the results can be returned to normal, then I must be healthy.  Again, not necessarily true.

Perhaps the easiest example is a headache or back ache.  If we take pain pills to remove the symptom of the pain but do not address the cause of the headache or back pain, we are no healthier. Or, if we take drugs to lower cholesterol but don’t address the cause of the elevated cholesterol, are we any healthier?

Perhaps even more serious, we can feel fine one day and be diagnosed with a serious disease the next day – clearly our symptom-free status did not equate to lack of disease.

You can see how this all relates back to the paradigm we operate from when it comes to healthcare.  When symptom relief is the primary focus (often by taking drugs) of our engagement in healthcare, we are selling ourselves short.

The paradigm shift is this – we need to focus on preventing sickness and disease long before we are forced to alleviate the symptoms of disease, and this is done by investing in your body’s innate ability to heal and be well, all through life, right from the beginning.  From the chiropractic perspective, this means adjusting the spine to correct subluxations from interfering with the nervous system, and then maintaining that correction.  When God designed the body, He chose the nervous system to control it, and thus it is the master control system and its health must be maintained.

Thanks for taking the time to read our blog!  We will continue to explore this paradigm next time!

The post The Big Myth first appeared on Martin Chiropractic.

Do you wear glasses? Even if you don’t, you actually do but you just may not know it! Each and every day we all make decisions–some little ones and some very big ones–and we also interpret what’s going on around us all through the lenses through which we see the world, and those lenses are your glasses. Invisible as they might seem, we filter everything that we hear, see, do, think and act all through the filter that these glasses provide and this is often referred to as our worldview. You are probably already wondering what this has to do with your health, but it has everything to do with your health.

The decisions that we make everyday, filtered through these glasses, is sometimes referred to as our paradigm and even though we may not know it, this paradigm will be the driving force behind decisions we make when it comes to our health.

In healthcare there are two overriding philosophies that determine how it is that we engage with the healthcare system and these two philosophies are most easily thought of as an outside-in approach versus an inside-out approach. Simply stated, our traditional allopathic medical model relies heavily on an outside-in approach where the use of pharmaceuticals is often the go to method for care. An obvious example would be taking a Tylenol (outside-in) every time you get a headache. On the other hand, the inside-out approach relies on your bodies innate (inside) ability to look after itself as long as it is given what it needs and restricted from getting what it doesn’t need. The chiropractic example would be adjusting the spine to allow the nervous system to function properly (inside-out), thus alleviating the headache.

In the last couple of blogs, we have learned that the vast majority of chronic health conditions are the result of poor choices that we make, and often these choices include trying to alleviate symptoms from the outside-in as opposed to trying to correct problems and change behaviors that have caused a breakdown in the inside-out approach to health and healing. When we consider how broken our medical healthcare system is when it comes to preventing disease, especially in light of the massive amount of pharmaceuticals that we consume in North America, it really is time that we have a massive paradigm shift in how we engage healthcare. God designed our bodies to look after themselves, but we have a duty to take care of them – not by simply eliminating symptoms when they occur with drugs, or waiting to change lab results by taking medicine – but by giving our bodies everything that they need in order to stay healthy, and this includes a healthy nervous system. As the master control system of everything your body does, a healthy nervous system is vital to a healthy body and in a nutshell that is what we do–adjust the spine to keep the nervous system healthy so the body can function optimally.

When you think about healthcare and how it is that you take care of your body, or the way in which you apply healthcare to your children, you can quickly see that the choices you make for you and your family will come from one of these two healthcare philosophies and we often don’t put a whole a lot of thought into our actions–we just do it because that’s the paradigm we live in.  And paradigms can be very difficult to change, especially if it goes against what appears to be the accepted cultural practice. Just because something is common does not mean that it is normal!

Over the next few blog entries we’ll take a closer look at how our glasses affect our decisions when it comes to health and wellness.

The post We All Wear Glasses first appeared on Martin Chiropractic.