Wanted to thank everyone who took part in the Thanksgiving Day Food Drive. Your generosity made this holiday season just a bit better for our community. All canned goods were given to the Salvation Army. Thanks again.

The known factor in ones ability to heal of any disease or problem is the intelligent life force within the body.

The unknown factor in ones ability to heal is the ignorance of the above. If you can realize your body is self-healing, then you are grasping the truth behind chiropractic. We know the brain generates information to all the cells in the body, over the nerve system, to carry information to all the cells in the body.

We know the spinal bones can shift slightly, causing pressure on the brain stem, or spinal cord. The nerves coming out of the brain only give 100% when they are free from any interference (subluxation). When there is pressure on them, they won't function normally, if at all. Thus if 1,000,000 fibers are pressed upon going to the heart, or any part of the body including the feet, those cells won't function correctly, thus DIS-EASE (incoordination/ dysfunction) has begun. When enough cells are dysfunctional, you get symptoms, number one being pain, but there are 1500 different symptoms, telling us there is dysfunction or cell damage.

For us to treat the symptoms and not correct the cause of DIS-EASE, a vertebral subluxation, which is a bone, pressing on the brain stem or spinal cord, would be worthless, unless we cannot offer anything else. You must give us time to correct the spine and reduce the nerve pressure to allow the body to receive the information needed to function correctly. Thus, we do not treat symptoms or disease; we correct a cause, which allows the body to rebuild itself with normal cells versus abnormal cells. It allows the pressure to be removed slowly, the nerves to function normally, to allow the glands in the body that regulate the chemicals to become balanced and restores normal function or healing.

For some, depending on the condition of the spine, how much nerve pressure there is, and the ability of the body to respond, it may take a long period of time, not to have symptoms or disease to go away, but to correct the spine and have it functioning properly once again.

People who understand and are serious about returning to their full potential agree that chiropractic, like any healthy habit, is something that should be done from birth to death and these people come in with their families to get their spines checked and adjusted as needed on a regular basis. Those that don't or won't understand, or aren't concerned about future health, will simply come in for symptom relief, which will temporarily make you more comfortable while your body continues to build itself sick, instead of healthy. How you value your health and life is up to you after all, YOU'RE THE BOSS.

Science acknowledges both entities and non-entities. However, its attention is always directed toward the entity. Lets look at some examples.

Sound is an entity. We can create it by clapping our hands, speaking or turning on the radio. It is measured in decibels. Silence, on the other hand, is the absence of sound. It is a non-entity.

Light and darkness are probably the best examples. Light is the entity. We can create it by striking a match or flicking a switch. Darkness, on the other hand, is the non-entity. It is only manifested when the light or its source is removed. We measure light in watts or lumens. When the light is turned on, what happens to the darkness? It doesn't collect in a small pile in the corner or slip out under a crack in the door. It simply does not exist as a tangible entity. All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light from one candle. Darkness cannot overcome light.

Science deals with entities. But somehow when medicine began to investigate the issues of health and disease, they chose to make disease the entity and health the nonentity. Perhaps it is because the manifestations of disease are so much more noticeable than the manifestations of health. They are not the norm so they tend to stand out more. Regardless of why, the fact is that health is the normal state of an organism, so that when the organism manifests a lack of health, it catches our attention. It is very much like our analogy of light and darkness. We take light for granted. We think nothing of walking into a dark room, flipping a switch and have it suddenly be as bright as noonday. If we had never seen it, perhaps we would be surprised, shocked or awed. But it becomes a normal act of everyday life. The same is true for a properly functioning healthy body. We don't go to bed at night and say, "Wow, my respiratory system really worked well today!" As we lay our head on our pillow at night very few of us reflect how our heart beats over 100,000 times during the course of the day. We take health, like light, for granted. Most people when asked how they are, will say, "fine' or "okay" without really thinking about it. It's probably because we know that the person asking the question really does not want an organ-by-organ, system-by-system report on our bodily functions. Like light, we take health for granted. It is only when the two are gone and the accompanying manifestations of a lack of light or health, are evident, that we begin to act. Unfortunately, it is usually in the direction of alleviating the manifestations of that lack of health, instead of addressing the cause of it or working to restore the lost health.

What are some of the manifestations of lack of light? The inability to move about confidently without harm is one. How many of us have banged our toe into a dresser or chair in a darkened bedroom in the middle of the night? What should we do? If we are cause/entity oriented, we turn on a light. If we are effects/non-entity oriented, we grope along like a blind person taking small, slow steps. Granted, we may treat the effects because our spouse is sound asleep, but we recognize that the better approach is to turn on the light.

Health is the entity, something to be attained. Or perhaps more technically, life is the entity. Life and health are in a sense synonymous terms. We have been able to measure the absolute aspect of life. Science can determine with a fairly good degree of certainty if a person is alive or dead. But we have not yet developed the technology to measure the relative aspect of life, what we call "health." We acknowledge it with such phrases as, "he is not experiencing life to the fullest" or the "quality of life," or "his life is slipping away." What we are alluding to is that life is the entity. A full complement of life is total physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional health. It can be lost, to a degree or totally. When it is lost totally, we describe that person as dead because they manifest certain signs and symptoms. Years ago, the lack of a heartbeat or the absence of breathing were the manifestations of a lack of life. The medical/legal community more recently has come to the conclusion that a person can be dead before these signs appear, and even "brought back" after they have appeared. Whatever the exact point, at some time an absence of life occurs and eventually that absence of life manifests signs. It also happens on a relative level. At some time an absence of health occurs in individuals and eventually that void manifests signs and symptoms that are referred to as "disease." Just as a person can be pronounced dead while certain functions continue, a person can be partially dead (lacking health) while appearing to be perfectly normal.

Two Approaches to Health
Throughout history, all approaches to the physical well-being of members of the human race have fallen into two general categories that reflect what we are going to call the ADIO (health restoration) and the OIBU (disease treatment) philosophies of life and health, which are health-restoring and disease-treating.

ADIO (Above-down-inside-out)
This acronym represents the health-restoration approach. It acknowledges that health is the result of a power or principle greater than or "above" our finite, educated mind. It also understands that the physical manifestation of this principle in the human organism, the electrical energy of the nervous system, flows over the nerves from the brain "above" -"down" the spinal cord and "outward" to all parts.

OIBU (Outside-in-below-up)
This acronym represents the contrasting or disease treatment approach. It attempts to control the body and its function or malfunction from the outside. Those that practice this approach believe that an educated mind is better equipped to run the body than the principle that created it. While they may not admit this, their actions bespeak an outside-in viewpoint. Let's look at how these approaches contrast. We will look at OIBU first since it is the most common approach.

Disease Treatment (OIBU)
In the disease-treatment approach, the symptoms or effects of the disease are treated while the body either gets well from the condition or does not, depending upon the body's inherent ability. For example, an individual suffering with the common cold will be treated for its effects -runny nose, sneezing, coughing, low-grade fever, etc. Eventually, the body will rid itself of the virus or bacteria and/or at least reduce its effect by raising the resistance of the tissues to the degree that the disease either no longer manifests itself as symptoms or is no longer present. The treatment of the symptoms has been primarily directed toward making the patient comfortable until the body cured the disease. The practice of medicine is the most well-known discipline directing its efforts in the disease-treatment approach. Much of its practice has been confined to the alleviation of symptoms until the healing process takes place. Pain-killing drugs are probably the most widely used treatment in this aspect of medical practice.

As the practice of medicine has become more technical and advanced, particularly in the latter half of the twentieth century, attention has been directed more toward treating the "cause" of a disease, or the most evident cause (which is usually the last to appear) rather than just confining efforts toward alleviating symptoms. The ultimate example of this effort is demonstrated by the practice of surgery. For example, the most evident cause of gall bladder pain is a malfunctioning gall bladder. Rather than medicate to relieve the pain, the offending organ, unarguably a cause of the pain, is removed. This aspect of the disease-treatment approach has achieved the most dramatic results, but is not without its limitations. One can live without a gall bladder, although, not as well as with one. The brain, liver, and heart present a greater challenge. Medicine has been working diligently toward meeting that challenge. As a result, some very dramatic accomplishments have been seen. Heart transplants, liver transplants, and kidney transplants are examples. In the disease-treatment approach, continued success is largely dependent upon advances in technology. This works out well in a technological age and in a society that is enamored with continual technical advances. Of course, the down side of this approach is the fact that technology and its accompanying research have a high cost. This creates an economic burden on much of the world, a burden that most cannot bear. Even in a country as wealthy as the United States, the cost of disease-treatment technology is growing far faster than the average American's income so that it becomes largely unaffordable. If medicine is to progress in its battle to overcome disease, it must constantly have more sophisticated and greater numbers of weapons to do battle with disease; just as a military establishment must have greater and greater weapons to secure victory on the battlefield.

Let us now compare the philosophy of the disease treatment approach with the health-restoration approach. If we are ever to experience abundant health and end the frustration of fighting diseases, we must begin to look at health and disease from a different perspective.

Health Restoration (ADIO)
Presently, the accepted worldview is that disease is an entity, something to be covered up, negated, destroyed or cut out. That is essentially the medical objective. Health is viewed as an absence of disease, rather than disease being seen as the absence of health. When the disease is removed or eliminated, a void is left which they call "health."

Until we view health as the entity which can be created, enhanced, increased, decreased, destroyed, or lost, and realize that disease is merely an absence of health, that symptoms are manifestations of that absence, we will never experience our full potential in life.

The Bucket Analogy...
Let's look at an analogy. Our body is like a large bucket, a health and life container, if you will. Health is like the contents of the bucket. By eating properly, getting the proper rest, exercising regularly, maintaining a positive mental attitude, and attending to the other health-promoting measures, we are adding to the contents of the bucket. Reduce any one of them and you diminish the level of health. They all add to the level. No single one of them assures health. But together they combine to fill our body (the bucket) with health. We can diminish the flow into the bucket by diminishing the amount being added. There is also a maximum limit that we can add of each component of health. They are like faucets. There is a maximum flow. There is a sufficient diet. Any more doesn't add to it. More exercise than is necessary does not increase the flow into the bucket. Getting more rest than you need does not increase the flow. In fact, too much of the above can have a detrimental effect upon the body, just as too much hot water in your morning shower will burn you. If we continually add the maximum of each component, we can expect a lifetime of health.

You would think that constantly adding to the contents, constantly adding to health, would cause the bucket to overflow in a short period of time. Life would be great if we all "overflowed with health." Unfortunately, the problem with our bucket is that it has some holes in it. Through these holes leak the contents of the bucket. The first and most important hole is near the top. This is the hereditary factor. Actually, it is at a different level for everyone. It is like the hole at the top of the bathroom sink to prevent it from running over. Each one of us has been given a genetic potential for health, a level that we can reach, established by our genetic makeup. It has been said; if you want to be healthy, first choose your grandparents wisely. Each of us has a level of health we can reach and for each it is different. That may be one reason why some people who appear to take care of their health die at age 60 while others who obviously do not, live to be 100. Our objective in life, relative to health, should be to reach our potential. Probably very few ever attain their genetic health potential. One thing is sure; none of us are going to pass it. We lose our health through other holes in the bucket. We continually deplete our health; hence the need to continually replenish the volume. The holes are caused by the stress of life, by traumas (major and minor), by the pollutants in our environment, by the poisons we take into our bodies in the form of additives, preservatives, and other chemicals in our food and water. The aging process itself robs the body of some of its health. Some of the holes can be repaired to a greater or lesser degree. How large the holes are will determine to a degree the level of health. The larger the holes, the more conscious we must be about "adding" to our health level.

Unfortunately, those people who seem to have the greatest number and the largest leaks in their bucket, for some reason do not have or take the time to concentrate on refilling the bucket. Often patients will say to me, "I know I should come in more regularly for care, but I'm just so busy with..." and then they tell about their two jobs, civic, church and family responsibilities, the softball team, the yard work, and the list goes on. The person who does not have the time to exercise regularly is the person who needs it the most. You cannot have health "leaking" out the holes without replenishing the supply just as quickly. For if you allow your health drained off without refilling it, disease is the result.

Disease is merely a manifestation that your health is being reduced to dangerous levels. When our health volume is reduced, either from creating new holes, failing to close off or at least minimize the size of those we can, and failing to replenish the health level at a sufficient rate, disease is a manifestation. The first manifestation is lowered resistance, reduced potential and then warnings from the body that a dangerous volume drop is occurring. Unfortunately, most human beings have developed the ability to ignore these warnings, either by not paying attention to the body's warning systems or by covering them up with over-the-counter drugs. Those warnings may include just not feeling good, sluggishness, non-specific symptoms, tiredness and irritability. We have all experienced them for one reason or another, from time to time. It is the body's early warning system that dangerous levels are being reached. The oil light on your dashboard says that your oil level is low, and if not increased, the engine may experience severe and costly damage. Why do we pay attention to the warning light on a car telling us the oil level is low, but ignore the signs that our body's health level is low? The level continues to decrease until disease results. The cause of the disease is a low health level in the body. The reduction in the health level may be related to the specific aspects of health that have been ignored, such as insufficient diet, lack of rest or exercise or any combination of the above. The signs and symptoms of a particular disease will depend upon which aspect or aspects of health are most lacking. For example, if your diet is insufficient, the disease manifestation may be associated with a lowered resistance due to lack of vitamins and minerals. Your nutrition faucet is merely dripping into your bucket! What goes INTO your bucket constitutes primary and secondary causes of health. The holes in the bucket are the last causes to appear, or tertiary (third level) causes. In this example, the tertiary causes could be microorganisms (bacteria and viruses) in the environment. Sadly, the practice of medicine has been and continues to be addressing the tertiary factors with first aid. Medicine puts Band-Aids over the holes in the bucket. Depending upon the size of the hole, the number of holes and the effectiveness of the bandage, the holes may be plugged up for a short or long time. The individual, with the leakage temporarily stopped, will continue to add, probably with little effort, to his health level. The level will rise sufficiently to pass the disease manifestation level, and the person then thinks the Band-Aid got him well. Usually this addition is in the form of getting more rest and improving the diet. For some reason, being sick usually forces us to go to bed and to eat better. Antibiotics are a good example of putting a Band-Aid over the hole. Bacteria in the environment create a hole in our bucket, a negative to our health. But as long as we are doing those things necessary to keep our health level above the "resistance" mark, we are fine. When it drops due to lack of rest, poor eating habits, lack of exercise, or whatever reason(s), the manifestation of lack of health that we call disease, occurs. The medical doctor uses the antibiotic as a Band-Aid, the level rises and we get well thinking it was the antibiotic that cured us. It merely slowed the loss of health (by inhibiting bacterial growth) while the individual restored more health by probably taking better care of himself. The Band-Aid is only a short-term fix and eventually the disease will return unless the person concentrates on keeping the health level high. If the level is not kept high, the person's health level will again be reduced to the disease mark. Depending on secondary or tertiary causes, then the same or a different manifestation (different disease) will occur when the disease level is reached.

If a person goes through life continually draining off health without replenishing it, the bucket will eventually be empty. We have come to believe that it is a disease that eventually "does us in." Often we think it is one that has caught us" unaware", without any indication of its presence, like a heart attack or a malignant cancer. The real fact is that we have spent years and years draining off the health from our body without adequately restoring it. When the bucket eventually empties, we die. The attending physician writes on the death certificate as the cause, whatever was manifesting itself at the end. What he should be writing on the certificate is "died due to ignoring health-depleting factors throughout his entire lifetime and by failing to adequately replenish his health level." I doubt that the above will appear on a death certificate in the near future!

Finding the Answers
If we are to experience real health we must understand the above and we must be able to apply this above-down-inside-out thinking to the real-life issue of addressing health-raising measures and health-depleting measures.

It would be easy to say that everything you ever learned about health is wrong and what I am going to tell you what is right. It is true that you have probably been taught many incorrect things over the years but the majority of what you have been taught is true. However, while true, the information you have received has largely been incomplete and that presents a real problem. The instructions for building a model airplane may be accurate in every detail but if steps 7, 12, 15, 18-22 and 27 are missing, only a good deal of luck will prevent your B-29 from looking like something the Wright brothers flew. Incomplete information has been one of the biggest problems with health care in the world for the past one hundred years. People simply have not had all the information they needed to make intelligent decisions regarding their health. Without all of the information, we are in trouble. Part of the problem has been a lack of available information. The human body is probably the most studied piece of "machinery" in the entire world and yet remains one of the least understood. While it is true that more and more is being learned every day, some authorities estimate that we know less than 1/10 of 1% of what there is to know about human physiology. As a result we have been guessing as to what to do in steps 7, 12, 15....

It would be the height of arrogance to presume that one has all the answers to life and health when thousands of books have been written on the subject already, all of which have failed to have any appreciable effect upon the level of health in the world. One purpose of my newsletters is to help people recognize the truth when they see it, to separate the truth from the error. Their intent is to give you an outlook, a way of seeing and thinking that will enable you to discern truth from error, half truths from the whole truth and to fill in the blanks for your life and health. We have called this outlook the "above-down inside-out viewpoint" or "ADIO." There are answers to just about every health problem and question that confront members of human race. They are there if you know where to look and how to recognize them when you see them. Ironically, most of the answers can be found within your own self. Have you ever had someone explain something to you and you say, "I should have known that" or "I knew that, I just didn't realize it was the correct answer?" Hopefully, that will be your response to many of the concepts in my newsletters.

What I am presenting is a life and health view that if understood, can provide you with the ability to find the answers YOURSELF. Every student going through school would like to be given all the answers for every quiz, test and examination. Fortunately, teachers know that is not what education is about. They may give you a few answers as examples but the real key to learning is to understand concepts and principles and be able to apply them to situations, questions and problems. That is true learning. That is what we are about. So, let's learn about health...

In next month's newsletter I will explain what role chiropractic plays in the Bucket analogy.

Winter is here - the cold season. Nearly everyone at one point or another will have a cold. In one year alone, Americans spend the equivalent of the national budget of all the Central American countries combined on cold remedies, a whopping $ 6 billion dollars, trying to alleviate or "cure" their colds. All this in vain and at the expense of the liver, kidneys and over-all body chemistry, not to mention the pocketbook. In a futile attempt to gain temporary relief, we destroy our long-range health. All drugs, whether over-the-counter or prescribed, have side effects.

Our society still regards a cold as an illness we "catch" from someone who had it before us. Not so! A cold is a normal, natural cleansing process. It is our body's biological way of adapting to environmental changes that occur in the fall as we move into winter, and then again in the spring as summer arrives.

Colds occur at times when all of life outside goes through profound changes. In the fall, trees are shedding their leaves, lawns are turning brown, animals' furs are becoming thicker, bees are moving underground, the list goes on as all of nature undergoes transformation.

By spring the resurgence of life can be seen everywhere as trees and shrubs buds, grass turns green, flowers spring up, and animals shed their winter coats. We, as human beings, are part of nature, not apart from it. We are alive and, just like the rest of nature, are going through similar changes. We label this a cold!

The symptoms we experience-stuffy nose, sneezing, coughing, scratchy throat, running eyes and fever-are normal processes our body goes through in order to clean the sinuses and upper respiratory tract. In other words, a cold is the "menstruation" or shedding of the mucus lining of the sinuses and upper respiratory system. No amount of medication will stop the process. Instead, it will temporarily suppress the symptoms while rendering the body more toxic. As the late Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, M.D. put it in his book Confession of a Medical Heretic, "A cold with medication lasts a week. Without it, it lasts seven days!"

Yet by suppressing the symptoms of a cold we may be paying dearly down the line. Recent studies have uncovered that during a cold, the body activate protein P53, an antimutagen agent instrumental in preventing cancer. Who knows if the increase in cancer rate may be due to something as simple as society interfering with a normal biological process?

Contrary to popular belief, colds are not caused by viruses. Viruses may be present while we have a cold but this does not make them the causative agent. England's Common Cold Research Unit established in 1946 in Salisbury has been a pioneering institution in the worldwide study of transmission, treatment and prevention of colds. Every year 400 volunteers spend weeks at the lavish research facility where they are given nose drops that contain Rhinoviruses (cold viruses). As of 1993, 47 years and 18,800 volunteers later, less than one third of the tested subjects ever get a cold. And that is because the one third who react to the artificial, unnatural swabbing of Rhinoviruses have a weakened immune system to start with. Viruses do not cause colds, no more than flies bring garbage. Viruses may be present during a cold but they are not the cause of it.

Chiropractic care clears the nervous system of interference caused by vertebral subluxations. It allows the body to function better, express life more fully, provides greater resistance to sickness and disease and ensures greater immune response. In this sense, it facilitates the shedding, cleansing process of the cold. The only side effect of the adjustment is improved performance of the body and a greater ability to adapt to changes.

So the next time you have a cold -remember- you did not catch it from someone who had it before you. If you did, that someone would have caught it from someone who had it before them. This would mean that Adam, the first man, must have had a cold to pass it on to others down through history. But then, from whom did he "catch" it?