Don’t Wait

Most of the time when we think about our health, we instantly move our thoughts to the amount of pain we are currently dealing with. If we feel well we deem ourselves fine. Or we imagine how well we’ve felt in generally in our lifetime and label ourselves healthy or unhealthy. The problem with this outlook is that pain is a poor metric of health. It’s simply the tip of the iceberg. The iceberg only reveals the tiniest portion of itself above the surface of the water. The true size and nature lies hidden below the surface. When a ship runs afoul of what looks like a small piece of ice, it’s error is quickly revealed.

My question is this: are we aware that our health can function in a very similar way? Normal one minute and less than ideal the next. Or do we live as if we are invincible? Like we will never be sick and we will never slow down? The truth is that our health, if not looked after properly, can be much like an iceberg. Meaning: many illnesses, diseases, and health issues appear to crop up instantly or surprisingly, but most have a long running underlying cause. That seemingly reveal itself in an instant, but rather have been brewing for much, much longer. So for instance, in the case of heart disease, a heart attack that just occurred, may have been building for years prior.

Most diseases that kill us, do take awhile to form, but most are also lifestyle related. This means, you are in the driver seat. You don’t have to be a victim. You don’t have to sit back and wait for a disaster, a bad diagnosis, or terrible health report. You can take control of your health and greatly improve your long term health picture.

Some of the most common preventable diseases are diabetes, some cancers, stroke, heart disease, and lung disease. That’s not to say, that in some cases, these diseases can sometimes occur and were unpreventable. That can happen. It does mean, however, all your risk of these issues can be improved with certain lifestyle choices. Here are some easy ways to potentially decrease your risks of the most common preventable diseases:

1) Stop smoking: shouldn’t this be obvious now? Save money and save your health.
2) Lose weight: this can help with your risk of heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers, and stroke. Simply put, we all need to move daily and focus on eating more fruits/veggies and less processed food.
3) Decrease stress: exercise, daily journaling, and daily prayer/mediation have all been thought to help with stress, which is a factor in depression, hypertension, and even heart disease.
4) Visit you chiropractor: Chiropractic is not a treatment of those preventable diseases. However, a common complaint I hear in our offices when first meeting someone is that back pain prevents them from daily exercise. Movement helps control weight, decrease stress, and decrease depression. Moreover, chiropractic is going to make sure your nerve system is working effectively and thus, your brain can communicate with your body and maintain health.
5) Drink more water: I think most people are dehydrated. Your body doesn’t run well like this. Try drinking at least 64 ounces daily and, depending on your activity level or your size, you may need more.

Don’t wait for your health to fail. I’d love to be invincible, but we are not. There is no free lunch, and when it comes to our health, each choice we make today is helping inform what our future looks like. My advice to all of us, is to do your best, take your best shot and stack the odds in your favor by making good choices today that create life long good health. There are icebergs out there in many shapes and forms, but the more we are prepared and the better we understand how are health can be fortified, the less damage and devastation they can cause us.