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.