This month, let’s take a minute and try and understand what it means to be healthy.  We’ve talked a lot about health, but how we define it can be quite different.  Some people might say to be healthy is not to be sick; to feel good; to be happy; to have mobility; to be free of any type of ailment.  No matter how we define health, most people would rate their health based entirely on their pain scale. The better we feel, the healthier we are.  But is that really all there is to it?

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.