Adding Or Subtracting From Your Future?

Have you ever asked yourself where you want to be with your life in the future? In these instant-gratification, quick-fix, drive-thru days in which we live, people tend to focus on what is happening and how they feel right now. Not feeling good? Pop a pill to ease the pain. Hungry? Grab some fast food. Bored? Turn on the television. Tired? Get a cup of coffee. So many people make decisions and take actions based on a current event, without looking at the possible consequences. Let me ask you, have you ever known a very happy, healthy and successful pill-popping, fast food-eating, 10-hour-a-day television watching person on a constant caffeine high? Me neither. Quick fixes maybe comforting in the moment, but they rarely provide long-term solutions.

I am asking you to think about what you want to be, not in the present moment, but in the future. Let’s take your health as an example. Your health is based on many factors: exercise, diet, nerve supply, rest, genetics, etc., but the key thing to understand is your health today is the result of actions you took (or failed to take) in the past. You may think that how you are today is just a current event, but in reality it is the result of a process. This may sound elementary, but if you take this concept to heart and put it into action, it can literally be life changing. Everything you do today is going to determine how you will be in the future.

This concept of looking at life as a process and not just a single event has been discussed in upper cervical care for decades. There is a concept of “survival values.” Things that we do each day are either positive or negative towards our health and function in the future. Positive activities, such as having a proper nerve supply, eating nutritious foods, resting, etc., are known as “constructive survival values.” On the other hand, negative events like injuries, drugs, toxins, emotional stress, watching 10 hours of television a day, eating fast food, etc., are known as “destructive survival values.” In this model, your life and health are determined by the accumulation of both constructive and destructive survival values over time. When you look at things such as health as a process and not merely an event, you begin to realize the importance of constantly and continually striving to add constructive survival values to your life.

Since health is just one aspect of human performance and human performance is in large part regulated by the nerve system, upper cervical care can play a key role in your health over time. By having upper neck misalignments that can interfere with nerve function gently realigned you allow your body to better express information through the nerve system. This can contribute to better performance and better health, and is a constructive survival value towards your life and can benefit your health in the future.

If you want to be better in the future than you are today, one step in the process is the periodic upper cervical evaluation. Having your spine checked only when you have a symptom simply shows that you are not interested in improving your life in the future and that you are only looking for a quick solution to a current event. While it is true that the upper cervical corrections may provide you with a quick-fix, that is not necessarily the intent. Upper cervical care is in many ways about adding constructive survival values to your life so that you will be better in the future.

The Mentality Of A Throw-Away Society

It is difficult for some of us to realize that we live in a throw-away society. We shake our heads at people who want to throw things out when they do not work and who look at us incredulously when we suggest they try to get them repaired. However, things are no longer meant to be repaired. If something breaks down, you might as well replace it. A while back, our computer’s printer was in need of repair and the parts and labor to fix it were about $100. However, for about the same amount I could buy a whole new printer! This is especially true in business where the costs of new machines can be written off as an expense but it is also true in the home. It does not pay to repair a broken DVD player or most small appliances. Added to that is the fact that we have more electric appliances now than we ever had, including of course, bread machines, power screw drivers, blenders, fax machines, answering machines and on and on ad infinitum.

This phenomenon extends even to automobiles. Of course, we still have auto mechanics but look how many people lease cars rather than buy them. Very few people buy a car with the idea of keeping it 10 or 15 years. Authorities say it is almost always less expensive to repair a car until it rusts away than it is to buy a new one, but we are programmed to get rid of it rather than repair it.

This change in our thinking creates a number of problems. In a time when we are concerned about recycling newspapers, glass containers and plastic and the ever-increasing number of landfills, we are simultaneously throwing out appliances and electronic equipment sometimes for the sake of a two-dollar part. The result is yet another problem, a decreasing number of technical jobs. When foreign labor can make a VCR or a television cheaper than an American worker can repair it, the latter job is no longer necessary. This has tremendous economic repercussions both in jobs lost and in the balance of trade.

Perhaps the greatest problem, however, is just in the attitude that develops about how we care for things. Why bother taking care of an appliance or piece of equipment if you can just buy a new one. It really does not pay to maintain things or have them periodically checked. Unfortunately, this same attitude often carries over into taking care of ourselves. Even though we realize that they make very few replacement parts for the human body, we are nevertheless, not accustomed to taking care of things and we neglect ourselves. The fact that we are constantly bombarded with medical ads for quick fixes for everything from sinus headaches to indigestion only adds to our neglect. Many people do not change their lifestyle after angioplasty or even heart by-pass surgery. They know they can have it done again.

We must realize that there are certain natural laws that have consequences when violated. When the head and neck are misaligned, it can interfere with the function of the nerve system and that impacts upon every aspect of one’s life. You cannot reach or maintain your potential for health; performance at work and/or play is lessened and life’s little problems often become magnified when your head and neck are misaligned. You just cannot get the most out of life. It is nice to know that we are not relegated to the trash pile when something goes wrong in our body, but it is more important to realize that we must care for ourselves in order to have a full and productive life. Upper Cervical Care can help correct and maintain head/neck alignment and proper brain to body communication so that you are more likely to have that full and productive life.