Looking through the lens of health.
Why did I become a chiropractor? Because I looked through the lens of life via the chiropractic health model, and found it to be good. I was in the insurance and investment world in Charlotte, NC when I made the decision (not bashing that world by the way).
I had come out of Buffalo with about three years experience on the sales side of the business. When I moved to Charlotte, it was right after a two and a half week honeymoon. Laura had a job as an OT at a hospital, and I was unemployed. Well, I am an entrepreneur, and because of that I haven’t been unemployed since I started my first business detailing cars at 16 years old. I find it hard to imagine how those doctors would let me pick p their Porsches and Mercedes, brand new Acura NSX the month it came out, back to my house so that I could clean them. I must have looked really trustworthy .. fortunately I was when it came to their belongings. But I digress…
So I was in Charlotte, but working my Buffalo clientele from a home office, when I got a job with GE Capital as a manager of a the sales force of a Life of Virginia insurance office they had just taken over. 24 years old, loving the freedom of my schedule as I golfed three times a week, every week. I was good at my job because my wife worked a lot, so I could do the same. Knocking on doors was easy for me, and I always was confident that I had something good to offer. I quickly became comfortable as the funny Northerner in a Southern world.
But when my back “went out” and floored me for three days (literally, I could not get up), something had to change. By the third day, I had gotten really good at crawling slowly from the kitchen to the living room where I laid on the dogs bed (softest thing we had for a floor), and watched TV, hoping something would change. Over the next few days as I improved, it struck me that I actually had insurance from the incredible company of GE (I had never used it up to now, but had heard the employees with families rave about the quality of our insurance). So I went to a chiropractor, and that was it. Before I felt any change in my body, I had a complete change in my heart and my mind.
After starting college in the medical world in a pre-med pathway, coming out of the home of a pharmacist, and largely being educated by the model of health that governs this world. I turned my back on it completely for this beautiful model of health, based on vitality and healing from the inside out. I was raised in a Godly home, and though I wasn’t pursuing God in my life, He was in my underlying script of what is right and true. It all fit.
So fast forward a couple years. I am in school at Life University, uprooted Laura from our newly started life in Charlotte to hop down to Atlanta. I found myself looking for health, I wanted it more and more, and began to see it as a means of honoring God through my commitment to health. At times, I most definitely went too far with how I looked at it, making it more of a personal thing, and an ego trip, than a commitment for wise reasons. But that change only comes with maturity.
I worked out harder, went and got my personal training certification and started training others. I connected with a few nutritional companies, as well as other health focused companies, hunting for more knowledge with a deeper appreciation of what long term health would mean to my family, and the families of those who I had a chance to lead.
Fast forward another handful of years, and now I am in practice, and have gone through the growth and development of several other offices, I have seen many other doctors come and go, and I have witnessed the difference in philosophical focus. And at this time I have come to realize that more important than knowledge, and understanding of science or nutrition, more than anything else that I might have thought important, was philosophy, or what I simply began to refer to as the lens.
Andy Stanley (pastor of Northpoint Community Church) often uses the lens terminology to describe looking at something. And I began to apply this philosophical belief to how I looked at everything.
God has a plan. One for everything, including health. If one were to apply his lens to every decision that impacted health, they would simply become healthier.
It is this VERY SIMPLE idea, that found success for our office with so many people. And it is why my answers are sometimes to simple for many of your tastes. “Dr. Eric, what should I do when…” and of course my response, “maintain your spine, eat right, rest and heal”.
Let me give just a little detail here, and then let you take this into your day.
Your brain is the most incredible creation on the planet, this is not argued by many, outside of the word creation. It controls all aspects of the human body, also not argued. Thus, ensuring that your spine works well is paramount to health. The only thing that ever changes with this truth, is your commitment to it because life gets busy, and PREVENTION begins to fade in importance. This is a God lens… else you could tell me why God protected the brain and spinal cord more than anything else, and it not be most important?
Gifts from God come with no strings attached. Medication from man comes with MANY strings attached. If medication is a gift from God, then why does it carry such incredible risk? Side effects that cause disease and death? Are there times when it is favorable to use a med? Of course, but then, have you known as many people as I have known who have died because of that choice? Ask their families if their meds were a gift from God. So IN ABSOLUTELY NO CASE is a drug a gift from God, unless there is NO CHANCE that the drug will hurt you. His gift is a path to live drug free in the first place. Again, don’t mis-read. Will I use a drug in my life? Yes. But I will understand that His gifts, His good and perfect gifts come without strings. If there is a string attached, then it is more from man than Him, and I would pray that he spare me the side effects.
The body was built to accomplish great things physically. The Bible gives great testimony to these great physical accomplishments. Is the Bible not a blueprint for living? Therefore, are you to be idle or to be active? Looking through that lens of health do you not see an absolute need for physical activity? We could then argue the type, and I would tell you there are more examples of active intense physical living through war and work, than there are of slow moving activity. Get active and get intense.
Last one. Stress. Duh. Of course you should have no stress. But whenever I say it everyone laughs. Chuckles it off. Sorry, you need to fix that. So Christ was kidding during the sermon on the mount. You think 2k years later he is saying, “Oh, just kidding, I only said that for first century laid back farmers, not you fast paced 2k’rs. Go ahead and be stressed, you can’t help it anyways”? I don’t think so. The lens says you are destroying your health, and the lens says that you are to be stress free.
I really think getting adjusted is the greatest piece of this lens, because of two things. First, 99% of our population is destroying their posture every single day. Second, because all other areas of the body are controlled by your nervous system, your posture is killing you.
You cannot feel the value of corrective chiropractic, you cannot see it. It is a silent improvement.
Be well, be blessed, find the lens. – Dr. E