It has been a little while since the last blog post because we have been working on the website and the changes should be going into effect the next few weeks. Recently I was reading The Harvester by Gene Stratton-Porter with my wife. I enjoyed the book but there was a quote from the book that stuck out to me that illustrates an important point. A little background for context: there is a character that has had a hard life living in poor conditions, overworking, and not having proper nutrition who is now out in the country trying to recover and hoping for a quick recovery. The person caring for her gives this wise advice.
You can’t expect to sin steadily against the laws of health for years, and recover in a day.
Health and Sickness Take Time
I thought about this and considered how often do people do this? They live their lives in a way that is not conducive to health. Then when they do decide to take better care of their health, they often give up because the results they wanted didn’t come in a day or weeks or whatever time frame they were expecting. The principle that people often ignore or forget about is TIME. This is actually one of the 33 Chiropractic Principles. Principle six is the principle of time and states “there is no process that does not require time.” This is true for the process of getting a body that is unhealthy as well as getting a body that is healthy. It takes time for the neglect of years to take its toll on a body. After those years of neglect, it is going to take time for the body to be able to make the necessary repairs to become healthy again. It is not an instantaneous process – it takes time!
Health Through Eating
Let’s look at a couple of examples. Have you ever heard “you are what you eat”? Well this is true because what you take in when you eat become the building blocks that your body uses to make repairs and grow. So if you are eating junk for years and years and not giving your body all the nutrients it needs, your body is not going to be able to make repairs the best that it can. In addition, the body needs to process and either use, store or get rid of everything that you eat whether it is good food or junk. There are limits to what the body can process and get rid of, so if you’re eating a lot of junk food, you start storing that junk in your body. Even after you start eating healthy things, it is still going to take time to make the repairs and to get rid of all the junk that your body had to store.
Health Through Chiropractic
Chiropractic care is also similar in that it takes time to work. If you have poor posture that puts excess stress on your spine and has been doing so for years, one visit or adjustment is not all going to take care of the problem over night. The body learns to accept a certain position and it becomes ‘normal’ to the body. So when you start making changes, it takes time for the muscles and ligaments to become used to this better and healthier posture before it becomes ‘normal’ again. Even after you feel better it is important to have regular visits to help maintain the progress you have made because if you aren’t make specific efforts to maintain it, the body can slip back to the way it was.
In closing, don’t get discouraged if you do not see the health results you want right away. It most likely took years to get where you are, it is going to take time to heal and repair.
