O T L / H E A LT H
Muscle Evaluation and Activation:
The New Frontier STORY BY DR. JEFF LUKE As a chiropractor, I often take on the role of educator to empower my clients to realize their health and wellness goals. And because you are with yourself more than you are in my office, it is important to include you in the process. Therefore, I have found it is far easier to enlighten a person’s perspective on health and healing than trying to do it all myself. By being more of a Sherpa than a Guru, I guide clients to see the world and their bodies in a new light. I recommend therapeutic movement and exercise; foods to eat or avoid; and ways to improve mental state. By allowing my clients to choose and own their personal healing path, individuals reclaim their health and becoming their body’s ally. Rather than sit back passively and wait for someone else to make them well, they grab it by the horns. Consumer health care has conditioned people to adopt several disempowering beliefs towards what health is, and how to attain it. Many people feel they can simply hand over their ‘health’ to their healthcare provider and return in an hour to pick it up. We have also been conditioned as consumers to expect to feel better yesterday and have someone else pay for it. We are constantly seeking a magic bullet or pill, but do not actually believe in magic. By reframing what true health and wellness is and how it is attained, my clients, again, are empowered to be their own body’s ally.
The truth is that the body was designed to self-heal and self-regulate, and when given the correct internal and external environment, the body can do seemingly miraculous things. We often forget that the power that made the body, heals the body and that that power did not leave you when you left mom. Armed with this understanding, we can see how the body is always doing the best it can with what it has at a given moment for the overall betterment of you and with the end goal of survival in mind. Consider that chronically swollen ankle as your body’s own cast, immobilizing inadequately healed tissue. Is this dysfunction or the body’s innate intelligence at play? In a very general sense, three avenues influence our health, positively or negatively. These avenues are the mental (Emotional), physical (Structural), and environmental (Chemical). Our unique combination of these three influencers of health equates to our personal health state. Each avenue works with the others to establish and maintain homeostasis towards the goal of survival. Just as this relationship between the three avenues can beneficially impact our health and healing capacity, so too can it be detrimental. Special attention must be paid to each avenue to correctly identify causative factors to symptoms or dysfunction so that appropriate treatment may be provided to maximize healing time and potential.
EMOTIONAL Whether you think you can or think you cannot – you are correct. The same is true for our mindset around healing. Unaddressed and unresolved mental and emotional stress can hinder healing and contribute to pain. Visualize the posture of someone grieving, now oppose that to someone is who just made a million dollars in cryptocurrency. And because of the interconnected avenues our emotional state is heavily influenced by our diet and gut health. For example, feeling moody when hungry and tired after meals are potential signs of blood sugar dysregulation.
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THE ‘O’ ISSUE 2021
