“The most common symptom of curable colon cancer is NOTHING”.

This is on the billboard sign on M 59 at Van Dyke Expressway in honor of Colon Cancer Awareness.    

This sign can actually be taken a step further.  The most common symptom of ____________is NOTHING.  You can fill in the blank with many diseases (heart attack, cancer, etc).  My question to you is when do you take action and focus on your health or lack of health?     Do you wait for symptoms to show up (reactive)?  Are you proactive?

Some of us may have a belief that was taught to us by those around us or the American society.  If you have SYMPTOMS, you are NOT HEALTHY.  If you have NO SYMPTOMS, you are HEALTHY. 

The lack of symptoms, does not indicate health.  And vice versa, the presence of symptoms does not indicate the lack of health.  It cannot get any more confusing, can it?  Let me explain this.

Let’s start with the presence of symptoms; symptoms like fever, vomiting, diarrhea.  These symptoms can be a healthy response.  For example, you may have just eaten something that is toxic which has created food poisoning in your body.  Your body wants to get rid of the food as fast as possible from all directions so that the toxins do minimal damage.  Another example of these symptoms being a healthy response, is in the case of a bacteria or virus entering your body.  The body may create these symptoms in order to kill the bacteria or virus.  In these two examples, what would happen if you stopped these symptoms?  The food, bacteria or virus could create a bigger problem; more sickness; more destruction.  These symptoms are good even though they may not feel well.

What about symptoms such as aches, pain, numbness and tingling.  Are these healthy symptoms?  Probably not.  These symptoms usually are your body’s warning signals going off.  “Houston we have a problem”!  Each person has a choice on how they deal with these types of symptoms.  First, you can choose to cover up these warning symptoms with medications.  Second, you can choose to listen to your body and seek help to find and correct the cause.  I will tell you that you can NOT correct the cause of these symptoms with a medication because the cause of the problem is not a lack of a medication.  If you choose to cover up the symptoms with medications it would be like the following example.   When the engine light goes off in your car, you take duct tape and put it over the light so that you cannot see the light anymore.  Is the problem with your car gone?  What will happen eventually with your car if you took this approach and never searched for the cause of the engine light going on?  My guess is that the car would eventually not work any longer.  You then would be forced to do what you could have chosen to do when the engine light originally went on  You could have taken it to the mechanic and had them search for the cause of the engine light going on.  Had the repair and your car would continue to run smoothly.  My point of all of this is that when there are symptoms present, don’t ignore them.  Don’t cover them up with medication.  Find the cause, because your body is attempting to alert you that there is a serious problem going on inside.

This leads us to when your body has no symptoms.  This situation can be the most challenging, especially if you have the mentality “if it is not broke then don’t fix it”.  If you judge your health like a big portion of our American society (as mentioned above), then you would believe that if you have no symptoms then you are healthy.  Let’s revisit the billboard sign by the medical doctor that stated, “The most common symptom of curable colon cancer is NOTHING.  So if you are waiting for a symptom to show up to take action, then you are a time bomb waiting to happen. 

 I urge you to take a proactive approach when it comes to your health.  Take care of your health and your body.  You are only given one body for your entire lifetime.  Invest in it, both time and money.  Invest in nutritious food, clean water, exercise, chiropractic care, proper amount of sleep are a few examples. 

How you invest in your health today, will determine the quality of life you will have in your future.  What do you want your retirement years to look like?  Are you wanting to create quantity (maximum number of years), quality (able to do the things you enjoy doing), or BOTH?   

Dr. Pam Tomaszycki, D.C.