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.
