Chiropractic and Personal Health

My name is Dr. David Hadden, with O'Fallon Crossing Chiropractic. It's mid-May in Missouri, and my gosh, it feels like summer already. Hope you guys are finding some way to stay cool out there. Get in the air condition or get ready for those pools to open up. But.

Either way, I wanted to come on this morning and today I wanted to talk about the word health. The word health, it gets thrown around a lot nowadays. The health industry has really exploded in the last, I don't know, decade or so, and there's a lot of aspects of health people talk about a lot and different things like that.

Nutrition is one, right? There's all kind of different nutritionists and different diet programs and things like that. When it comes to exercise, personal training is really big. There's all kinds of different work out programs you can subscribe to and get on and things like that, so. The word health and that whole industry, I think it's almost become overwhelming.

There's so much information out there about health. It's hard to know what to do. It's hard to know who to follow or that sort of thing. In my office, as a chiropractor, we talk about health a lot. It's a big thing for else, because not only do we help people get out of pain, we also, even more importantly, we like to focus on getting healthy and staying healthy and preventing any future pain and discomfort and other healthcare types symptoms that can develop from living an unhealthy lifestyle.

In getting asked a lot of questions, I started to realize myself in the last few weeks that I haven't been really taking my own advice, so I haven't been listening to myself. My weight was getting a little higher than I would like it to be and I hadn't been exercising so I was starting to feel tired in the evenings and sluggish and I just didn't feel like I should be feeling like that, so I had to get real with myself and start making some changes of my own, the same thing that I would tell my patients to do.

When it comes to trying to be healthy, really the key is developing good habits. So, we all tend to fall into the bad habits. Eating poorly, sometimes it just seems like it's easier to eat poorly, right? Going through the drive-through or getting those processed foods where you don't have to put much effort into cooking, right?

And I understand that. I get it. I'm guilty of that as well. But the long-term effects of that are much worse than putting in the work to actually make yourself a good meal. Developing good habits of eating. Making a plan to eat properly and same thing with exercise, just to set a plan for how many times you're gonna exercise each week and when you're going to do it and just make it a priority.

If it's a priority on your calendar, your schedule, then you're much more likely to follow through with it. The other key with exercise, what I've found is that it's very important to find something that you like to do, or something that gives you a good feeling. Personally for me, I'm a runner. Ever since I was in high school, I've enjoyed running, and that's the type of exercise I'm gonna go to because I know I like to do it. I'm more likely to follow through with it. Okay?

Now, running to be honest with you is not the best type of exercise because it can be hard on joints like hips and knees and ankles. But I know that's something that I'm gonna do and get that cardiovascular exercise that then I need.

Sometimes, you might find something that you don't like to do but it gives you a good feeling. I've had some patients who, they didn't really like to run ... they knew that once they got going running, they felt good and felt good afterwards and their joints were less stiff and loosened up, and so that's what they were more willing to do because of that feeling that it gave them.

Like I said, find something that you like to do and another good tip is to find someone that wants to do that exercise with you. Have someone keep you accountable. Again, just something that makes you more likely to follow through with that particular type of exercise that you've chosen to do.

So, the other thing I want to talk about as far as health is the method I like is the KISS method. You've all heard that before: Keep it simple silly. We want to keep it simple when we talk about health. Like I said, it can be very overwhelming to get into the health field right now. To try to figure out what to eat, when to eat it, how to exercise, how to reduce stress, all those sorts of things. Keep it simple. We'll probably do videos in the future to get more detailed on things about nutrition, what to eat and when to eat and that sort of thing.

Just really try to keep it simple. Eating things that are natural foods, you know? Lots of fruits and vegetables. Drinking lots of water, especially this time of year. We talked how it's getting hot outside. Your body's going to need more hydration, more water throughout the day. Keep it simple. Keep it smart. Have a plan.

If you do have a question, I'm always available. You can message me or call my office. I'm happy to talk to anyone about these types of things. And then, how does chiropractic fit in with health? So I recommend to most of my patients that they come in for a regular chiropractic adjustment and we do that because chiropractic adjustment is going to help regulate the nervous system and the nervous system is what controls everything in your body, so it helps to control your digestive system. Your immune system. Everything that you need to run all the processes within your body.

Regular chiropractic adjustment keeps the pressure off the nervous system and allows the brain, the spinal cord and that whole system to function more properly, more efficiently. That's kinda how, a brief explanation of how chiropractic fits into the idea of keeping ourselves healthy and living a more healthy lifestyle.

That's really what I love, helping people with that, because I get to see the long-term effects of that and I get to see people just happier in their lives, getting more ... able to do the activities, like whether it's playing golf or playing with their grandkids, doing the things that they like to do and want to do and just getting more out of life than they would have if they were following those same bad habits.

That's my message for today. Thanks again for watching. I hope you got something out of this. Again, you can always message me or give the office a call or check us out on the Internet at www.OFallonCrossingChiropractic.com. All right, thanks a lot everybody, have a good day. We'll talk to you soon.