What Do You Base Health Decisions ON?
We have had a lot of recent conversations with families regarding the best way to improve and maintain the health of a family. Every night we check our emails and messages and get dozens of questions from parents that are scared of something.
It could be flu season, to much heat, food, media time and even sleep regiments. It became apparent that the answer to the question was not necessarily one change that could be made overnight but rather a change in the way that we think about our health.
We broke this into two categories: Strength or Fear
-Either you are making your decisions for the family on a foundation of strength and knowledge or we are making our decisions out of fear.
-Most of the time when we are making health decisions for our family they are made out of fear or are very reactive decisions.
A great example would be the common cold. All of a sudden we wake up and one of our little ones has a runny nose and their congested and crying. As parents, we go into overdrive and pack them full of every possible good thing we can think of and if it doesn’t subside we rush to the doctor for a round of antibiotics.
When we are taking our kids outside to play we fear allergies, the sun, the plants and other sick kids.
We feel that if we can limit our child’s exposure to anything harmful then we have saved them from getting sick or injured.
It can become overwhelming and we tend to react to all of these situations after they have happened. While I can openly admit that this is me 90% of the time we as a family and as a practice have started implementing more and more decisions that are proactive and from a place of strength.
The amazing thing about the body that most of us forget is that it was an amazing capability to handle almost any stress that you put it under.
The Body’s Natural Strength
If you’re out in the sun you will sweat to cool yourself down or if you eat rotten food you will throw it up. Even a broken bone will often heal much stronger than it was before!
As long as your body is working the way that it should we don’t overreact to being outside (allergies, sinus issues) get run down and sick or live with pain.
The strength or resiliency of the body is found in the nervous system.
Your nervous system’s sole responsibility is to adapt to the stresses that the body is under and make sure that everything (heart, lungs, stomach, immune system and brain) is working the way that it should.
We often realize that we have a system that is constantly keeping us as healthy as possible but are not sure how to maintain it.
When we are not sure how to properly maintain it we have to wait for it to become overloaded or run down and then we have no choice but to become reactive with our decisions.
If we won a brand new car or truck and we used it all day every day and we did not know how to maintain it and we didn’t know who to take the vehicle to, it would not be long before the car broke down. We all know that if we are proactive with the maintenance of our vehicles they last for years.
When we decide to take care of something before it shows signs of wear and tear then we know it will last much longer. A great example would be your teeth. You know that if you do not brush your teeth, floss and limit sugar you will eventually develop a cavity.
So the question becomes how can you be proactive with your health, make good decisions about your health before it is an emergency or your options are limited and most importantly make decisions based on strength not fear?
So, How do We Make a Decision Based on Strength, not Fear?
In order to answer that question, we have to have a baseline set of data. How well are you functioning today? How well will you be functioning in a year from now?
If you are functioning at 80% but you don’t feel sick and you are not hurting, is it worth it to make changes now so that you can create your own health? These are the tough decisions that people make in our practice every day.
Dozens of families come in every week to see how well they are doing and how can they create their own health story instead of reacting and basing their health decisions on fear.
I hope that if you are reading this and have a similar thought or question then you will reach out.
Blessings,
Dr. Aaron Cain