Why are We Sick and How Do We Get and Stay Healthy?

It is said that there are no stupid questions and I believe that to be true, though certainly some questions are better than others. Unfortunately, the answers to many questions are dependent on how that question is asked. For example, high blood pressure presents a significant health risk and research demonstrates that medication will lower blood pressure. The assumption, then, would be that taking a blood pressure medication and lowering existing high blood pressure to normal values would make one healthy. But is that actually so? Health insurance companies look at risk factors such as blood pressure, as well as body mass index, cholesterol and others, to determine the likelihood that you will make a claim and how much that claim will cost them as a company. If two people with the same health profile apply for health insurance, one would assume the cost of insurance would be the same. If one of those two people were on blood pressure lowering medication, though, we find the cost is greater for the individual on medication. Insurance companies have done their homework and recognize that being on medication does not make you healthy and recognize the higher risk of illness and thus expenditure.

Much of the medical community bases their treatment or care on symptoms with the goal being to get an individual within a certain range to be considered healthy. Therefore, the standard of care is based on the question: “will this drug, surgery or other intervention place the patient within the current normative values?” If research shows that it does, the drug or procedure is deemed to be valid and becomes the standard of care, even if the patient, according to the insurance company, is still a statistically-higher risk for chronic illness and disease.

Prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medication use has continued to climb at an alarming rate. Of 2590 participants surveyed in the Sloan Report of 2002, 81% used at least 1 medication in the preceding week; 50% took at least 1 prescription drug; and 7% took 5 or more. The highest overall prevalence of medication use was among women aged at least 65 years, of whom 12% took at least 10 medications and 23% took at least 5 prescription drugs (1). Medco Health Solutions Inc., which manages prescription benefits for about one in five Americans, gathered statistics for a study in 2008 that reported for the first time that 51% of Americans are taking prescription medications regularly for chronic health problems. With this continued increase in the use of medication the expectation would be that the population is getting healthier at a proportionate rate.

The reverse seems to be the trend, though, as chronic disease has become the leading cause of death and disability in the United States. Today, seven out of ten deaths are attributed to chronic disease (2). Even more alarming is how childhood chronic disease has almost quadrupled over the last four decades with the Center for Disease Control predicting one in three children will develop diabetes over their lifetime. Clearly, our healthcare model is failing and, despite some of the best crisis care in the world, society is becoming more ill.

Merely lowering blood pressure, cholesterol or weight to acceptable levels does not guarantee health. Very few of these numbers are static to begin with. Thanks to our built in fight or flight response, our systems continually fluctuate to adapt to the environmental stresses placed upon the body. Stress can come in three forms: chemical, physical and emotional. A sprinter, for example, will see pre-race increases in stress hormones that prepare the body for intense physical exercise. The response starts when a part of the brain called the hypothalamus detects stress. The hypothalamus starts the alarm phase by turning on the sympathetic division of the nervous system. The sympathetic nerves release adrenaline, making the heart beat harder and faster, and raising blood pressure. A person’s skin turns pale as blood vessels to the skin constrict and direct the blood to the muscles. The liver releases stored sugar into the blood, hair stands on end and the body begins to sweat (3). The body’s natural response is to run away or fight back; in the case of the sprinter, to run as fast as possible. Other systems, such as parts of the immune, digestive and reproductive, are down-regulated since they are not necessary for the short-term fight or flight response. Once the race is over, it is the job of the para-sympathetic nervous system to return the body to a state of rest.

Unfortunately, in today’s society we live in a state of constant stress and therefore see chronic elevated stress responses that eventually lead to chronic disease. Does it make sense to artificially lower these elevated responses necessary for the body to survive in the stressful environment or would it make more sense to change the environment? The body is an amazing piece of biological intelligence that is self regulating and self healing given the proper environment of sufficiency and purity. Instead of turning to drugs and other outside interventions to merely treat the symptoms, we need to address the environmental stressors through proper exercise, better nutrition, positive mental attitude, proper sleep and, most importantly, ensuring a properly functioning nervous system through chiropractic.

1. Recent patterns of medication use in the ambulatory adult population of the United States: the Slone survey. Kaufman DW, Kelly JP, Rosenberg L, Anderson TE, Mitchell AA. JAMA. 2002 Apr 10;287(14):1804-5; author reply 1805.
2. An Overview of Chronic Disease in America. 2009 Almanac of Chronic Disease.
3. The 14 Foundational Premises for the Scientific and Philosophical Validation of the Chiropractic Wellness Paradigm. Chestnut, James L., B.Ed., MSc., D.C. The Wellness Practice-Global Self Health Corp. 2003.