As many of you have noticed I’m back full time in the office this past week.  Courtney and I wanted to thank everyone for their kind words and well-wishes on the birth of our daughter Pippa.  Both mom and baby (and even dad) are doing great!  I wanted to take a few minutes to share our birth experience with everyone as we had some unique events happen that may provide interesting and instructive.

As you probably expected Courtney and I very strongly wanted to have a natural birth with minimal to no medical intervention.  We choose this route for a number of reasons.  First and foremost is that we believe that it is the healthiest for the baby.  Vaginal delivery without medical, as nature intended, confers advantages to the baby in physical development, ease of birth, immune system development, and more.  Furthermore, while obviously a more painful experience, the mother’s recovery is much faster and easy (Courtney was back in the gym working out within two weeks of delivery!).  Finally, without medications the body is able to go through labor as it was designed, the stages happen as they should, lessening the chances for complications.

Knowing that we wanted to have a natural birth from the beginning we tried prepare for it and surround ourselves with resources to make it happen.  Courtney began incorporating specific exercises into her workouts, we interviewed and hired a doula for support while we were laboring both at home and in the hospital, we took an amazing Bradley Method of Childbirth class from Juli Walter, an amazing doula, coach, lactation consultant and teacher (as well as Dr. M’s doula, find her online at www.juliwalter.com)   One mistake we made in the beginning was not talking about our desire for a natural birth upfront with our OB/Gyn.  Courtney had been with a practice at Northwestern for a while and really liked the doctor that she regularly saw.  Unfortunately, as we moved through the process and met with other Dr.’s in the practice we came to the realizations that they wouldn’t really support our wishes.  It’s not that they were bad people or bad doctors, it’s just that natural birth wasn’t something that they regularly did and weren’t really set up for.  In fact, at Northwestern, 95% of all births have epidurals or are C-section.  It’s not impossible, Dr. M had both of his there naturally, it’s just not something they do much of.  So at 32 weeks we decided to switch to a midwife group at Evanston Hospital that came highly recommended for their focus on natural birthing.

Other than switching providers the pregnancy was completely uneventful (other than some bad morning sickness weeks 9-12) up until week 37.  On the Monday of that week Courtney went in for a regular visit.  At that visit the midwife was unable to feel the head of the baby (ultimately we found out that it was due to it already beginning to descend into the pelvis).  Because of this she wanted an ultrasound performed to check the positioning.  We returned to the hospital the following day for the ultrasound.  We would have done it in the office but their machine was out of order.  At the hospital, against our midwives’ wishes, the ultrasound tech performed not only a position check (it was head down), but a sizing exam of the baby.

Note:  If we had known at the time that this was going to be done we would have refused it.  Size measurements off of an ultrasound in late term pregnancy are notoriously inaccurate.
After the exam the staff doctor for the hospital came in (head of OB/Gyn).  He explained that they performed a sizing of the baby and it showed in the less than 10% in weight for its age (it measure 5.5 lbs).  He recommended that we induce labor at that time.  We asked him if there were any signs that the baby was in danger, or of any other problems other than simply measuring small.  He said that there wasn’t – the amniotic fluids levels were good, the cord looked good, the heartbeat and movements were strong, and the ultrasound showed no other abnormalities.    His philosophy was that because the baby can live outside of the womb at 37 weeks, we might as well go ahead and take it out and then we can feed it to bring the weight up.  We refused in order to speak with our midwives.

Note:  If the previous paragraph seems ridiculous, it’s because, especially looking back, it is.  Basically, that Dr.  looked at a chart on the wall, and without the baby being in any evident danger, recommended a major intervention, solely because the baby was “below average.”  Guess what:  someone has to be.  It makes me especially frustrated for two reasons:  #1:  as mentioned, ultrasound measurements can be off by up to 1.5 -2 lbs.  Typically we hears stories of C-sections occurring because the baby is “too big”, and then it comes out at 7-8 lbs perfectively deliverable.  Ours just happened to be the opposite.  #2: that late in development babies tend to gain 1/4 to 1/2 lb per week.  If we went to term that would have put Pippa at between 6.5 and 7 lbs (she was born at 6 lbs 12oz).

The following day my wife left work to drive to meet with our midwife to go over the previous day’s events and was rear-ended.  After speaking with the police, on advice of our midwife, she went to the hospital where she underwent about 8 hours of testing.  Our nerves, from both the accident and the doctor the day before, were the only things that were damaged.  We had a long discussion with our midwife and decided that, instead of jumping into inducing the baby, we would wait and see and monitor it weekly to make sure that everything was ok.

The next few weeks flew by.  We had regular appointments at which the baby showed no signs of any issues.  At 39 weeks we did discover that the baby was in a posterior position – sometimes called “sunny-side up”.  With a combination of specific exercises and an adjusting technique called Webster, designed to address issues in pregnant women, the baby turned with no problem and we were ready to go.

We were due on May 23 (only 5% of babies actually come on their due date).  The Friday after that Courtney began having mild – moderate contractions at work.  This was it!  She decided to call me and go ahead and come home from work!  Many of you saw me rush out of the clinic!  We called my parents and they flew in from Kansas, her mom was already here from Arizona, and then everything stopped.  We ended up having an enjoyable Memorial Day weekday with family.

On Wednesday the first Courtney woke up having contraction at approximately 4:30 in the morning.  She went back to sleep and woke me up at 6:30.  These were different.  We started monitoring them and went about our day.  We took our mom’s to breakfast and took a lot of walks.  The contractions were consistent, but were never closer than 7-10 minutes apart.

Note:  It was important to us to wait as long as possible before going to the hospital.  In many hospitals from the moment you check in you are on a clock.  If you don’t progress according to the “average” then you are labeled “failure to progress” and encouraged to have interventions performed – in many cases leading to a c-section that could have been avoided.  Because we know that every birth is different, and even though we knew our midwife was on the same page as us, we wanted to labor as long as possible at home – ideally until the contractions were 2-3 minutes apart, lasting 1 minute, for a solid hour.

At about 4:30 pm the contractions began to lessen and Courtney wasn’t feeling the baby move as much.  We were contemplating calling the midwife when our phone ran – it was her!  She had gotten a phone call from the doctor who runs her practice – the Dr. who encouraged us to induce at 37 weeks had noticed that we had been at the hospital for an ultrasound (again we were unable to do it at the office because of memorial day weekend) and was mad that we hadn’t been induced as per his recommendation.

Note:  When you are post-due our practice asked that you had weekly fluid checks (by ultrasound) and non-stress tests on the baby.  We were ok with these because they were a trade-off for not having to induce labor unless it went really over (more than 2.5 weeks).  When we went to the hospital for the fluid check the ultrasound tech, against the specific orders of our midwife, informed us they were going to do a sizing check.  As this was exact thing that caused us stress at 37 weeks, and due to the fact that we knew everything was fine with the baby, we refused.

We couldn’t rid of this Dr!  It was really frustrating to us that he kept butting in to our case.  If we had wanted to experience a typically medical birth, we would have stayed with our initial practice.  We later found out through our midwife that he is notorious in the hospital for early inducements and, not coincidentally,  has an atypically high c-section rate for Evanston Hospital.

After speaking with the midwife we decided to run up to the hospital to have the baby monitored (with the assurance that we could leave if the everything looked fine).  We arrived at 4:30 pm and monitored until 5:30 – the baby looked great and at that point the contractions were mild and 13 minutes apart.  The midwife went ahead and did a check and we discovered that we were already over 6 cm dilated!  The baby was already trying to pass through the cervix but was being held back by the bag of water.  She felt that if we ruptured it that labor would go ahead and start.  At 6:15 we went ahead and had her rupture the bag, we then went for a 20 minute walk outside of the hospital.  After we came back in we were walking in the lobby when I saw a look on Courtney’s face that I had never seen before.  She started having very, very intense contractions almost on top of one another.  At that point she started progressing very quickly – in the next hour and a half she progressed to 10 cm.  We moved her around a lot – she labored in the tub, on a ball, standing, lying – just about every position imaginable.  She started to push around 8:15 and Pippa was born at 9:39 pm.

Note:  the body is an amazing thing – this just confirmed it for me.  As I mention, Courtney was completely medication free.  She’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t easy and that she didn’t know if she could do.  About halfway through she started to ask for something for the pain.  We had discussed this situation and I started to do all the things we talked about to take her mind off of it:   we focused just getting through the next few contractions, shifting positions, getting checked, talking about how great the baby was doing, encouraging her, etc.  Finally, a little after 8 she grabbed my arm and said something like:  “please, Jeremy, I know we talked about it but I really really need something – I can’t do this.”  My heart was breaking, I didn’t want to force her to go through this.  Our midwife was great – she stepped in and basically said:  “No, it’s too late, you have to do this, now”.  And amazingly she was right:  at moment Courtney transitioned from contractions to pushing and the pain changed and decreased.  This just re-enforces everything about health and wellness to me.  The body knew what it was doing – it pushed Courtney right to her breaking point, took her as far as she could go, and then at that moment when she thought she was done, backed the pain off and had her channel her energy into  pushing.  It was miraculous and I know that, while every women is different and has a different experience, the body will do what is right for her.

I know this was long and I want to thank all of you for getting through it.  It was a very special experience for us and I would trade any part of it, even the Dr. who just wouldn’t go away.  I got to experience something 1st hand that I had been talking to patients about for years.  I was able to see how couples who want a natural birth are pushed (and scared) off track, and I am grateful that our faith in the body was there to keep us on the path that we wanted.  And in the end I am left with a perfect, beautiful little girl whom I love so much that I can’t even put it into words.

Thanks again everyone for your kinds words and thoughts!

Dr. A

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As many of you may have noticed, starting this week in the office we have made finger puppets available for a small donation.  These are handmade in the very neighborhoods which I will be visiting  and working in.  Women in these villages can make 3-5 of these puppets each day.  Hands for Change purchases these puppets directly from the women for 3-4 times for what they would normally receive in Peru.  The proceeds that we receive from your donation will go directly back to the villages in which the puppets were made in the form of health and educational resources.  Each of these little puppets has a huge affect on people’s lives!

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As a passionate and principled doctor of chiropractic, one of my favorite lines that people say is: “You’re Crazy!”  Now sometimes this is said in a fun, sarcastic tone, but many times I can tell that they are saying it simply as a jerk reaction to learning something completely opposite from what they had heard or learned prior.  If you think about it for a moment, if you were to learn RIGHT NOW something completely opposite from the truth you know, at first you may think the messenger is CRAZY.  A good example would be Columbus trying to tell you the world is round, when you were told it was flat your whole life. 

 Many of you, since being members of our practice, and experiencing health in a completely new perspective, may have been looked at or called CRAZY when discussing your experience with friends and family, mainly because they are defending their own lack of knowledge or due to surprise, when finding out the truth, but still too new to accept philosophically.  You see, when you say to someone, “Hey Joe, are migranes the result of a lack of Tylenol or Aspirin in your blood?”  Joe (the typical American Mindset) would say “What do you mean?”  Well, Joe, you take either Tylenol or prescription strength IMITREX for your migrane headaches, which your M.D. prescribed you, so since the solution is to take these drugs, then the cause must be a lack of those chemicals in your body.  You could say the same thing for a child with recurrent otitis media (ear infections).  Since the answer from the M.D. is generally going to be ANOTHER round of anti-biotics, then the problem must have been a lack of anti-biotics in the bloodstream.  Now of course, with good logic, most people would read this and start to see how CRAZY that sounds, but the funny thing is THAT is what most people do for their healthcare, or should I say SICKcare.  It is simply a matter of perspective to see truth come out of a previously CRAZY or STRANGE idea.

 In the USA, we are not a healthy nation by any stretch of the imagination.  In fact we currently rank 37^th amoung industrialized nations ranked by the World Health Organization’s quality of health report.  37^th You ask?  Is it really that surprising?  We live in increasingly stressful times, where we barely have time to get home from work to have dinner with the family, in which the dinner probably doesn’t have any vegetables, and if it does they have been sprayed with pesticides and genetically modified.  (Is it any wonder cancer is the second leading cause of death?)  Who has time for exercise, unless they have had a heart attack, and were lucky enough to live, then they May make time.  Then there is the toxicity from drugs: it starts with Tylenol, antibiotics, and if you’re an American, twice as many vaccines as any other kid on the planet (did I forget to say we rank 37^th) , then birth control drugs, Ritalin, Aderol, well-butin and others as tweens and teens, then recreational drugs, then paxil for life stress, Ambien to help sleep, then estrogen replacement therapy….whoops I guess they already figured out that was a bad idea, then Lipitor, BP meds, meds for your bones, and all the other over the counter Dayquill, Nyquills, Afternoonquills, allergy meds, inhalers… should I stop?

Look, when the 3^rd leading cause of death is the side effects to medications, you may start to see that trying to live without medication is NOT such a CRAZY idea afterall.  But how do you do that you may ask?  Well, its not as easy as popping a pill, but it can be done, and a few Americans are doing it, by learning to understand the innate healing ability of the human body, and facilitation its function, rather that taking the batteries out of the alarm with drugs when something is producing a SYMPTOM.  This is why Dr. Arthur and I come to work everyday; to teach how to facilitate healing as well as to remove interference to healing with chiropractic adjustments that restore normal nerve connection.  If you don’t have a good nerve connection, the light bulb doesn’t shine as bright and you are less likely to adapt to stress in a healthy manner. In a society where most are sick, I want to be considered CRAZY in my view;  if I don’t then that means I’m in the norm, which means I’m probably sick too.  They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a DIFFERENT result.  I’d rather be CRAZY than insane!

 Much Love,

Dr. McKinley 

 PS – please forward this to loved ones you know need to hear it, without your voice, NOTHING will CHANGE!

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Most people think that “feeling bad” is an indication that you are sick.  This basic, yet faulty, premise is what starts sooooo many off on the WRONG road to health and wellness.  You see, from the moment we are born, our loving parents generally will do anything to make us feel better in the moment, no matter if the cause is a dropped pacifier or a fever.  Now, I will not spend this entire article explaining how fevers are good for you because if you are a member of our practice and don’t know this yet, then sign up for the after school, remedial session every other Thursday at 645pm!

That being said, I do want to spend a little time examining the following question:  “What symptom is bad for you?”  I generally ask this question at some point in all of our lectures, and I get great dialogue and creative answers.  You see, while headaches, fever, insomnia, depression, muscle aches, anxiety, and other symptoms may all “FEEL” bad, they are ALL very SMART alarms and/ or actions the body is innately making as part of a healing process.  Some of you may say, but how is depression good for you?  Well, I would counter, if I found out today a close family member died suddenly, and I felt no despair or depression but instead happiness, then THAT would be bad.  I didn’t say I like depression or sadness, but there are moments in one’s life, where that is the healthy response for the body.  This is the same with a runny nose and fever.  Sure, it feels bad, but it is a process the body must go through to achieve wellness. 

 For too often, we are our own worst enemy, because many of the teachings of our parents, and of western medicine, has taught us that SYMPTOMS are bad, and we should mask them as soon as possible with a chemical to FEEL better.  We see this in kids too!  Before trying natural processes like chiropractic care, parents are accepting diagnosis like asthma and ADHD as inherent problems with their kids , and are resigned to the fact that  their child must be on side effect ridden medications for life!  As babies, we overmedicate young immune systems with more vaccines than any other country in the world, and give a million rounds of antibiotics for ear infections.  All the while, the body was simply doing what it was designed or evolved to do.   

Anyone who exercises will tell you there is a “passage of pain.”  At some point during the exercise in order to grow, to improve, to get better, our bodies hit a point where we become very uncomfortable, to the point where you don’t know if you can go on.  It is at and beyond that point where our greatest growth takes place.  The body is going through the exact same thing when we have symptoms.  It doesn’t mean you are sick, it means your body is healing and getting stronger.  But, unfortunately, the majority of us don’t look these symptoms as a good thing.  We are trained from the time we are kids to avoid discomfort, to avoid symptoms.  So as adults, when we can’t handle life’s stresses, so we pump up with Paxil or Ambien to sleep, or Vicodin for pain, or Xanax for anxiety, or any of the other common presciptions out there.  And then we wonder why the average adult takes 8 prescription meds by the age of 55 (yes, true statistic), and that our health care system is causing us to go broke.   

Ok, now let me make myself clear one more time.  I ALSO do not like to GET symptoms, but I appreciate their purpose and like to listen and respond naturally to their meaning.  This is why I love getting regular adjustments for my family and I, so we have a clear communication pathway to our cells, tissues, and organs through our healthy nervous system.  This provides for a stronger adaptation to the stressors of life and when we do have symptoms our response is always faster than those bodies who don’t have a fine tuning, allowing us to have a better, more appropriate response to life’s stresses – whether that is a virus, an accident, etc.  (And I know that many of you get this as well because every single days we hear stories of children and adults getting sick, or having pain, and their bodies fighting it off much much easier than in the past before they started getting adjusted.  It’s why we come to work each day!  So keep those stories coming!)

Much respect

Dr. M

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Imagine not being able to run, or play, or living in fear of being unable to take a deep breath.  Imagine being literally tied to medication, medication that may cause you to develop cataracts, or to not be able to fight off simple illnesses, or develop osteoporosis.  Medicine that damages your lungs every time that you use it, that may send you into analphylatic shock, that may even trigger an even worse attack than the one that you are using it to “treat”.  Imagine thinking that you have no choice but resign yourself to this life.  This is reality for over 34 million American, 1/3 of whom are children, who have been diagnosed with asthma.  

It is so prevalent that it has worked its way into all aspects of our culture.

Asthma (or the diagnosis of asthma) is an exploding epidemic in this country and in the developed world.  Since 1980 asthma rates in the U.S. have almost quadrupled.  There are a number of reasons for this:  vaccine recommendations per child in the US has tripled in the same time frame (vaccines change the way our immune system works, leading to sensitization of and inflammation in airways), lack of exposure to bacteria due to antibiotics and antibacterial soaps, pollution, the increase of pro-infammatory foods such as grains, sugars, and milk in our diets, the increasing lack of activity and exercise in our lifestyles, and poor posture related to the increase in TV, video game, computers, and other sitting activites in both children and adults.  (A comparison between asthma rates in the US (very high) and under-developed countries (very low) demonstrate these reasons nicely.  Underdeveloped countries (and even developed countries such as those in Europe and Japan) don’t mandate nearly as many vaccines as the US, live a much more active lifestyle, don’t each nearly as many processed foods, and are typically exposed to bacteria and dirt in much more natural ways.)

There are good news though.  Both research and our clinical experience have demonstrated that it is possible to help people with asthma throw away their inhalers and take back their lives naturally.  Its for this reason that we have decided to declare March Asthma Awareness Month here in our office.  We have set a goal of helping at least 25 people overcome their asthma and start living their lives again, start running, and playing, and stop living in fear.

We need your help!  Each and everyone of us knows someone with asthma who could benefit from our help.  Simply give them our information, or even better yet, make them an appointment with Sarah or Monica.  There are no prizes, gifts, or giveways for doing so.  Just the joy in knowing that you have helped someone change their life!

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As some of you may have noticed (at least I hope you noticed), I was out of the office last week Wednesday through Friday. I wish I could say that I was at an exciting chiropractic conference or sitting on a beach somewhere, but, alas, I was at home, in bed, sick. My symptoms included: fever, congestion and runny nose, headache, dizziness, and low energy. I’m still left with a lingering cough. My question to you is: were my symptoms a good or bad thing?

The answer depends on your view of what health is.  If your view of health involves feeling good then obviously they were a bad thing.  I felt like crap!  But if you view health, as I do, as the optimum functioning of the body, then my symptoms were a very good thing.  They were signs that my body was doing what it needed to to fight off infection.  Lets take a look at each symptom and what positive effect they had on my body:

• fever – raising the body’s temperature in order to kill whatever organism was invading my body
• congestion and runny nose – the by products of the white blood cells attacking the improper organism as well as my body trapping them in the mucous membranes so as not to let them infect deeper
• headache, dizziness, and low energy – my body’s way of making me stay and bed, rest, and allow it to do its thing.
• My lingering cough – breaking up and expelling the products left over in my lungs from the body fighting the infection

Look, it sucks to get sick.  Believe me I would have much rather been in the office working, not lying in bed.  But over the long haul I am better off going through what I just went through – I know that my body can fight something off in a relatively short amount of time, the next time I’m exposed to it I have developed natural immunity to it, and I’m back in the office today rested and relaxed.  Getting sick was a good thing!!!

Another good thing is Dr. M’s Birthday Bash this Friday at Mrs. Murphy’s Irish Bistro!  Everyone who has RSVP’d thank you, if they haven’t already, you will be receiving a call from Monica or Sarah confirming you and your guests.  We still have a few seats left for anyone else who wants to attend.  Please call us today with your name and your number of guests so we can seat you.  It’s gonna be a great time!!!

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First off, let me please thank all of you for the warm wishes and emails sent over the last few days since the birth of our second child, Maia, this past Thursday.  My wife once again put on a miraculous display of natural birth, allowing for true expression of innate intelligence and pure beauty.  The benefits to both mother and child with natural birth are so grand, that I personally don’t understand how any doctor could allow another path, unless of course there was a true problem.  A natural birth is one in which the human nervous system is allowed to function naturally, so the mother can listen to her body’s innate intelligence from start to finish, allowing for the perfect timing of hormone regulation, as well as timing from early contractions to late pushing stage.  An obstetrician can intervene if there is a complication causing a problem to the health of the baby or mother, and this is why they have procedures like the caeserian. 

Unfortunately, these procedures and others, like the epidural, are being used to comfort the mother, at the expense of the baby and mother’s health.  For instance, if the birth is natural, the mother does not need anyone to tell her to “PUSH” because she feels WHEN from hormones released, followed by a “RELAXATION” phase, which allows the mother to rest a minute or two before the next surge of pushing comes.  This all allows for a smooth transition of the baby’s head through the vaginal canal.  When the obstetrician does not need to use instruments or hands to pull, twist, and turn the head, the baby’s own delicate spine and nervous system are MUCH safer.  

On the other hand, if an epidural is used, the mother is temporarily paralyzed from the waist down, so she won’t feel pain (at least not during labor).  Once paralyzed, the nerve connection to the brain will not be able to let the mother feel when to push, so the doctor will have to say “PUSH” for her.  Also, there is a considerable loss of strength with the epidural’s temporary paralysis effect, so the muscles won’t be strong enough to push the baby out without the help of about 90 lbs of pulling pressure from the obstetrician,  which increases the risk of upper neck birth trauma leading to a multitude of problems such as difficulty breastfeeding, decreased APGAR score, and lowered immunity to name a few.  Then to make matters worse, the mother is usually hooked up to an I.V. administering a drug called Ptosin, which is a synthetic hormone that speeds up the contractions.   The problem is, the synthetic hormone isn’t as good as the one God made  (we call that organic these days ), so Ptosin doesn’t allow a resting phase between contractions; it just says, keep contracting, even though you can’t feel it because of the epidural, which then fatigues the mother, who already has weak, temporarily paralyzed muscles from the epidural, so then the c-section comes. 

This is not an article to bash c-sections.  About 8 percent of the time, they are absolutely the only known way to get a baby out, in those cases the complications are worth it, but with the national average pushing close to 40% of all births going to c-section, well that means that most of them didn’t need it, and caused the baby and mother harm in the process.  I thought, (I know I did), doctors needed to take an oath, that said, “first, do no harm?”  Maybe the oath should say, “first, make sure mom doesn’t feel pain, and if its harming the function of her body or the baby its ok, just first make sure mom doesn’t feel pain.”  You see, here is where it all comes again.  We (most of our subconscious health ideas) are taught that pain is bad, which is why we make the mistake of giving medicine too early for normal, healthy fevers, take cough medicine for a good, healthy cough, take ibuprofen for normal, healthy swelling, and yes, in this case take paralyzing injections into our spinal cord to not feel normal, healthy contractions in pregnancy. 

No one ever said you had to like PAIN, but if its helping you or YOUR baby, wouldn’t it be a good idea to help facilitate what is normal, instead of working against it? Ok, well, I was going to write more about how wonderful chiropractic care allows for a more natural delivery by balancing the round ligaments that connect to the uterus from the pelvis, but I’ve obviously been pulled away by pure philosophy again, which is always more important.  “Get the BIG IDEA and ALL ELSE WILL FOLLOW”—B.J. Palmer. 

For those of you who are expecting, please let Dr. Arthur and I know as soon as possible, because there are very important, natural techniques we have to help facilitate better nerve function and pelvic stability during these miraculous 9 months of pregnancy.  Please feel free to ask us questions about this important topic.  Pregnancy should be a joy, not a DIAGNOSIS.  

Much Love and GO BEARS!!!!

DR. M

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 I thought I would start off the year with a short message on immunity, especially since many of you may have a poor immune system at the moment due to all of your holiday stress.  A professor of mine, Dr. Fred Barge, used a memorable story to help us change the way most people mistakenly view germs and immune function.  Some of you may have heard it before if you’ve heard me speak. 

I want you to imagine that I took all of the garbage cans out of our Chicago alleys and put them on the street like NYC does.  Do you think that our scavengers (squirrels and rats) will stay in the alley, or do you think they will come out to the street, since I moved the garbage there?  Since we are talking about garbage by the way, do you think squirrels and rats are good for our environment or bad?  Do they help with the decomposition of our waste or make it worse? I’m sure you answered that they would come to the street to where the garbage has been moved, and I’m sure you said they are good for the environment. 

Now, you see, germs are really just smaller versions of opportunistic life, like rodents.  They will survive in high quantity where there is a form of garbage that they like to live in or near, and, like rats, they are actually good for our planet.  Mind you, I didn’t say you had to say they were cute! 

Most people are running around scared of germs and viruses as if they are actually out to get you.  Calm your ego down, because none of you are that popular to these organisms, unless your body is a hospitable host due to its current state of garbage.  Nobody if perfect, but some of us have a lot more garbage in our internal system than our neighbors, and those are the individuals whom are more likely to be “infected” with illness, due to their poor immune system, not because you are popular or look cool with your new Banana Republic underwear you got from your mom at Christmas. This is why only 2 kids generally get sick in a classroom of 30 kids.  If it were the germ that caused it, then all would be sick, because kids touch and get into everything, as any parent would know.

So, for 2011, is the New Year going to bring a New You?  What are you willing to do different, or stop doing, in order to clean up your internal garbage to keep the rats/germs away?  If you are reading this, then at least you already get regular chiropractic care which improves immune system function instantly.  On the other hand, maybe you need to schedule more fun into your weekly calendar, eat less sugar, eat more greens, stretch, relax, meditate, pray, or just turn your cell phone off for 20 seconds a day.  You get to choose!

 Happy New YOU/Year!

Dr. M

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