Are Your Practicing SickCare or HealthCare?

Did you get a massage from us at the Italian Festival? That’s right, just like every year, Garden State Spine & Pain Institute was in a tent in Joe Palaia Park giving out FREE 5 minute massages. Over the 5 day stretch, we performed over 300 grueling massages. After massaging all day, after day two of the five day festival, one of th edoctors woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with muscle cramping from head to toe. So, why did we do all this back breaking hard work for FREE? We wanted a captive audience! While you were drooling and speechless enjoying the royal treatment, we took the opportunity to change your way of thinking because you have been hard wired incorrectly since birth.

TREAT THE CAUSE NOT THE SYMPTOM??
Did you ever have a pebble in your shoe? Initially, you notice a slight irritation. Then minutes later, the irritation becomes an annoyance and then finally, pain becomes so overwhelming that you MUST do something. What do you do? There is a new medicine coming out for this called Pebble Ease. You take a couple of pills and the pain in your foot goes away. You will of course need to continue to take the pills because they wear off. Side effects include headaches, irritable bowel, sexual dysfunction, and loss of hair in some women, but the pebble won’t bother you anymore. Or, you can elect to have the latest surgery for this problem called a Pebbleectomy! This involves removing a portion of the affected foot. Not a big portion of the heel, just the area where the pebble is causing pain. This way, the pebble will fit perfectly into the sole of your foot and hopefully give you relief. Sound good?! It would if you were in a lot of pain and didn’t know how to fix your problem. All you have to do is simply remove the pebble. The point is, you don’t want to just cover up SYMPTOMS of pain, you want to remove the CAUSE of the problem.

Let’s say that tonight, at 3AM, you are awakened by screaming fire alarm. The last thing that you want to do is walk around the house looking for a fire, but you know that if you go back to bed, there is a chance that your whole house, (with you in it), may burn to the ground. What do you do? Do you go back to sleep, or do you search the house for smoke and fire? Knocking the fire alarm out of the ceiling and going back to bed is like taking pain pills when you have pain. Your body is trying to tell you that something is WRONG and taking pills to mask the problem is ignoring your body’s signs and symptoms.

YOU ARE KILLING YOURSELF
Do you know what happened to Kenny Easley? Kenny Mason Easley Jr. is a former NFL strong safety who played seven seasons for the Seattle Seahawks from 1981 to 1987. He is considered as one of the greatest Seahawks players of all-time and one of the greatest safeties in NFL history. He was a 4-time All-Pro selection and was elected to the Pro Bowl five times in his career. Easley’s career ended in 1987 after being diagnosed with severe kidney disease due to taking ibuprofen. He eventually required a kidney transplant and later sued the Seahawks for giving him too much Advil.

People don’t realize that over the counter drugs, are still DRUGS. NSAID’s (Non Steroidal Anti-inflammatory drugs) are associated with a number of side effects. The most common side effects are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, decreased appetite, rash, dizziness, headache, and drowsiness. NSAIDs may also cause fluid retention, leading to edema. The most serious side effects are kidney failure, liver failure, ulcers and prolonged bleeding after an injury or surgery. These medications are meant to be taken 1-3 times a years, not 1-3 times a day. Do you know what the #1 reason for admission in the hospital from the Emergency Room is? It is an overdose to Tylenol! The makers of Tylenol are even running commercials on television warning that they would rather you not take Tylenol at all, than have you take it incorrectly. Have you seen these commercials? Why do you think that they are warning people? They know that people are causing themselves serious injury and sometimes death by using their product improperly. We as a culture rely on over the counter medications way too much! We would rather cover up our pain then fix the problem.

YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM
Your brain controls everything that you do, and the rest of your body is a puppet controlled by your brain. Your brain communicates with the rest of your body thru a telephone cord called the spinal cord. This cord travels thru a hole in the center of each vertebrae of your spine. Wires project from the sides of every bone called nerves that go to every area of your body. When something pinches or chokes this wire, you lose communication. It is like the decrease in water from a kink in a garden hose. This is how your nervous system works. It is your electrical system. Take Christopher Reeve for example. Though he had an accident, there was nothing wrong with his arms and legs. His brain however, was cut off from communicating with the rest of his body because his telephone cord could no longer transmit signals below his head. To a lesser degree, a nerve can be choked by a rotated vertebrae or herniated or bulging disc that interferes with communication signals. This is like having a bad cell phone connection.

Say the nerve going to your stomach is choked. This specific nerve exits your spinal cord between your shoulder blades. You are now going to have difficulty breaking down your food. Why? Normally, your stomach notifies your brain when it has food and then your brain authorizes the release of hormones to break it down. However, if the brain never gets the message that there is food in your stomach, it can not release hormones or effectively tell the stomach what to do. The long term affects of this choked nerve going to the stomach may be chronic indigestion, reflux, or even ulcers! Nerves like this go to your heart, liver, kidneys and all your other organs too. Like the car, your body is able to detect problems, but unlike the car, your body is able to fix most problems on its own if you give it a chance.

HEALTHCARE OR SICKCARE.
Taking care of your body in hopes of preventing sickness and disease is caring for your health, or healthcare. Sick care on the other hand is the theory of treating the body only when it is ill.

The Merriam-Webster’s definition of Healthcare is: 1a: the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit; especially: freedom from physical disease or pain b: the general condition of the body

We at Garden State Spine and Pain Institute practice healthcare. We focus on the detection and elimination of interference on your phone line and the lines that come off of it. By removing this interference, your immune system can work properly healing itself without the use of medication. Everything works more effectively when you remove the interference from your nervous system (your phone line).The combined efforts of Medical Rehabilitation, Physical Therapy, Chiropractic and Acupuncture work together allowing the body to function the way it was meant to. We do all of this as conservatively as possible without introducing medications unless necessary. Our job is to get you out of pain naturally while boosting your immune system. You can do it, and we can help! Are we starting to rewire the way you think yet or would you like a free sample of pebble ease? “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.” –Thomas Edison.