“In my opinion, chiropractic is the most misunderstood profession in the world because we’ve all been sold a bill of goods—that medicine is the only form of health care to the extent that we call it our medical system,” said Dr. Hanopole.
At Active Life Chiropractic & Wellness, we think we should refer to it as our healthcare system which has different types of components (e.g., medical treatment, chiropractic care and other forms of holistic care). “The pharmaceutical industry is so powerful that they’ve sold the public a bill of goods that says to have health, you need medication,” he added.
Of course, there’s a time and a place for medication, especially when it’s a traumatic or a crisis. If someone has a heart attack or was involved in a terrible accident and sustained head trauma, they need to be in the emergency room. In cases like those, we have the number one best care in the world for that.
Helping Patients Regain & Maintain Their Health
Our country does an excellent job in providing emergency medical care, but we’re woefully inadequate when it comes to helping people with chronic conditions to regain their health and stay healthy.
There are so many chronic degenerative diseases in this country and we think that chiropractic should be at the forefront of helping people with such conditions. The problem is so many people think that chiropractors are merely back doctors. We want patients to know that chiropractors are whole-person doctors.
While medical doctors prescribe patients drugs, those just manage symptoms. So chiropractic is misunderstood because most people think that health comes from taking medication. All the medication does is one of the following: speed something up, slow it down, mask it or numb it. Medication doesn’t heal though.
Removing Interference
Did you know that the only thing that can produce health is your own body? Your body can be as healthy as it can be if there’s no interference to the nervous system through the brain and the spinal cord. Most people don’t know that and they also likely aren’t aware that good spinal hygiene is the key to good health.
People think that chiropractors are back doctors because we utilize the spine as the portal of entry into the system. When we’re adjusting the spine, a patient thinks we’re just working on the spine. They don’t understand that the master controlling system of the body is your brain and spinal cord.
The Nervous System as Command Central
The brain is a microprocessor of the whole body. When Dr. Hanopole asks his patients, for example, “What controls the heart?” Many of them say it’s the circulatory system.
“The nervous system is the master control system of the body and the body doesn’t need all these chemicals and multiple medications; in many cases, it just needs no interference. So it’s a different way of looking at health because medicine looks at health through the parts of the body,” he added.
A chiropractor affects the whole by ensuring that there are no nerve communication blockages. This is done by removing subluxations in the spine and allowing the body to function the way it’s supposed to.
When Dr. Hanopole lets patients know that the nervous system controls all of the organs in the body, they look at him like he just taught them something that they’d never heard before.
Providing Healthy Living Guidance
In addition to providing chiropractic adjustments, we also teach patients about healthy living and healthy lifestyles. We talk about the three types of stress: chemical, emotional and physical stress that cause interference to the nervous system. Although the chiropractic adjustment removes that interference, patients have to take an active role in reducing the stresses that are causing that interference.
In our practice, we look at the problem and recognize that symptoms may be part of the healing process. Chiropractic care is about letting the body do what it needs to do—function normally and not interfere with the process.