What is Health?

Health is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), Dorland's Medical Dictionary, and the American Chiropractic Association as "a state of optimum physical, mental, social, and spiritual wellbeing, not merely the absence of symptoms or disease."  This means very clearly that someone can be free of symptoms and still be very unhealthy.

Unfortunately, the medical profession continues to define health as a mere absence of symptoms.  This is seen time and again in medical treatments which concentrate on covering up symptoms or the suppression of symptomatic expression.

This brings up a very serious issue in health care.  Let's first consider the three leading causes in the U.S.: cancer, heart attack, and stroke.  What is the common and most prevalent first symptom of these killers?  If you answered pain, fatigue, or anything other than DEATH you answered incorrectly.  That's right, the first sign of these killers is most commonly death.  We've all known or heard of the healthy guy down the street who ran five miles a day, ate only healthy foods, didn't smoke or drink and was for all accounts the picture-perfect embodiment health.  Then one day he wakes up, has a heart attack, and dies immediately.  Surely there was something going wrong before this, but the first overt symptom was death.

Let's consider a second case.  A group of friends go out for dinner and then sit around to chat.  Suddenly one of the friends gets violently "sick" and rushes into the restroom.  He is feverish, chilled, and vomiting.  After a few minutes, he regains his strength and returns to his friends to bid them a fare night.  He goes home and goes straight to bed.  Upon waking the next day, he feels somewhat weak, but all in all much better.  All of a sudden, the phone rings; it is the State Health Inspector.  He relays that a number of individuals have died related to an accidental poisoning at the restaurant he visited the night before; among them are his friends.  It can't be, he thinks.  They looked so good, so healthy, when he left and, after all, he was the one who had gotten "sick".  The reality of the situation is that his violent vomitous attack probably saved his life by ridding his body of the poisonous toxins.  Imagine if he had not been so healthy that his body did not respond in the way that it did.  Imagine if he had suppressed his symptoms with a medication.  He may not have been so lucky.

You see, symptoms, when present, are the body's way of telling us something is wrong.  Covering or suppressing the symptoms does nothing to remove the cause of the problem.

As a holistic physician, I am interested in more than covering up your symptoms.  I want to work with your body to help you attain true Health, as it was defined above.  I want each of you to reach that optimum state of wellbeing that your body was created to have.

I believe in your body's Innate capacity to heal and its desire to flourish and be vital.  I wish to facilitate that miraculous process in each of my patients.

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