Amy Schulstad, D.C.

September 2008

Making a promise is a very powerful action to take. Many times during our lives, we are asked to make promises to do certain things.

For example, at age 16, we receive a driver’s license that requires us to make a commitment to obey the laws of the road. If we fail to obey these laws we may pay a price. We might pay a fine or lose our license for a while. Any lessons can be learned through experiencing loss. We learn quickly to pay close attention to speed limit signs and reduce speed when necessary. Experiencing loss can teach us a practical lesson such as this; however it also helps us change behavior in other ways.

Have you ever experienced the unfortunate loss of a loved one? Grief is a common and expected emotion to feel at this time In addition, we frequently feel a sense of regret that we did not fully appreciate and value the relationship we had with our loved one until it was lost.

Regret is a very difficult emotion to deal with. Usually we can choose to celebrate the wonderful memories; sometimes we may choose to change our future behavior with our loved ones who are still with us. We make promises to spend more time with the people who are important to us and tell them how much we value and appreciate the relationship. Loss teaches us a valuable life lesson.

In other words, sometimes we tend to take things for granted until we lose them. It is then when we truly understand their value in our lives. We can understand this concept in other areas of our lives as well: financial independence, health and happiness. We can promise ourselves that we will reach specific goals regarding financial independence and even happiness. These promises have little value if we don’t have good health to follow through with them. It seems unfortunate to me that our own health frequently seems to be the personal asset we take most for granted. Because we take our health for granted, we may never have set an effective plan to insure optimal health today and in the future.

The best promise you can make TODAY is to make the health of you and your family top priority. Promises are powerful. A promise means that we state an action that we will take and not allow anything to stop us. We can use this powerful tool of making a promise to create and implement a health plan that focuses on the body’s natural ability to heal itself. Make a promise to yourself to prevent health problems before they arise by eating well, exercising, getting enough rest and committing to a chiropractic corrective and wellness care plan.

Chiropractic care focuses on YOU and your body’s ability to heal itself. Chiropractic emphasizes the necessity of having a healthy spine in order to insure optimal health. The brain, the body’s central command center sends messages to every tissue, organ and cell of the body through the nerve system. These messages can be interrupted through misalignments of the spinal vertebrae (subluxation) caused by activities of daily life including falls, sports and accidents.

Traditional medicine utilizes drugs to treat and mask the symptoms, while chiropractors realign the vertebrae of the spine, restoring the body’s natural communication system. Chiropractors locate and correct the cause of the problem so true health can be restored.

Don’t make an unfortunate mistake that so many people make. Don’t take your health and your family’s health for granted. Make a promise to yourself TODAY to make chiropractic a part of your healthy lifestyle and insure yourself and your family a healthy future.

When Chiropractors Act As Primary Care Providers, Costs Drop

A study in the May 2007 issue of the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics reports
health plans that use Chiropractors as Primary Care Providers (PCPs) reduce their health care utilization
costs significantly.

The study covers the seven-year period from 1999 to 2005. Researchers compared costs and utilization data from an Independent Physicians Association (IPA) that uses Chiropractors as PCPs and a traditional HMO that doesn’t.

The Chiropractic PCPs had 59 percent fewer hospitalizations, 62 percent fewer outpatient surgical cases and 85 percent lower drug costs compared with the HMO plans.

The patients in the Chiropractic PCP group also reported higher satisfaction with their care than the HMO group. Over the seven-year period, Chiropractic patients consistently demonstrated a high degree of satisfaction with their care that ranged from 89 percent to 100 percent.

Study co-author James Winterstein, D.C. says that patients using Chiropractic PCP health care groups “experienced fewer hospitalizations, underwent fewer surgeries and used considerably fewer pharmaceuticals than HMO patients who received traditional medical care.”

“The escalation of medical expenditures remains an urgent problem in the United States and it’s becoming quite clear that cost containment strategies by conventional medical providers are failing to achieve even mediocre results,” he said. “This study confirms that the integration of [medical], chiropractic and other complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) providers can positively impact patient quality of care while limiting costs. This approach to patient care has great potential to improve the U.S. healthcare system.”

Lifetime Resolutions

No one ever gets out of this world alive.

Resolve therefore to maintain a good sense of values.

Take care of yourself.

Good health is everyone’s major source of wealth.

Without it, happiness is virtually impossible.

Resolve to be cheerful and helpful.

What you give to the world comes back to you.

Resolve to listen more and talk less.

No one ever learns anything by talking.

Be cautious in giving advice.

Wise men don’t need it and fools won’t heed it.

Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged,sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and wrong. Some time in life, you will have been all of these.

Do not equate money with success.

The world abounds with big money-makers who are miserable failures as human beings.

Resolve to not procrastinate another day, for it is the thief of today’s peace of mind and tomorrow’s happiness.

Resolve to be the person you want to be … today!

                Cited in Ann Lander’s Newspaper Column