Health, Naturally! – November 2012

Health is our greatest wealth

Hello, I’d like to introduce myself to all Roseland Online readers. Thanks to editor, Mark David Hatwood, for the invitation to share my beliefs with you on health and wellbeing, which are both a passion to me and a job… how lucky am I?!

I am a chiropractor with clinics in Truro (Kernow Chiropractic Clinic) and Newquay (Newquay Chiropractic Clinic) and the clinic names reflect a love for ‘proper’ Cornwall and also the opportunity to mix surfing into everyday life… (well, a bit less now I have a trio of kids!)

Our present state of health, to me, is the perfect expression of how we have stimulated our bodies. I.e. the health we are experiencing right now is only relative to what we’ve ‘put in’ to it, causing the body to naturally and perfectly respond. So putting in bad stuff in means getting bad stuff out, and visa versa. Nature simply works according to how we look after ourselves!

Science today is unravelling such wonders about how our genes are influenced by the foods we eat, and even the emotions we experience, so the health we presently enjoy (or the lack of) is often down to our actions. If you’ve ever felt fitter in spring after a winter of eating chocolate and ever increasing belt sizes, you’ll know what I mean when your body starts to feel lighter. It feels more energised and more rewarding, as if you’ve shed the old you and, ‘viola’, somehow life feels that little bit sweeter. And when you walk up a flight of steps and feel you could do that twice… or even run it!

Age is less of an anxiety when you see a muscle in the places there haven’t been any! Ultimately we are a use-it-or-lose-it machine and as nature balances us to precisely to how we feed ourselves both nutritionally, mentally and physically, so the wealth in our health pays dividends to our sense of wellness, confidence and self belief… if we get that balance right. You only have to look at a bookshop’s ‘Health’ section to realise how much is out there about self improvement.

As a chiropractor, my profession treats poor movement of the spine, which creates problems such as back pain, sciatica, neck pain and headache. But it extends into arthritis in the injured or elderly, growing pains in kids, and colic in infants. A sound medical-like training in chiropractic allows us to run clinics where people can walk off the street with any physical ailment. We can diagnose and offer advice, sometimes with X-rays, and treat there and then. It gives us a lot of scope beyond drugs and standard NHS physiotherapy.

As the spine is the switchboard to the body, this interface has resounding implications on nerve function when spinal movement goes wrong through injury. Chiropractic care influences both bone muscle and nerve in its treatment, often seen as that ‘sense of wellbeing’ patients describe whist also feeling the resolution of their physical pain.

Being equally interested in the art and the science of this work, I’ve been on courses where further integration of our general wellbeing has shown me how emotions are carried in our injuries. Our teeth, for example, upset the balance of our whole body, leading the average therapist to chase (and charge!!) after symptoms oh too frequently.

This merging of ways of treating the body effectively, often immediately – and most important naturally – is what we all want from health care now and in the future. That is why at the clinics I believe we see an 80{c8c3b3d140ed11cb7662417ff7b2dc686ffa9c2daf0848ac14f76e68f36d0c20} referral rate from patients who have used our services. They’ve experienced a sense of direct action, positive outcome and clear patient involvement. Sometimes the journey can take longer, but each step is exciting as their daily pain diminishes, or we find out about how our body works through the explanations given, and hope starts to rise from it.

More and more I also realise that no one person knows everything. So I’ve personally chosen other therapies that align with the chiropractic work in our clinics. Referrals for massage – if the condition is more muscle related – and acupuncture, kinesiology or nutritional therapy for weight loss, diabetes, or heart disease management.

Outside referrals for physiotherapy, GP, or counselling services are also used. I’ve had the pleasure to work with a large network of effective therapists who I can text your details to, or call to ask about your case, or inform them of particular issues that may need more direct explanation. All of this is done discreetly, in confidence, and only once your consent is given.

So I hope this is a great start to springboard us into future topics the clinics have success with on a daily basis. And if I am talking to the converted, then any stories about back pain recovery through chiropractic would be greatly appreciated as in my next article, I will share some of the wonders our bodies through the hands of a chiropractor.

May you be blessed with action to trigger your best health!

Michael Noone

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