The Fountain of Youth

You would think that the idea of a fountain of youth would have ended with Ponce` de Leon's failure to locate it in Florida, but every few years, someone comes up with an idea, a drug, or a gimmick which can assure people eternal youth.  A recent article entitled “Enzyme May be Fountain of Youth” has once again spurred interest.  Of course, the headline is only designed to grab peoples’ attention.  There is no secret to perpetual youth.  The researchers admit that findings “won’t make people any younger or allow them to live forever.”  By the time you finish reading the article you realize that the researchers are really not promising anything.

What they have found is that a cell divides about 70 times over a lifetime.  Each time it divides, the protective end of the chromosome, called a telomere, is shortened.  Eventually it is too short to protect the cell and the cell dies.  The researchers believe that by inserting a gene into the cell this shortening will not occur.

There are other substances, vitamins, herbs and “natural ingredients” that are supposed to keep you younger.  Most of it is just Madison Avenue hype.  No one is going to discover anything that will enable you to live forever.  We all know that.  What they are saying or should be saying is that these substances may enable you to live a better quality of life and perhaps even live a little longer.  But then that is nothing new.  We have known for years that doing the things necessary to be healthy will increase your chances of living a longer, more productive and healthier life.  You may not always have the stamina of an 18 year old but you will be better off than you would if you did not do those health enhancing things.

When it comes to chiropractic, we have to be the most honest people in the scientific community.  We do not offer a fountain of youth.  We do not promise cures for disease, we do not even promise that you will be healthy or live longer.  No one can make those kinds of promises.  What we can and do promise is that if we can correct the vertebral subluxations in your spine and keep them corrected as much of the time as possible that you will lead a healthier more productive life than you would if you were walking around with subluxations interfering with the proper function of your nerve system.  How much healthier? Sorry, we cannot even make a guess.  Perhaps it will be imperceptible.  Perhaps it will make all the difference in the world, more than anything else you do in your life.  We have no way of knowing.  But the fact that your body will work better is based upon logic and common sense.  Proper function depends upon the nerve system. If there is an interference in the nerve system, the organs and parts supplied by those nerves will not function as they were intended to.  If those parts are vital organs or if they produce necessary chemicals, then the entire body will be affected.  In fact, any breakdown of function anywhere in the body has a universal detrimental affect on the entire body, for each part of the body is dependent upon every other part and all parts contribute to the whole.  So while the Spanish explorer’s idea of a single fountain that would affect the whole body was non-existent, the fact is that what we do to our body both good and bad does affect the entire organism.

You will hear many claims for many products in the years to come, miracle cures, instant relief and fountains of youth.  For some there may even be seemingly dramatic results.  But for most of us, the thing to do is to realize there is no easy way to a full productive healthy life.  We can wander through life like a modern-day Ponce` de Leon looking for the magical elixir of life or we can recognize that a healthy fulfilling life depends on what we do in the way of taking care of our body and doing what is best for it.  The latter approach seems to me to be the one that makes the most sense.

The Dangers of Bottled Water

Recently on the evening news there was a promo for a news item on the dangers of drinking bottled water.  You know the kind of short blurbs that keep you watching an otherwise negative and unenjoyable program until you get to the segment that you want.  I watched because I really wanted to know the dangers of bottled water.  Might it be that some dangerous chemical was leaking into natural spring water?  It did not seem like there could be too many things wrong with bottled water.  It has no cholesterol, it is not addicting and 85% of our body is made up of it.  Well, they finally got to the bottled water segment and the danger that it was causing.  It seems that the five-billion-dollar industry is starting to cause a greater incidence of tooth decay, as children are drinking bottled water instead of municipal water which in most places in this country has fluoride added to it.  During a brief interview with representatives from the American Dental Association a number of interesting issues arose.

            The assumption is that this is creating a real danger, however, dental cavities are not exactly a life-threatening malady.  Whether the increase is significant and whether it is a result of bottled water is open to discussion.  But notice that the answer to the problem is not better oral hygiene which involves brushing regularly, avoiding between-meal snacks and doing other things that are important to maintain good health for the entire body.  The answer to this problem according to the medically-oriented community is to put a strong chemical, actually a poison, into the body in an effort to make the teeth stronger.  That represents a philosophy that addresses the expedient or temporary solution at the sacrifice of what is right.  A wrong thing (putting sodium fluoride in the water) done in a wrong way (outside-in) cannot have a right result (a healthier body).  It may temporarily reduce cavities in children but it will not make them healthier.  On the contrary, it has to have a negative effect on their bodies.  Further, our children need to be taught good oral hygiene and the other aspects of health rather that thinking a drug or chemical can be a substitute.  The major problem with health today is the idea that every health problem has a quick fix in the form of a drug or surgery or even a vitamin.  Too often the nutrition industry is prone to promote quick cures through food supplements.  Herbs, vitamins and fluoride just perpetuate that myth.

            Perhaps the greatest irony, actually bordering on stupidity, was the response by the bottled-water industry.  A spokesman said in effect, “Okay, if tooth decay is a problem, we can remedy that.  We’ll just add fluoride to our bottled water.”  Hey, wait a minute!  Isn’t the whole idea of drinking bottled water avoiding all the garbage the water company knowingly or unknowingly is pumping out of the spigot in your kitchen sink?  Why pay all that money for water that is going to have the same thing in it.  But you know what?  The average American will buy fluoridated bottled water because they believe that is what is best for them. The medical/dental profession has missed the real idea of what health is all about.  A bottled-water industry that is really only interested in selling products and does not care whether it is pure or not (you have to wonder if they are so quick to agree to put fluoride in their bottled water how concerned they are with the purity of it in the first place).  Lastly, we, as consumers, have a public that really do not understand the need for avoiding harmful substances and keeping the body healthy.

            People are drastically in need of some clear thinking when it comes to matters of health. More and more it appears that with few exceptions only the chiropractic profession has that perspective.

The major problem with health today is the idea that every health problem has a quick fix in the form of a drug or surgery or even a vitamin.

The Uniqueness of You

There is a new system of identification that, according to some authorities, will make P.I.N. numbers, passwords, and other forms of identification obsolete.  Its called Biometric Identification.  Everyone is familiar with the most commonly used form of this type of identification--fingerprints.  However, there are others, some that are even more accurate than a fingerprint.  Face technology looks at a scan of the entire face utilizing 50 points around the nose, mouth, eyes, brow and jaw.  The weakness of the system is, of course, identical twins, but growing a beard or putting on weight will also alter the facial structure.  The hand, like the face, is another identification system.  It has unique geometric shapes and sizes.  Most of us are familiar with voice prints and, of course, DNA, although the latter is not practical at this time to be used at an ATM or at the supermarket.

The most technical biometric identification to be used is the iris of the eye.  While a fingerprint has only 40 measurable characteristics, the iris of the eye has 266.  Even if a third of the information is mismatched, it can still make a positive identification.  We are truly unique individuals.

Just as there is a uniqueness about our face, our iris and our fingerprint, there is also a uniqueness about the inside workings of our body.  No two people are alike as far as physiological needs.  One person’s insulin needs are different than another person’s.  Even the exact quality of the insulin is a little different.  Two people may eat the exact same meal but the digestive juices necessary to break down that meal and make it useful to the body are totally different.  Every person’s blood chemistry is slightly different.  Our caloric intake needs vary from person to person and within the same person from day to day.  There are literally millions of different measurable characteristics within human beings.  How could any doctor know all these needs for any one person let alone for all his patients?  The fact is that he cannot.  The worst that can happen with biometric identification is a case of mistaken identity.  The worse that can happen with a mistake in knowing what a person’s internal, chemical needs are is death, and that happens thousands of times a year.  We simply cannot know the unique biochemical needs of the body.  That is why medicine is not a science but an art.  It is making educated guesses on a daily basis regarding people’s health.

Unlike medical science, the chiropractor does not attempt to conform a person to a standard or norm which is really unknown to the doctor.  Chiropractors recognize that the body has a self-regulating, self-normalizing mechanism to it, what we call an innate intelligence.  It is this self-regulating principle that has stored these millions upon millions of unique characteristics and needs and can meet those needs on a moment-by-moment basis.  The problem with biometric identification is that it cannot adapt if you put on some weight or change the features of your face.  The innate intelligence of the body, however, can adapt to changes in your body as well as changes in the environment.  To accomplish this adaptation a communication system is necessary.  That system in human beings is the nerve system.  If it should be interfered with, due to vertebral subluxation (a bone misaligned putting pressure on the nerves) then that which is uniquely you cannot be expressed.  The objective of the chiropractor is the correction of these subluxations.