It seems like every time I turn on the radio or TV I hear someone talking about Obama-care.  It seems that in spite of the overwhelming opposition from the American public, our government has resorted to telling everyone what is best for them instead of asking.  Since we have historically been the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave,” I’m personally not too keen on the Government’s new role as Daddy.  I have a Dad.  A good one.  I don’t need another one.

The big fuss about Obama-care seems to be two fold.  First, anyone who has ever actually worked for a living knows that there is no such thing as a FREE lunch.  Things cost money and as my Dad used to say “We don’t have a money tree.”  It turns out those things only grow in DC.  Sorry rest of the country.  Sucks to be you.  Second, it turns out that most Americans don’t like being told what to do.  We are sort of a proud people.  It’s partly why a lot of the world hates us.  So the idea of being told what doctor to see and not see, where you can go and not go, what you can have done and what you can’t is a little bothersome.  If you aren’t quite sure if it’s a good idea or not, just ask Canada.  They have government funded health care system.  If you aren’t sure where to find a Canadian, go to the nearest hospital.  They are in OUR country paying out of pocket for their health care!

So that got me thinking.  How much of a choice do we have right now anyway?  Can we really go to whomever we want?  Do we have the option of selecting from any healthcare method of our choice.  The short answer: NO!  The long answer: HAHAHAHA…NO!  Unless of course you don’t have insurance.  If you are paying out of pocket for healthcare, you can go to whomever you want.  Simply put…CASH IS GOOD!  Of course there’s always the fear of getting a bill that you can’t swallow.  I understand that, but statistically the average person is better off paying out of pocket for healthcare than they are paying for insurance.  You come out way ahead in the long run.

Of course, I’m not telling you to drop your insurance.  I think everyone should at least have some sort of crisis insurance.  Unless you happen to own a fully operational crystal ball.  Then you can do whatever you want.  But we shouldn’t be so naive to believe that Private Company Lack of Choice is much better than Government Funded Lack of Choice.  Lack of Choice is still Lack of Choice.  It doesn’t matter who is restricting you.

I am, on the other hand, recommending that you take a second look at  your insurance.  Are you paying for insurance so in the event of a crisis you have help, or are you overpaying for a health care credit card that most good doctors wouldn’t take and that has more fine print than benefits?  Open your mind to the possibility of seeking out and paying for the care that you need instead of trying to pick the lesser of the evils off of your Private Company Lack of Choice list.  If you don’t know it by now, just because you can get a discount on something that doesn’t mean that’s what is best for you.  Or a crude but more memorable way of saying it is this: A cheap Turd Sandwich is still a Turd Sandwich.

So if you are against government regulated and restricted healthcare, I applaud you.  You should be.  You should be able to seek out the best care for yourself and your family regardless of what Big Daddy says.  But if you are willing to stand up to the Government and say “NO” then you should be willing to stand up to your insurance company and say the same thing because a lack of choice is a lack of choice.

Since the time that I learned about and subsequently fell in love with Chiropractic I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that I fell in love with a sinking ship.  From the outside looking in, the Chiropractic profession is a mess.  The public as a whole trusts chiros about as much as they trust snake oil salesmen and though we have fought so valiantly to be “real doctors” in the eyes of the general public, we have managed to make very little progress in the last 100+ years.  And in spite of the positive “it’s not as bad as it used to be” outlook that people often insist on comforting me with when they find out I have the letters DC behind my name, I don’t have a warm fuzzy feeling about the security of the profession in which I have chosen to dedicate my life.

Now I’m not by any means bad mouthing Chiropractic. I love Chiropractic.  With that said…for the most part, I hate (hate may be a bit strong) Chiropractors.  I know that sounds a bit harsh, but one of my pet peeves is when people speak very boldly about things they are ignorant of.  Since chiropractors usually have very strong opinions about Chiropractic but most of them have never taken the time to actually find out what Chiropractic is about, I chose not to hang out with them.  Sadly, even the ones that think they know…usually don’t.  That’s even more annoying.

How all chiros can give BJ Palmer the credit for “Developing” the profession but 99% of chiros ignore BJs work is something that will puzzle me until the day I die.  Truthfully, my entire Chiropractic journey took a massive turn because of a single phrase uttered by my good friend Dr. Adam Tanase while we were still in Chiropractic college.  He said, “BJ did it.  We should at least look into it.”  Now there’s a novel idea.  Let’s find out what the “Developer” of the profession did and do that!  If you are a chiro and you are reading this and are unsure about what I mean then maybe you should pick up a Green Book and learn about how BJ applied this amazing philosophy that you love so much.  And if you are a chiro and you don’t know what a Green Book is…well…shame on you.

Now I didn’t say all that just to gripe and moan. Like I said before.  I love Chiropractic.  But I truly believe that Chiropractic is DEAD.  After years of struggling, it has died from self-inflicted wounds.  We as chiros have killed our own profession and we have done it in the most ironic way, from the inside out.  The diversity of the profession has spread it too thin to survive.  The Chiropractic war cry for years has been “Why can’t we all just get along?” but I have recently realized something.  We can’t.  We won’t.  And we never will.

It is said that united we stand and divided we fall, but in Chiropractic’s case, I believe that divided is the only path to survival.  We have tried for too long to live under the same roof together when we are clearly divided.  The Bible says in the Gospel of Matthew “a house divided amongst itself will fall.”  This is why over the last few years, Chiropractors who in the past have referred to themselves as “Specific Chiropractors” have dropped the term Chiropractic and started referring to themselves as “Upper Cervical Doctors.”  We are trying to get our own house because we are sick of all the problems and fighting.  When people ask me why we started changing the name, I usually just tell them that enough Chiropractors have peed in our pool that we decided to get our own pool.  I think it creates a nice visual, don’t you?

Now Upper Cervical Doctors have been getting a lot of heat about the recent change, even amongst our own.  Of course this isn’t terribly unexpected because Chiropractic has a long illustrious history of eating their own.  But the bottom line is, we are right.  Division is the only path to survival.  And not just for Upper Cervical Docs, for EVERY chiropractor.

Think about it. What would the medical profession look like if every Medical Doctor was just a Medical Doctor?  What if there were no Podiatrists, Pediatricians, EENTs, Urologists, Oncologists or Neurologists?  What if they were not allowed by state law to call themselves anything different in spite of  additional training and specific specialty?  What if a Podiatrist had to go around explaining to people that they were a Medical Doctor “who did something different” or that they focused on a very specific type of medicine that has no name.  Then they can spend half of their day explaining to people why they only work with feet and don’t work with the digestive track even though their last Medical Doctor did.  After all…aren’t all Medical Doctors the same?

The bottom line is this. We all do very different things.  We aren’t the same.  We don’t have the same training.  We don’t all focus on the same type of care.  We aren’t ever going to agree on what Chiropractic is or should be.  AND we sure as heck do NOT get the same results.  So let’s stop pretending that we are one big happy family and stop insulting the intelligence of ourselves and the general public.  We are a house divided so we should start acting like one.  Let Chiropractic Rest In Peace and let’s move on to bigger and better things.  We will all be better off.

It turns out Arizona DOES Border Mexico!

If Ignorance is Bliss then I would like to introduce you to the happiest woman in the world.  Her name is Peggy West.

Last week County Supervisor and 2004 Hispanic Woman of the Year, Peggy West, stood up in front of her county board, God and ultimately the entire world and boldly shared her convictions about the new Arizona Immigration Law.  She informed everyone that if Arizona shared a border with Mexico like Texas does then Arizona’s new law to crack down on immigration would make more sense.  But because Arizona is “a ways removed” from Mexico, she was opposed to the law.

Yeah…you read that correctly.  The scariest thing is that we aren’t talking about a 12 year old girl that flunked geography.  We are talking about an award winning hispanic community supervisor. YIKES!

Now I don’t usually write about politics on my blog but I thought this acts as a wonderful example of people’s willingness to speak so boldly about something that they are so ignorant.  We see this in Politics, Religion, Business, Health and the list goes on and on.  It’s often the people who are the most passionate and the most willing to open their mouth in protest that are the most ignorant.

In my world, I see this most in health care. I have had people get into heated arguments with me because I have chosen not to vaccinate my children or because I think that medicine is a last resort instead of a first one. There are very educated yet ignorant doctors out there that have told my patients that Upper Cervical Care can not help them because they didn’t understand it or had never heard of it.  Usually the doctors are telling the patients this right AFTER the patients have finished telling the doctor how much Upper Cervical Care has helped.

I guess that’s why I have come to the conclusion that just because someone looks like they should know what they are talking about doesn’t mean they actually do.  I would encourage all those who are reading this to adopt that point of view (after you have done your research of course).  A healthy skepticism of what people say is a good thing.

With That said…I want to offer two pieces of advice for today.

1. Educate yourself, then form your own opinion.  Just because someone is in front of a camera, behind a mic, wearing a white coat or living in a white house that does not mean their opinion is or should be shared with the population as a whole. You may just find out that a lot of things you thought were opinions are actually agendas.  NOT the same thing.  If you don’t know what that means.  Look it up!  That’s a great place to start.

2. SPEAK UP! But do so ONLY AFTER you have educated yourself and formed your own opinion.  Bad things happen when good people sit in silence.  There are a lot of people out there that are more than willing to shout their ignorance from the roof top declaring to everyone, “We the Sheeple…” without taking even a moment to get their facts straight.  If you know something is good and right, if you know the world is indeed round when everyone says it’s flat, then stand up.  Be Bold.  Speak up!  The world does not benefit by you shrinking in order to avoid offending someone.

Unfortunately, this is what our world  has come to.  The only thing that I find more shocking than the 2 year old smoker is the fact that it wasn’t filmed in a trailer park.  It’s nice to see that the adults sitting around kept him from putting the lit end of the cigarette in is mouth.  I would sure hate for him to hurt himself.

There’s an old saying that says, “You can’t put a square peg in a round hole.” Now I have always disagreed with that because I feel that what you can and can’t fit into a round hole depends on the size of the hammer and not the shape of the peg.  It would be more accurate to say, “You can’t put a square peg NEATLY into a round hole.”  Of course this is besides the point.  The point of that saying is to illustrate to everyone how some things just don’t fit.  Have you ever felt like you don’t fit?

I know that trying to live a healthy lifestyle in an unhealthy world is difficult.  We are constantly bombarded with the opportunity to make bad health choices.  And the fact that bad health choices are so prevalent means that most people are conditioned to believe that they are normal.  Anyone who chooses to take the health path less traveled is simple a square peg.

And yet we see progress. At least in my area of the world, we are more health conscious now than we were five years ago.  Grocery stores are carrying organic foods, vitamins and supplements.  Bottled water is being sold where only soda and sport drinks were before.  Restaurants are offering more healthy food choices.  Even fast-food joints are modifying their menu to give people better choices.

But where does it all fit in? There are so many things people can do to improve their health and most people get overwhelmed trying to figure it all out.  To answer that question you have to ask the question, why?  Why am I doing what I’m doing?  Most people are either making healthy choices because they have to or because they want to.

People who make healthy changes in their life because they have to are in crisis mode. This is the guy that loses 50 lbs and stops smoking because the doctor told him he was going to die if he didn’t.  This is the woman that decides to start exercising because she has a class reunion coming up and she doesn’t want to “look fat.”  Or the woman that goes into an Upper Cervical doctor’s office crying because of her migraines and is never seen again after two visits because “she’s better.”  Of course there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make changes for the better no matter what the motivation.  But the problem with crisis mode is, when the crisis is over the healthy changes stop.  All the normal unhealthy choices resume until the next crisis comes up and then the cycle will start all over again.

People who make healthy choices because they want to are in true health mode. The normal state of the human body is health.  It’s always doing it’s best to achieve an optimal level of health and there are certain things that help the body to do this better.  Things like exercise, proper diet, proper head/neck alignment, good posture and adequate sleep all help the body work at it’s peak, no matter what you are going through.  And although these healthy things can help you tremendously in a crisis, that’s not the point.  Healthy people do that because they are healthy people, not because they are sick.

So look at the things you do in your life. Start doing things because you want to be healthy instead of trying not to be sick.  I would suggest that you focus on three main things as the foundation for your healthy life:

1. Upper Cervical Care: You can’t be the healthy person you are supposed to be without proper head/neck alignment.  You may not understand why, but there are plenty of online sources that will answer that question.  Drop your ASSumptions and do your own research.  Your health and your families health depends on it.

2. Exercise: If you don’t use it, you lose it.  The body needs to be worked.  If you don’t get physical activity in your daily life (and most of us don’t) then you have to do it on your own.  You don’t have to try and be ripped like a racehorse but you do have to exercise.  Your body needs it.

3. Diet: Diet is what you eat not what you don’t eat.  Everyone has a diet but most people have a poor one.  You can’t treat your body like a garbage disposal and expect it to run like a Ferrari.  If you want it to run like a Ferrari, treat it like one.

One of my running jokes is that “I’m surprisingly handy for a doctor.” I have my father to thank for that.  I think one of the greatest things my dad ever taught me was how to think.  He taught me how to figure things out.  This skill helps me in my personal life as well as my professional one.

I’m a lot like my father in the sense that I rarely need someone to come to the house to fix things.  I know how to fix cars and how to fix houses and if I don’t know how to fix something, just like my dad, I’ll figure it out.  Honestly, at times it’s a curse.  If there is something around the house that my wife wants me to fix, she will never take the “I don’t know how to fix it” excuse.  Either she will call me out on it right away or she will just “try to fix it” herself because she knows once she really messes it up, I’ll fix it.

Now I’m not saying I’m an expert at everything. I’ve fixed a lot of my own stuff and I’ve helped a lot of friends fix things, but I doubt that many people will be paying me to fix their stuff any time soon.  And the truth is…they shouldn’t, at least not very much.  The reason I say this is simple.  I’m not an expert electrician, drywaller, plumber, mechanic, landscaper or any other of the many professionals that I have impersonated at various times throughout my life.

The ironic thing is that even though I am a jack-of-all-trades in my personal life, I am NOT AT ALL in my professional life.  I’m a professional Upper Cervical doctor.  It’s what I do and I don’t mind saying, I’m good at it.  But a lot of people don’t understand that.  Especially since Upper Cervical is associated with chiropractic which has definitely evolved into a jack-of-all trades profession.

There are a lot of people out there who are simply amazed at how “little” we do in our office. Because I have a DC (Doctor of Chiropractic) after my name I’m supposed to have a giant menu in my office that includes pillows, supplements, herbs, monavie, goji juice, vitamin D, vitamin B, vitamin C, foot baths, massage, aromatherapy, physical therapy, sports therapy, acupuncture, energy work, nutritional counseling, colon cleansing, weight-loss consulting, oil-changes, hair cuts, lawn care and fortune telling just to name a few.  Now I’ll admit, I exaggerated a bit there at the end, but not much.

Now I’m not  in any way saying that any of those services are unnecessary. They all have their place.  But there are a lot of people out there that have no idea what chiropractic or Upper Cervical are really about because a bunch of Doctors with DC behind their name insist on spending more time trying to expand their menu instead of mastering their skill.  This should be considered a crime against our fellow man.  Because of our never ending pursuit to expand our scope of practice in hopes of some day becoming “Real Doctors” we have confused the public to the point that they have missed the most profound but yet simple health principle ever discovered: Health from above down inside out.  Shame on us!

Of course there are times when a Jack-of-all-trades is nice. My wife really appreciates the fact that I can do so many things around the house.  But the fact that I own a pipe wrench and know how to use it doesn’t make me a plumber, and just because a Chiropractor owns a bunch of acupuncture needles and took a couple weekend classes to learn where to stick them, doesn’t mean they are an acupuncturist.  In spite of what their weekend seminar certificate says.

The bottom line is this. There are a lot of doctors and natural health care providers out there that try to be everything to everybody.  Often they disguise their lack of excellence in any one area with the “we do whatever our patients need” explanation.  It sounds great on the surface, but you should always remember, any time you are working with a jack-of-all-trades it is very possible that you are also working with a Master-of-None.

Dr. Jerry Kennedy is an Upper Cervical Doctor in Belleville, Illinois.

Scientists have recently uncovered a new disease that is affecting millions of Americans.  It is costing Americans billions of dollars per year.  It is one of the leading causes of time away from work and it reeks havoc on a daily basis.  It’s called Daily Pooping Disorder (DPD).  The FDA has recently approved a Poop Control medication to help treat DPD and we are expecting a vaccine to be released later this year so people can start taking preventative steps in the fight against DPD. Doctors are hopeful that DPD will be under control soon as the public is made aware of the problem with the help of local and national news media.

Unfortunately there is a group of irrational people out there that will argue that daily pooping is normal and that Poop Control medication is dangerous.  They try to use scare tactics to convince people that Poop Control medications have been linked to other health problems, but these concerns are clearly overreacting and these concerns are irrational and unscientific.

I said all that to say this…

The other day a patient was sharing with me her dissatisfaction with daughter’s doctor. Her teenage daughter was having some pelvic pain and went to the doctor for a checkup.  The doctor proceeded to tell them that they didn’t know what was wrong with her and then in the same breath they recommended that she start taking birth control.

Of course this happens all the time.  Doctors are extremely trigger happy when it comes to recommending birth control.  It seems to be the cure for every female problem known to man.  No one seems to care much about the long term health problems that birth control can cause to women.  Birth Control has been linked to cancer, osteoperosis, heart disease, sexual disfunction and that’s the short list.

Ultimately birth control tricks the body into functioning abnormally.  One of the big selling points for birth control is that women won’t have to have their period any more or they will have it much less.  Now I don’t pretend to know what women go through each month with their cycle.  I know enough to know it’s unpleasant.  But the bottom line is…it’s normal.  The female body was designed to clean itself out each month and when we trick it to stop, we could be causing more harm than good.

Just something to think about.

I have been captivated by this video the last few days.  So many of us live our lives in fear and never fully reach what God has intended for us.  It’s a shame really.  I just hope that I can learn to live life without the fears and limitations that imprison so many people.  What an amazing world we would live in if we would all just let our light shine.

Turns out another vaccine has been deemed dangerous due to the fact that they found Pig virus DNA in it.  It has already been administered to over 1 million US children and over 30 million worldwide.  Read more on www.mercola.com.

When are we going to learn that blindly mass medicating our children is a really bad idea?  In spite of what you may think.  There are ways for parents to protect their children if they choose not to vaccinate.  Educate yourself, your children’s health depends on it.

I was caught off guard the other day when I was sitting in my car and I heard the latest H1N1 vaccine scare commercial come over the radio.  It wasn’t that long ago that we were getting hit from all sides with H1N1 propaganda.  (Sort like what happens to the guy that tries to run across the line of porta-potties.)  But as of late it seems like it has died down a bit.  Until now…

So I looked into it further and it turns out that there are a whole bunch of unused H1N1 vaccines out there that are getting ready to expire.  My first thought was, “Congrats to everyone who refused to be a Sheeple.”  I’m glad that enough people refused to fall for the marketing of Big Pharma that there is a bunch of that stuff still sitting around going stale.  If that happened more often, the pharmaceutical companies may be forced to look into alternatives to blindly pumping people full of harmful drugs.  Of course at this point in time that’s a pipe dream.  For now we will just have to weather another H1N1 storm.