Dr. Rob's Health Explosion

SUV after hydroplaning

First, I would like to thank God for protecting my friend’s son after flipping his vehicle last night. Brian could have been hurt so much worse than he is now. Second, I have changed his name to Brian to protect the innocent. Haha

A buddy of mine called me this morning and told me he was up until 3 AM because his son was driving home last night and ended up flipping his car. Apparently, Brian drove over some water in the road left from the earlier rains. This caused him to hydroplane. He was unable to maintain control of the vehicle and ended up flipping into the ditch. Brian had to actually crawl out of the rear window because of the damage done to his door.

After a quick trip to the ER, Brian found out he was an extremely lucky individual in that no major injuries were sustained. Outside of some bumps and bruises, there really was no impairment they could find.

So what is the lesson we are to learn from this? To explain that, we must first rewind time a little bit to a few months ago.

My friend was going over his auto insurance policy and noticed his Personal Injury Protection (PIP) was set at only $2500. Most people aren’t even aware there is such a thing on their policy unless they have had to use it. My friend made the decision to double his PIP to $5000, which costed him a total of $10 on six months.

So what is PIP and why do you need to know about it?

PIP is a type of special insurance on your policy to protect you in the event you are injured in an accident involving someone with no insurance, an accident that is your fault, and/or an accident where no other parties are involved. This is money that can be used to pay for doctor bills, lost wages from work, therapy, etc. with no affect on your rates. The average cost to add this to your policy is about $25 for $2,500 in PIP and about $35 for $5,000 of PIP. For this to be a bad deal you would have to never be in a car accident for the next 50 years. The chances of that happening is extremely slim.

Because my friend decided to spend an extra $1.67 for the next 6 months on his insurance policy, he will not have to pay up to $5,000 in bills from a trip to the ER or any other doctor visits/treatments received. That is a heck of a deal if you ask me.

The moral of the story is to check your car insurance policy and add PIP coverage if it is not there. My recommendation is have at least $5,000 in coverage because $2,500 does not go very far as anyone who has made a visit to the hospital has found out.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sCKRJ3G4JI&feature=player_embedded

As much as I talk about pain being a poor indicator of health and how your body’s ability to function dictates how healthy you are, it is still a very big problem for thousands of people in this country. Every day, millions are reaching for a bottle of aspirin or Tylenol to relieve some type of pain. Most don’t even know that they are poisoning their bodies at the same time and setting it up for failure further down the road.

Take aspirin for example, we are taught to take it for aches and pains. You should even take one a day as you get older to show your heart that you care about it. Right?!

Did you know that your aspirin is causing your stomach and intestines to bleed everytime you take it? They fail to leave that part out of the commercials. Or how about your liver and kidneys? They have to filter everything out of your body.

Being that ALL medication is processed as a poison (because that’s what it is) in your body, it will cause damage to either one or both. As a matter of fact, Tylenol is now reported as the number 1 cause of liver disease. You cannot assume that something is not dangerous to your body because you buy it at the grocery store without a script.

Here’s something else I bet you didn’t know: you don’t suffer from a deficiency of aspirin or Tylenol! I usually get a few chuckles when I make that statement so feel free to insert yours here. Your pain does not come from not having a high enough level of pain killers or antiinflammatories in your system. Pain is a perception of the brain or signal.

This means if an area of the body loses its ability to function then at a certain level your brain decides, “Hey, I guess I better tell him/her about it.” It then throws out a signal to you, preferably where the problem is, so that you can correct the problem. Sometimes the brain gets the location right and sometimes it does not. This is because less than 10% of your nerves actually deal with pain, everything else is function.

Let me translate. By the time you are feeling pain, then something else has already lost its ability to function properly somewhere else. So how do I know that? (Glad you asked)

All nerves exit from the spine and every single cell, tissue, and organ in your body is hooked up to a nerve. Every nerve controls more than one thing. Part of the nerve goes to control a group of muscles and the other part goes to organs and tissues. If you have pain, then something is not functioning properly.  The nerves exiting that part of the spine are now affected, which disrupts the messages being sent to whatever parts of the body it controls.

For example, lets say you have a job where you work at the computer a lot. Now you notice that your neck is starting to get tight on a daily basis and some pain actually starts to creep in from time to time. The nerves exiting that part of the spine also go to control areas of the brain, your eyes, your nose, your sinuses, your throat, etc. All those areas are not allowed to function as well as they normally would.

Now I am not saying that you will also have problems in all those areas. What I am saying is that now you are set up to have problems in those areas. Let’s say with no stress on the neck your sinuses can function at 100%. Now let’s throw a little stress in there and a couple of misalignments and now they can only function at 75%. Who do you think is more likely to get  a sinus infection – sinuses functioning at 100% or 75%?

I get asked all the time what the deal is with chiropractic. Why shouldn’t we just take Advil or whatever else? My response is that we look at the body differently than most MDs. We try to find an area of the body that is not functioning properly, which is causing problems (symptoms) there or somewhere else, and restore normal function. If you go to your RD (that’s regular doctor), they will ask for your symptoms and prescribe medication to correct those.

So let me ask you this? What makes more sense, addressing the cause of the problems or the effects of the problems? In which scenario do you think a reoccurrence is least likely? This is why pretty much all the research you can find on the effectiveness of chiropractic says we are just as good or better than medication.

The more things you can improve or problems you can solve without drugs or surgery, the longer your body will last you, and the more you will be able to enjoy it later in life.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFyyI-KWJxE&feature=player_embedded

The government has been doing everything in its power to scare you into hysteria over Swine Flu. It has gone so far to estimate the number of deaths to reach 90,000. In all fairness, the CDC did issue a statement telling the government to pull back on those reigns a little bit, but the amount of media given to the retraction is always far less than the original statement.

 So far our “best chance” to survive this pandemic is to wash your hands and get vaccinated. Oh and they still haven’t finished producing this vaccine for distribution. Oh AND they really haven’t tested it for all its possible side effects. This means you are the test subject if you decide to get the shot. I even heard an announcement that pregnant women are targeted to “protect” them.  You mean to tell me that pregnant women can’t have any caffeine or a drink of alcohol but you can inject them with mercury and a bunch of other preservatives.

 It’s ludicrous!

 The flu is quite easy to avoid and treat. It doesn’t even involve getting shots or taking medicine that doesn’t work most of the time. It’s been around for a really long time. It’s called vitamin D.

 It’s not a coincidence that the flu and colds are prevalent during a time of year when people have less sun exposure. In case you have forgotten from biology class, UV radiation from the sun comes in contact with your skin which your body turns into vitamin D.  It’s also not a coincidence that studies are showing that we are becoming a nation of vitamin D deficient people and now different types of flu are beginning to spring up.

 Vitamin D is actually a hormone and not a vitamin and plays an EXTREMELY important role in the body. It’s probably even more important than vitamin C. Go ahead and Google it and learn about all the benefits vitamin D gives you. I used to only link it with bone health, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. It is great at preventing and killing viruses. It also helps your body fight cancer as well. This is why studies involving sun screen have shown an actual increase in your chances of getting skin cancer with the use of SPF products.

 So the next question is usually “How much should I be taking?”

 Glad you asked. The average person should be taking 1,000 to 2,000 IU per 100 lbs. of body weight per day. I know this sounds like a lot but your body can produce up to 20,000 IU per day with adequate sun exposure. The next question is “what if I already have the flu?”

 Glad you asked again. The recommendations are 2,000 IU per kilogram per day for 3 days and then you stop. So If you weight 110 lbs., you divide that by 2.2 to get 50 kg. Multiply that by 2,000 to get 100,000 IU per day for the 3 days.
 I know this sounds like a lot and the question of toxicity is always brought up. Your body will not reach toxicity levels with vitamin D until it has received over 30,000 IU for several months or years. This mega-dose recommendation is only for 3 days.

 Remember if you choose to get your child vaccinated against the swine flu, then your child has become a test subject.

Being that I am a health care provider, it seems like everyone wants to know what I think about the possible reformatting of our health care system. I have given it some thought and I have come up with an answer. But before I give it to you, I must first say this.

There absolutely needs to be some kind of change in the system we have or it will continue to spiral downward and get more and more out of control. However, change does not mean better it ONLY means different.

So now my answer to the question…..it doesn’t really matter.  Before anyone gets upset, let me clarify.

When I say it doesn’t matter, I mean in relation to helping out the health crisis this nation finds itself in today. The World Health Organization has us listed around 35th (+ or – 2 spots) on the healthiest nations in the world. We are number 1 in emergency medicine (what medicine was to be used for) but way down on the list for chronic, preventable diseases.

Let me ask you some questions. How many people have health insurance? I think we can all agree that most people have some form of health insurance. When are you allowed to use your health insurance? If you are thinking “when you are sick,” then you are right. When do most people go to the doctor? When they are sick or have problems, and in the mean time, do nothing until they have another problem.

You see, we currently have a sick-care system and sick insurance – NOT health care with health insurance.

We have been brainwashed for several decades now that your health is all about how you feel. If I’m not in pain/sick, then everything is good. When pain/sickness is present, now there’s a problem. When it stops hurting, the problem is fixed and all is good once again.

This just simply is NOT how your body operates. We are not machines with nuts and bolts. We are dynamic, biological systems that are constantly assessing, compensating, and adapting to the environment we are in. Unless you can think of the exact moment you experienced trauma when your pain began, then it is something that has developed over time. Even then, the scar tissue left behind from an injury will cause that area to prematurely decay if not payed attention to.

Until we adopt a system that puts more emphasis on the prevention of health problems, we will always have a messed up system. You can’t wait until your car breaks down before you decide to take care of it and expect it to perform at a very high level. We all get that with our cars and our teeth, so why do we not get that about our health.

The health care crisis in this nation has little to do with the presence or absence of a health insurance policy. The crisis originates with the thought process currently used with respect to our individual health. The government is not going to get you or your children healthy. The insurance companies are not going to get you or your children healthy. We’ve been following there lead for several decades now with vaccination, drugs, and surgeries and look where it got us.

Obviously each individual case is different, and I would never say that we don’t need any of those things. In the right circumstances it is greatly needed. If I break my arm or my appendix ruptures, don’t come at me with some herbal paste to rub on my skin. Get me to a hospital first for some pain medication and possibly surgery. After things are stabilized then I’ll probably check out your herbal remedy.

The overhauling of our system needs to start with changing our out-dated ideals of health and use some of the research we’ve been spending billions of dollars on over the last 20 years and start applying it. Then we need to develop a system that encourages the individual to be more responsible for their own health. Until that happens, we will always end up right where we are at today.