Moderation is key

I have this particularly embarrassing fault I will share with you to show why moderation in your diet is so important. Like I have said before, overall I eat very healthy. But when I fall off the wagon, I fall HARD. During gymnastics, I became rather addicted to baking…probably because I also became rather addicted to eating. I am a pretty good baker, if I do say so myself. I enjoy not only eating what I bake, but I also enjoy sharing with my friends and family…sometimes.

One particular day, I was home alone and decided to make this chocolate cheesecake. The crust was made from Oreo cookies and chocolate, and the cheesecake filling was the most rich, velvety chocolate ganache creation you have ever tasted. I’m drooling just thinking about it. After I made the cheesecake, I decided I had better try a sample of it. I couldn’t serve this to my family if it was bad, right? Well the first sample was so good that I decided I needed another…and then another. Before I knew it, I had eaten way too much of the cheesecake and was embarrassed for my family to see what small amount was left. So I decided to throw the rest away so they wouldn’t know about it and lectured myself to never do that again.

As I was cleaning up the kitchen, I kept thinking about how delicious that cheesecake was and how, surprisingly enough, I wanted more. I could see it in the trash, lying there right on top. “I shouldn’t…” I thought to myself, “but it’s lying right on top and you could just scoop some off that isn’t touching anything else”. Judge me all you want because I find it very hard to believe anyone, who says they have never done this…never eating an entire cheesecake in one afternoon, okay I believe that. But I know A LOT of people who have eaten out of the trash. I am just able to admit it. Yes, I ate the majority of the rest of that cheesecake from the trash. And it was delicious. I still have the recipe if anyone wants it. I wouldn’t dare make it again though.

I deserved my punishment. Cheesecake doesn’t taste as good coming up as it does going down. Normally when I do something like that, I am sicker than a dog for the rest of the day and have a migraine and joint pain for several days. I deserve it. As you can see, I seem to have a problem with moderation. I thank God for my high metabolism and sensitive stomach or I would be a much heavier individual. It became a tradition of mine, several years in a row on Fourth of July to stuff my face with bags of Cheetos and red licorice, while watching the fireworks, and to awaken in the middle of the night puking my guts up. Some of us never learn.

Just because you fall off the wagon, doesn’t mean you can’t get back on. Having a cheat meal every now and then is actually healthy because it lets you get over your craving and move on. If I don’t satisfy my cravings, I tend to go a little crazier than if I just go ahead and have that piece of cake instead of denying myself and then going overboard later. Over the years, I have come to the realization that I don’t agree with “diets”. For some people they may work, but not for me. I can’t deprive myself of all my favorite foods for very long. I get a severe case of “hangry” (so hungry you’re angry) if I do this. What I find works best is four to five small, healthy meals throughout the day. This keeps your metabolism running and keeps you from becoming “starving”, which then leads you to binge regret. A cheat meal once a week for me helps satisfy cravings and can be something like one to two slices of pizza with a large salad…not consuming the entire pizza in one setting, like we all have tried our best to do.

A cheat meal like this every once in a while, will allow you to satisfy your craving, without blowing your entire healthy lifestyle. When you blow it, you may feel disgusted with yourself, and will all of a sudden feel like you’ve gained a bunch of weight, and will lack the motivation to get back on your healthy wagon again. Try focusing on your health instead of making this lifestyle a “diet” to lose weight. When I reached my full-grown height of 5’9”, and was in the perfect shape of my life because I was in gymnastics, I wore a baggy size 0 in jeans, yet I weighed 125lbs…on my light days. Yea 125lbs sounds good, but not for a size 0. Because of this, I have never been a fan of scales. No, it’s not like I fear them; they actually have no meaning to me. Muscle weighs more than fat and if you look great, feel great, and both exercise and eat the way you should, the number on the scale shouldn’t matter. So stop being concerned about the number on the scale and focus on eating a lot more healthy food and get to the gym or go outside and move!

 

Vaccines. Decide for yourself

The traumatic stories on the effects of vaccines are endless. My personal experience with vaccines isn’t comparable at all to the stories I've heard from both patients and acquaintances.  I remember just like yesterday, going in for some routine vaccines when I was 6 years old. One of the vaccines I received that day was the tetanus booster, which I received in my right arm. The moment that the Doctor injected me, I immediately was in pain. Over the next 10 minutes, the pain spread from the injection spot all the way down my arm and up into my neck and back. I remember being hunched over, unable to move for the remainder of the day. My mom took me to the grocery store afterwards, to get a pain reliever because I wouldn’t stop crying, but it didn't help. I remember not even being able to walk through the store because my legs had gotten so weak. I knew what I was feeling wasn't normal, but we simply had done what the Doctor recommended and because we knew no different. Sometimes I think this vaccine may have played a small roll in my autoimmune disease, but God only knows. That was the last vaccine I have ever received or ever will receive.

I feel bad for my previous OBGYN whom I went to for many years. She should have really made a note on my chart so she didn’t have to be rejected every year to try to sway me to get the HPV vaccine Gardasil, among other things. Every year it was the same; she would try to tell me the “dangers” of not receiving the vaccine and I would tell her it was far more dangerous not only for an immunocompromised person to get the vaccine, but that a healthy individual will fight off the virus, if received, anyway. I gave her the whole rundown of what is really in the vaccine, how it hasn’t been effectively studied, and how it can cause more harm than good. The funny thing is…she would agree with me every time…yet she continues to give the vaccine to all of her other patients. I currently have one patient, in particular, who has had a wide range of serious health problems since receiving the HPV vaccine. She has missed so many days of school that her mom has now been forced to homeschool her. The girls Medical Doctor won’t even report her case, saying that it is a “coincidence” she developed these debilitating health problems the next day after receiving the first HPV vaccine. Thankfully, she didn’t complete the series. Who knows what would have happened.

Aside from the fact that I have done a lot of research on vaccines over the years, which causes me to disagree with them completely, common sense shows they are unnecessary and counterproductive. Why would you get the flu vaccine, for instance, if it makes you get the flu anyways? I understand this is not 100% the case…but for the majority of people I know who get it, it is. Also, when you get vaccines, you shed the vaccine for several days or longer, depending on which one it is. So you get a vaccine, you end up getting the flu, and you give the flu to your unvaccinated friend (or your Chiropractor). Makes no sense to me. There are many ways to prevent getting the flu that naturally have no side effects. Washing your hands, for instance. Loading up on fresh produce that contain vitamin C, eating garlic, and staying away from processed sugars are just a few things to start with that will strengthen your immune system.

Being educated about different vaccines, instead of simply receiving just what the Doctor tells you what you are getting, is very important. Medical Doctors often push for ones to get that don’t even make sense, like the Hepatitis B vaccines for newborns even if there is no possibility for the mother to have Hepatitis B. The only other way the baby could get it is through intravenous drug use or sex with someone who has Hepatitis B…yah…a baby. My family laughs at the craziness of when my sister was younger and stepped on a horseshoe nail. Our Doctor, at the time, insisted on her getting the tetanus vaccine because “she could get tetanus from the nail”. Well did you know that the tetanus vaccine can’t treat existing tetanus that is already in the blood stream? It can only prevent tetanus in the near future.  It is also ridiculous to assume all women have an STD and to let babies suffer through silver nitrate drops the moment they are born, which is the only reason for the drops to be used for. These drops burn very badly and cause you to go blind, lasting for hours.

Immunizations have had their benefits in history and differ from vaccines. Immunizations introduce a pathogen to the body so it will later recognize that pathogen and attack it in later exposures through a pathway that the body would normally be exposed to. Vaccines, however, are an injectable cocktail of the intended pathogen along with a host of toxins such as thimerosal (mercury), aluminum, formaldehyde, and genetic material from both humans and animals, among other things. Deciding whether or not you choose to vaccinate is a decision you must make for yourself. I am not here to give you research statistics or even try to sway you to one way or the other. I just want you to be informed and to spark your curiosity for more research. Facts are facts though. Many diseases were eradicated once proper cleanliness, nutrition, and better living conditions were introduced, not because of vaccines. Conventional medicine teaches that Polio and Smallpox epidemics, for example, were brought down due to vaccines, when in fact, there are a significant number of studies in Medical journals that show this wasn’t the case and that these were actually eradicated BEFORE antibiotics and vaccines were introduced.

No matter what your decision is regarding whether or not to receive vaccines, they have changed significantly over the years, both in quantity and quality. Vaccines are moneymakers and the slim benefits of them will be exaggerated to get patients to receive as many as possible to bring in the biggest buck. At least make your decision an educated one and if you feel that some vaccines are still necessary, in your opinion, try choosing an alternate schedule that allows you or your child plenty of time to recover between vaccines, instead of exposing your body to them all at once.

Medical Doctors are now even questioning the use of vaccines; this is a great interview http://www.nvic.org/NVIC-Vaccine-News/October-2012/Mercola-Palevsky-Interview.aspx

http://www.naturalnews.com/Vaccines_Get_the_Full_Story.html

Mercola has tons of informative articles http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/07/30/whooping-cough-vaccine.aspx

‘The Greater Good’ is a great documentary worth watching and ‘What your Doctor may not tell you about your children’s vaccines’ by Stephanie Cave is a great book. Feel free to ask for any more resources and I will be more than happy to point you in the right direction.

The New York nightmare

During the two-week break before my final trimester at school, my mom and I decided to take a short trip to New York. Even though my dreams of modeling were long gone, I will always love New York and would live there in a heartbeat if money were no question. As much as my mom was completely against the idea of me going, she didn’t want me to have any regrets and so her and I made plans to go up there and scout out some cities to see if living there and opening a Chiropractic clinic were even an option. Sometimes it is hard to see the plan that God has for you, and other times it is completely obvious. I am one hundred percent certain that New York will remain an occasional vacation destination for me, instead of a place where I will live. The problems started before we even left Texas.

One of my best friends parents were in town and so we went out to dinner the night before our trip. As I was putting my contacts in that evening, I felt a sharp pain in my right eye just as the contact was put in place. I immediately took it out and rinsed it and then put it back in. Well it instantly started to turn red and was moderately painful. “Just ignore it”; I thought to myself, “it will go away.” So we go to dinner, and yea it is starting to hurt more and more. “Ignore it, ignore it”, I keep thinking to myself. We finished out the night and woke up early the next day to catch our flight to New York.

I looked in the mirror when I woke up…o my gosh… it was even worse. My eye was completely blood-shot and felt like it was on fire. So I smartly decided to go with wearing glasses that day…which was also fun because my glasses were not the right prescription. Constantly squeezing one eye shut because it hurt so badly and looking through the wrong prescription eyeglasses in your non-dominant eye can be quite challenging. Well I only thought my eye hurt before I got on the plane, but it was nothing compared to the pain I experienced while up in the air. The pressure from the plane increased my pain from probably a 5 to a 9 and I just prayed the whole time that we would get there quickly. Oh and did I mention we were seated in the absolute last row in the back of the plane with a screaming toddler right in front of us?

We finally get to New York; get a rental car and head to the hotel on Long Island we had already made reservations for. I felt so bad that my poor mom had to practically do everything herself because I couldn’t see a thing! At no surprise to us, once we got to the hotel we discovered they had reserved the wrong room for us. An easy fix once they finally figured out what had happened. We got situated in our room and then attempted to do some driving around but that just was not working. I couldn’t see a thing due to the fact that my eye hurt so badly and every time I tried to open it, my eye would start pouring with water. We decided to go to dinner and call it an early night. We attempted to “watch” a movie…meaning my mom watched and I listened.

The next morning I woke up…it was not good. My eye looked much worse. Okay we finally decided I had better go to a Doctor. Well guess what? It was now not only a Sunday, but we apparently take for granted all of the minor emergency clinics surrounding us back at home. It seems like there is one on every corner, as well as a hospital in every direction. Well in New York that was not the case. After a bit of effort, we finally found a hospital. I was thankful at this time to only have the one, non-dominant eye to see with, as this hospital was not at all up to the standards we were used to back home. My OCD nature was about to lose it, but we had no other option.

The Doctor who treated me was very nice and she quickly determined that I not only had punctured my eye, but also had literally taken a chunk of my eyeball off. I had wondered why there was this rather large, white section on the blue iris of my eye. I had also developed conjunctivitis (pink eye), no shock there. I then chatted with the Doctor about why I was in New York and she pretty much told me I was crazy for wanting to move there instead of staying in Texas and then proceeded to tell me all the reasons why it was a bad idea. Okay God, I get it. Right before I was done, the Doctor hands me this amazing beige eye patch she expected me to wear that was half the size of my face. She said I had to keep the light out of my eye in order for it to heal properly. Made sense because of the electric shooting pain I experienced when the light hit my eye. I said, “Yea for sure I will definitely wear this”. You are correct; I threw the eye patches in the trash before we even left the hospital. There was no way I was going to wear that. So instead I wore my eyeglasses with my sunglasses over them and just squinted my right eye closed. Because that looked much better right?

The whole rest of the trip was a bust. I couldn’t look at anything. We decided to take the train into the city so we could at least enjoy that. But guess what? There was a pretty serious protest going on! So that didn’t exactly work out either because we couldn’t even get to the places we wanted to get to. So overall the food was great, the company was great, and the memories will for sure last, but it is safe to say that I understood God’s answer on that one, loud and clear. God apparently wants me in Texas. My poor eye took a record slow time to heal. My eye Doctor said that she had a patient staple their eye and it didn’t take as long as mine did to heal. Yea…I have no idea how on earth someone staples their eye.

Chiro cracks-ups #1

So this is an entertaining story, to say the least. This is the story about a man who I will refer to as the Indian. No, he was not literally a Native American. He was as white as me, but you will understand why I call him that soon enough. I have completely changed the names of those involved, as well as clinic location, and don’t worry; I’m not talking about you, so don’t get excited.

While interning at a privately owned clinic, Victoria treated this particular patients’ mother a few months prior to seeing him. Her treatment ended after a series of only about four or so adjustments due to the fact that Medicare would no longer pay for her care. After telling her this, her story of how severe her pain was, quickly changed from just bad to all of a sudden life threatening. The clinic Doctor and Victoria soon discover that she was trying to use the Medicare system to receive free care. So they documented the accurate findings and she never returned. This actually happens a lot to any of us in the health-care field and is one of the many reasons why our insurance system is such a mess. Don’t get me started.

Some of her visits were often strange too in fact; on one particular visit she complained to Victoria that she was having restless leg syndrome symptoms and that she experienced them off and on over the past few years. Victoria asked her some questions about it and she promptly told her that she knew what the cause was. Victoria said, “oh really, what is it?” “The cause of restless leg syndrome is sex”, she firmly told her, “ but I know you and all the other Doctors won’t believe me.” Before she could ask her exactly what she meant by this, the clinic Doctor came in the room, so she wasn’t able to ask her more about it. She did tell the clinic Doctor about her having restless leg syndrome though…but not the patients theory behind it. Upon her next visit, Victoria asked her if she had any more symptoms of restless leg syndrome and they had miraculously vanished. She never mentioned again this “cause” and Victoria never quite understood what she meant by it.

One day a few months later, Victoria received a call from this Medicare patient asking if she could treat her son because he had badly hurt his back. Victoria said absolutely and told her to have him at the clinic that day by 3:00. Part of her dreaded seeing this patient because there was always something strange about his mother; she just always had the feeling that something wasn’t right. So 3:00 came, and Victoria was paged to the front desk saying the patient was ready. The strange feelings Victoria had when she first saw his mother was nothing compared to how she felt when she walked into the waiting room and saw both the mother and the new patient, the Indian. So there he sat, this forty-two year old man, slumped over, barely able to make eye contact with Victoria, either because his eyelids were so heavy or because he made no attempt at lifting his head. She introduced herself and then instructed them back to the exam room. The Indian grabbed Victoria’s hand and demanded that she help him stand up. Victoria is not really the type of person that allows this fake, attention-seeking behavior, but she had a sense that this was going to be a difficult appointment so she bit her lip and helped this apparent handicapped man to the exam room.

Once they got back to the exam room, Victoria started glancing over the paperwork that he had “completed” up at the front. She was quickly thrown off and don’t know what happened, because the ladies at the front desk normally did a pretty good job about checking to make sure paperwork was properly completed. Short from his name, there was hardly anything filled out and what was filled out was worse than chicken scratch. Nothing was legible. On one section, there is a picture of a human body, which you are supposed to mark with an X on the area of concern. Well he simply drew an X over the entire drawing. So Victoria thought to herself great, this is going to be fun. So she said, “So um, did you have some difficulty filling out this paperwork?” “uuhhh?” He groans. “Why did you not fill out the paperwork? I can’t read any of this,” she said. It was VERY hard to understand this guy between the mixture of southern twang, exaggerated pain groans, and desire to be a pain in the a$$. So he says, “eeeh can’t move my arms,” as he’s slumped over on the exam table. “Okay,” she said, “we will just have to do this the long way then and I will verbalize every question to you.” “uuuh ok,” he grunts back to her.

Victoria proceeded with the questions and at one point she started looking around for the hidden candid camera. This dude claimed to have had a train hit him in the right shoulder going full speed and he was able to lean forward and stop the train. He said he had several surgeries and his entire ribcage had screws holding everything together, he had shoulder replacement, hip replacement, and a few other things. He then explained in great detail about how several times an Indian from Oklahoma would climb on top of his back and start whacking him over and over again on the shoulder with his tomahawk. He would say, “Yea man, this was the chief of the tribe I have occasionally smoked peace-pipe with.” Oooooh ok, gotcha. It’s beginning to make sense to Victoria now. So then she looked over and noticed that his mom is in her chair shaking hysterically with laughter. Are you freaking kidding me? He saw Victoria looking at her and he said, “Yea she always enjoys my stories.” So clearly she was quickly approaching her breaking point. He then tried to tell her that he never smokes. She thought that was interesting seeing as how his fumes filled, not only the exam room, but also the entire clinic…maybe he doesn’t count “peace-pipe” as smoke.

Victoria persisted on with the actual physical examination portion of the appointment now, which turned into a complete joke to say the least. It was obvious that he was making a complete mockery of the whole thing, so she stopped him just a few minutes in and said, “ok, I know you are having a lot of fun here and all but if you are in legitimate pain like you say you are, you need to start taking this more seriously so we can actually finish all of this today.” “I AM TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY! I WANT YOU TO CURE ME DOC!” he screams. So her blood is boiling now by this point. It is difficult when you are either interning under someone else or working for someone else because you can’t react the way you wish you could…which could be either a good or a bad thing. Victoria decided she could go no further and needed help with this particular patient. He put absolutely no effort into anything and all the while he is feeling great about himself serving as comedy central for his mother. The straw was that he started being suggestive about Victoria in general. Saying things like he couldn’t wait for her to put her hands on him and that she had really long, strong-looking legs. You know the usual kind of “flattery” that begs for a heel to the crotch. So she had enough and excused herself to go ask her clinic Doctor what she should do about the patient.

Her assigned clinic Doctor actually wasn’t there that day, which was probably a blessing in disguise. Although he was a great Doctor… his personality was just a little too…should we say timid, for this type of situation? She went to one of her favorite clinic Doctors whom I will refer to as Doctor Williams. Victoria explained the situation to Doctor Williams and she realized after telling him everything just how riled up she had gotten. She was surprised she got so upset about it all, but good grief! But was there to help this guy and he was trying to make a fool of her! Thank goodness Doctor Williams was on the same page as she was and once she finished explaining the situation with the Indian character, Doctor Williams says, “Oh so he’s forty-two years old and still lives with his mommy? Well we are dealing with quite the intellectual individual now aren’t we?” See why she loves Doctor Williams?

Victoria and Doctor Williams head back in to the exam room and in a matter of minutes, both the Indian and his mom had quickly changed their demeanor when informed by Doctor Williams about how their attitude had better change or they would be escorted out immediately. Doctor Williams then proceeded to tell the both of them that this was a professional environment and there were certain expectations of conduct that the patients were to exhibit. He then laid down what was expected of the Indian and asked if he was going to cooperate with the remainder of the exam. Now very agitated, the Indian agreed to proceed. Doctor Williams led him through the remainder of the exam in a very factual manner. Victoria was thankful to have gone through the entire situation with this patient early on her career, because she was able to see how to deal with problems while still under the guidance of another Doctor.

After completing the exam, the Indian was sent to receive full body x-rays because of all of his past “trauma” and then they told him he had to come back the next day for his report of findings and adjustment, because the appointment had already gone on for over two hours. He was surprisingly not too upset about having to come back the next day and Victoria was honestly hoping for a no-show on this one. Later that day they were able to access the Indians records and much to their amazement (note the sarcasm) there was absolutely no evidence of surgery, trauma, or any other deformity. Well except for some evidence of “peace-pipe” smoke in his lung tissue.

Much to her disappointment, the next day came and the Indian arrived for his appointment right on time. She began the appointment by explaining what they found on the x-rays…or actually what they didn’t find. No, she wasn’t about to let all of his lies about his “surgeries” slide. And she was of course, excited to lecture him about the effects his “peace-pipe” had on his lungs, even though he insisted it was helping him with his asthma and allergies. His attitude had significantly improved even though he still gave her the creeps and continued to try to insist that she help him in and out of chairs.

For that initial appointment, Doctor Williams wanted to make the first adjustment, which was more than fine with Victoria. Getting the Indian to relax was no easy task and he made the process way more difficult than it should have been. As soon as Doctor Williams had gotten to his mid back area, in between his shoulder blades, the Indian started screaming that the Indian chief had his tomahawk stuck in him again. Doctor Williams followed through with the adjustment in that area and then the Indian leapt off the table exclaiming that he pulled the tomahawk out and “cured” his pain. That was when Victoria officially lost it. How can people be this nuts? She bust out laughing and Doctor Williams couldn’t resist either.

The Indian continued to come to his appointments throughout the remainder of his treatment plan (or actually until his mother didn’t want to pay anymore) and they made a great deal of progress. Victoria always had to block out a good amount of time after his appointment in order to document everything that was said during the Indians visits. In addition to all of the questionable Indian “herbs” he claimed to use, not a visit would go by without him trying to get Victoria to go out to dinner with him. He also had some pretty interesting stories about owning some oil wells in the Middle East and was bringing in “billions” each day. I don’t exactly know what billions he was referring to when his 75-year-old mother had to pay for his Chiropractic adjustments.

Let's get technical

Now remember at the beginning of my story when I talked about my birth trauma and how it made a significance on my health? Well, let me explain that a little bit. Because there was so much force applied to my neck, when I was born, by the Doctor pulling me out by my head, the ligaments, muscles, and bones in my neck were put at a great deal of stress right from the start, similar to a baby being born by vacuum extraction. Now that I know what to look for, I can see many suggestions of misalignment in my baby pictures. My Chiropractor used a very gentle, specific technique that has a great impact not only on your spine, but also on your brain, which is why I perform this technique on all of my patients as well. This technique is known to many of us as the “Mercedes” of adjustments. Now prepare yourself to get a little technical in this explanation.

The word “adjustment” is a rather loosely used term in chiropractic today. It denotes the application of a force to a spinal bone (vertebra) to move it from one position to another. The intention of the adjustor in moving a vertebra is to correct the patient’s subluxation (a misaligned spinal bone causing harm to nervous structure). In order to do this, the adjustor must reduce the vertebra to or toward its normal position. If spinal bones did not displace, there would be no reason to adjust them; no objective would be gained in trying to re-position a vertebra that is in its proper location in the spine, causing no harm to nervous structure. When, however, a vertebra is displaced and is interfering with nervous structure, it should be restored to its normal position by an adjustment. The word “adjustment” means “to set right”, and is what Chiropractors do: re-set displaced vertebra.

The technique that I perform is called Upper Cervical Technique. This means that the adjustment is given in the upper neck, applied to the first cervical bone called the atlas or C1. The reason for correcting the atlas is that it affects the Central Nervous System (brain stem and spinal cord) when it subluxates. Because all other nerve systems in the body are controlled by the Central Nervous System, an atlas subluxation affects the entire body. As a result of an atlas subluxation, the patient’s entire spine and pelvis are distorted from its true axis by spastic contracture of the spinal extensor muscles because the atlas subluxation interferes with the essential inhibitory control to the muscles.

A very precise adjustment is, therefore, necessary to obtain an atlas subluxation correction to restore spinal balance. There are several directions in which the atlas can be misaligned and there are different degrees in which it can move in each direction. The doctor, therefore, must make an x-ray examination in three planes in order to obtain this information. The doctor then analyzes the x-rays so that an adjustment can be specifically structured for each patient. X-ray is the only means from which this precise adjustment can be figured, and each patient receives an adjustment tailored to his/her needs.

The atlas subluxation is known as the Atlas Subluxation Complex (ASC) because it distorts the spine and pelvis. Vertebrae below the atlas are also misaligned in over 90 percent of the cases and must be realigned by a C1 adjustment. Thus it is a complex-composed of many parts. The complex is a biological stressor, a strain or an interference affecting the entire body. If the spine and pelvis measure normal after an adjustment, the electro-chemical flow of the nervous system is balanced. The adjustment, therefore, must be accurate, timed, and coordinated. Further, it requires control and direction of force, which must not be greater than the resistance of the subluxation being adjusted and performed in accordance with sound kinesiological and biomechanical principles. For this reason, an adjustment is not painful to the patient.

Because no two adjustments are exactly alike, atlas adjusting is a difficult art. All healing in the body is self-healing. An example of self-healing is the repair of a broken bone. No treatment of any kind can heal bone tissue; only the healing forces within the body can heal bone tissue. Other bodily tissues are no different in this respect. Self-healing, however, requires a perfectly functioning nervous system free from subluxation stress and interference, one that can normally feed other bodily systems with a normal electro-chemical flow, creating an internal environment in which the body’s immune system can function. Self-healing, then, is promoted by the adjustment. Correction or adjustment of the subluxation, however, must precede relief from illness and discomfort.

More fun problems

Now on to the next major problem I had to enjoy. Soon after starting undergrad, I was getting sick a lot again with things like strep throat and colds with a chronic cough. It seemed like I was continuously on an antibiotic, which of course was absolutely killing my already weak immune system. So it was of no surprise to me that I soon developed tonsillitis. No matter what the Doctors gave me, nothing would take care of it, but instead, my tonsils got larger and larger and I continued to feel more and more sick. Each time I would go in to see a Doctor it was the same story, “oh my gosh what is that?! I have never seen any tonsils look like that before!” I was now nearing the end of my first Trimester at Chiropractic school and was completely miserable. I tried both acupuncture and oregano oil, as well, but neither made a difference. I am all for trying the more holistic approach first, but Medical intervention is there for a reason, and is necessary in some cases.

I finally went to an ENT we knew, to get the situation under control. I had a two-week break between trimesters and something had to be done fast. He tried to convince us that this “extremely powerful” prescription he was giving me would do the job, but we insisted he schedule a tonsillectomy just in case. Thank goodness we insisted because that so called “extremely powerful” prescription made my tonsils even more enlarged. You do not want to know details, but he swore he had never seen tonsils so bad. I had to sleep at a certain angle at night as to prevent my tonsils from covering my throat. So we proceeded with the surgery and I had less than a week to recover before returning to school. If you have had a tonsillectomy as an adult, then you will understand when I say that an added benefit of the surgery was that I got back into my size zero jeans in less than two weeks. I see it now as an added benefit, but it’s safe to say that the recovery from that surgery was nothing short of terrifying. I bet you’re not surprised to hear that I did have some small complications discovered post-surgery due to a nicked nerve that thankfully has been nearly rectified, thanks to my sisters myofascial release skills.

This will be the final descriptive story I will share for a while or otherwise you will start to think I’m crazy. A word of advice, never go through a major cleanse while you are going through a period of extreme stress, like say, Chiropractic school for example. In order to remove toxins from your body, you need to be in a relaxed state in order to give your body the chance to properly heal. I was in, I believe my third trimester at school, that I started this highly recommended cleanse who’s brand I will not slam because they have helped many people. But again, my body is extremely sensitive and hopefully one day I will remember this. So my huge weakness is cheese. When I am stressed I want cheese and I want as much as I can get my hands on. Jason’s Deli was near my school…they have an amazing baked potato that my friends and I affectionately referred to as the steroid potato. Scotty P’s also has some cheese fries that are out of this world. It is healthy to allow yourself some cheats, especially when going through stress, but some of us tend to have a problem with moderation. So due to some particularly enjoyable joint and stomach pain I was experiencing, I decided to try this cleanse. I did it by the book. Which is how I do everything. If I set my mind to something, it will be done right. So I get done this cleanse and I honestly don’t feel too different, besides the fact of feeling like I had been starved to death. I was determine to continue eating well after I came off this cleanse.

The day after this cleanse ended, I went to a restaurant and had a salad, which had some cheese in it. An extremely small amount of cheese by my standards let me add. Later that day, both of my big toes began to ache. Then I noticed they started to swell and got really red. Now I had previously battled ingrown toenails, thanks to ballet, which I participated in after gymnastics, so that’s what I assumed it was. So the next day I had my “ingrown toenails” tended to. Well, that not only didn’t help, but it made them much worse. The pain was unbelievable. I mean I could not even let a bed sheet touch my toes at night, I couldn’t stand to wear closed toe shoes, and I could barely walk. Then I finally figured out what it was. Great, I was a seemingly in shape, healthy, twenty year old and I just figured out that I have gout. So naturally I freaked out, continued to eat a perfect diet...NO CHEESE!! I even went several weeks of only eating dehydrated superfood greens, which normally does wonders for whatever ails me. But the problem would still not go away. Here it was winter and I had to wear flip-flops!! The gout now had spread to the first three toes on each foot and down into the joints of my feet.

A couple of months later, I started taking Acupuncture courses on the weekend. When you are in Chiropractic school, those of us who are apparently demented had the opportunity of receiving additional specialties, which you could take on the weekends. I soon befriended a Doctor taking the courses for his continuing education hours for that year. It was nice getting extra tips from someone who had already been treating patients for ten or more years. So the second day of these Acupuncture courses he made a comment about me wearing flip-flops when it was nearly snowing outside. I told him what was going on and he said if I wanted, he would do some points on me and see what happens. Well of course I was up for anything. He placed needles in several points on my feet, back, and arms for about fifteen minutes and I kid you not, in less than an hour, the gout was completely gone and it has never returned since. I only thought I was a believer in Acupuncture before, but now I am completely convinced. I of course, had him write the points down that he used on me and have helped quite a few of my own patients get through gout as well with both acupuncture and nutritional advice. Sometimes it seems like the best kind of learning truly is by personal experience.

Like I previously stated, I have never been very interested in diagnosing the vast amount of problems that I have because they mostly all seem to come down to the same conclusion - weak immune system - need to be on a low inflammatory diet, get plenty of exercise, and eliminate stress. Seems simple enough, but it’s much easier said than done. I do think that Doctors tend to be a little too eager with diagnosing/labeling people just to feel like they solved the problem. Some of the additional diagnosis’s I have picked up over the years include Sjogrens syndrome, Dupuytren’s contracture, Medial epicondylitits, Ligament laxity, hyperthyroid, lymes disease, stomach ulcers and other stomach problems you don’t want to know about, celiac disease, trigger finger, plantar fascitis, De quervain’s tenosynovitis, encephalomalacia, absent seizures, pneumoparotitis, Erysipelas, and I’ll stop there. If I let all of this get to my head, I would be one of those people laying in bed all day longing for a “cure.” God provided us with many modalities to heal and prevent disease; we just have to use them.

Going blind while pursuing my calling

So shoot forward to graduating high school. I graduated over a year early, again because I hated school and just wanted to be done. I Continued modeling for a while, which I had been doing while in high school as well. But things weren’t falling into place like I had imagined. I wasn’t getting the jobs that I wanted at the places that I wanted. Moving to New York was not working out either, for many reasons, but mainly because a fellow model that I was going to room with got married. I couldn’t understand getting married so young without becoming independent first. Soon after, I guess due to my innate hard working, dependable nature, I all of a sudden found myself working a lot of odd jobs for distant acquaintances. I did some retail work and fell into tons of temp jobs like being a nanny/babysitter, house sitter, dog walker, and personal assistant work. I never sought out to do any of this, but the pay was good, referrals went crazy, and it kept me busy.

I wish I could say what it was that helped me make the decision on my career, well it was God obviously, but no true “event” at the time drove me to this. I was bored with all of my temp work. There was no way I could do all that forever. I was also losing interest in modeling. Although I absolutely love fashion, the self-absorption involved in the entire industry is something I learned I could not tolerate. It was one evening, I remember going into the bathroom as my mom was washing her face and I told her, “Okay, I don’t want to do it and I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I am going to be a Chiropractor”. She started the very next day helping me figure out what all I needed to get done at the community college in order to start at Parker College of Chiropractic. I have a very smart, supportive mother. She knew that I was different than most. She knew that there was no point in “making” me go to college unless I was aiming for something and chose to go on my own.

It is true that if you are determined to do something, hard work will get you anywhere. I learned quickly, while in school, that God allowed me to go through Lupus and all the many problems that come with the disease, in order for me to have the passion, drive, and determination to get through school so that I could help others. My close friends and I often enjoyed how a substantial amount of exam questions, both on lecture and board exams, were successfully answered by us solely because I had been through that particular ailment either when I was younger or had gone through it during school.

No not all of my problems stayed away after my initial Chiropractic “miracle”. Maintenance is key with a health history like mine. When your body goes through as much trauma as mine did, you have to make a choice of whether or not you want to be aggressive in your desire to stay healthy, or if you want to let things go back to the way they originally were, and eventually progress even further. With the high level of stress I experienced while going through school, I went through a multitude of rather enjoyable trials regarding my health. It came to a point where it all became rather comical to my mother and I each time I received either a new diagnosis or a puzzled specialist who couldn’t provide us with any answer. I will provide you with a few selections for enjoyment purposes.

A large amount of stress drastically started during undergrad at my local community college. Now you may think community college is no big deal. And actually it isn’t to most people, but when you have never actually been to a classroom before there are a lot of new things to get used to. Correct, I was home-schooled. Thankfully though, I took a lot of online classes during undergrad in order to get everything done faster, but all of the changes apparently still didn’t agree with my body. One day, when I was thankfully at home, over a period of about twenty minutes, I completely lost all of my vision. Yes, it was terrifying. I had no other symptoms, simply could not see for about four hours. It was bedtime when I finally got my vision back so I went to bed and woke up the next morning and everything was fine. At first we ignored it because that’s just how we treated all of my weird problems. Ignore them and maybe they’ll go away. Well the vision loss kept becoming more and more frequent and it did start to become a little dangerous. What if it happened while I was driving? And it in fact did once. There was also no way of predicting when it would happen or how long it would last. Speeding through an exam at school several times because I knew my vision was quickly fading, quite honestly sucked too.

And so back to the specialists we went. I can’t say how many Doctors we went to regarding this but they all said the same thing, “I have no idea”. I did receive some other diagnoses’ along the way though as well as discover that each time I went in to see them, me vision decreased more and more. Those poor Doctors probably thought my mom and I were insane the way we bust out with laughter each time one would tell us that I should have died because of a certain condition they subsequently discovered. So I soon got sick of them telling us not only that they didn’t know what the vision loss was caused from, but also the lack of an informed bedside manner and individual patient care. This one specialist at Southwestern Medical Center in particular I had been seeing once a week, sometimes more, for over a month provided me with the final straw to end the diagnoses journey for that particular problem. On the day of our last visit, he walked into the room, flipped through my chart, said everything looked fine, and then said, “Now what exactly is your concern? Why are you coming here?” And with that I laughed and said, “yea mom I’m done, let’s go.”

I have never gotten an official diagnoses regarding this particular vision problem, but over the years, with the help from a Chiropractor/Professor, I have come to my own conclusion. One of the many symptoms of Lupus is decreased circulation, and stress as we know, affects all parts of your body in a negative way, especially when you have a history like I do. I was diagnosed with optic neuritis several times, sometimes having it during these episodes of vision loss and sometimes not. With this condition being a problem with inflammation, like a majority of the conditions I have had, I see a similarity of inflammation of nerves and blood vessels, and maybe some brain involvement due to past head trauma. I am not one of those people who are necessarily concerned in diagnosing every little thing that goes wrong, but what I was mainly looking for was if there was prevention to umm going blind. Cleanses, rest/decreased stress, adjustments, and exercise have seemed to be the key for this particular problem. When I am not paying attention to these things, I will have a vision loss episode a couple times a week. When I am focused on my lifestyle, I have gone almost a year without any problems.

Why Chiropractic?

You are probably a little confused at this time of how Chiropractic allowed my body to heal from Lupus. Chiropractic is just for neck and back pain isn’t it? Chiropractors actually treat the whole body and are interested in addressing the source of the patient’s dysfunction instead of masking and treating symptoms. Chiropractors should actually be referred to as Nervous System Doctors because that is what they do; they remove interferences from the Nervous System. Chiropractic is the perfect form of treatment for Lupus if you really think about it. There are no drugs involved, which we all know can cause further harm to the body. Chiropractic allows your Central Nervous System to work at its full potential to function free from interference so our body can heal itself and stay disease-free, the way God intended.

Our entire body is controlled by our Central Nervous system (Brain and spinal cord). Coming off of our spinal cord are nerves, which go through each of the vertebra that make up your spine, and innervate certain things in your body depending on the location. These nerves are responsible for everything from ear function to being able to wiggle a toe. A subluxation is when one vertebra in your spine is misaligned from another one, either above or below it, and when this happens you now have pressure on that particular nerve, which then causes decreased function, pain, tingling, and more. There are three possible ways we can get subluxations and those are thoughts, traumas, and toxins. Thoughts consist of things like stress, negativity, or anger. Traumas can range from anything including a major car wreck to even sleeping improperly. And finally toxins include things as bad as drug or alcohol use and even things like consuming unhealthy food or inhaling toxins in the air that we breathe. So no matter how we get these subluxations, the longer they are there, the more severe the problems will become. Chiropractors are trained to detect and gently correct these subluxations in your spine.

A lot of people say, “Oh I don’t want to go to a Chiropractor because when you go once, you have to continue going for the rest of your life.” Well the easiest way to explain all of this is to show the similarities between your teeth and your spine. So you don’t understand why when you first start going to a Chiropractor, why you have to go so often? Well it has taken years for your vertebra to become subluxated, so how do you think they can be put back into place in just one treatment? By the same token, when you get braces put on your teeth, do they move the very next day? No, it takes months and even years to get them the way they should be. Well think about how tiny your teeth are and how big your vertebrae are. And vertebrae function in the protection of your Central Nervous System and the support of your entire body weight, so they need much more care in the movement of correction. The same goes for maintenance of your spine. In order to take responsibility of your health and prevent future illness, regular Chiropractic checkups are necessary just as brushing your teeth are necessary for good oral health. Do you brush your teeth to keep them clean and healthy or do you brush them only when they hurt? So why would you go to a Chiropractor just when your back hurts?

There are still many people out there who are skeptical about Chiropractic. We once were skeptical, but finding the right Chiropractor thankfully educated us in to correctly changing our opinion. Just like any other Doctor, the best kind of Chiropractor you can find is one who has dedicated him or herself to life-long learning. Finding someone who knows that Chiropractic is just one piece to the puzzle, but not at all the only answer. Many forms of healing are involved for whole-body wellness. Chiropractic is not nearly always the only answer, but wouldn’t you want to try a more conservative approach first before damaging your body further with treatment that results in other harmful side effects?