Pay Attention to your symptoms

By Brad Fackrell, D.C.

You’ve likely heard the saying, “Don’t blame the messenger.” That saying conveys the wisdom that no matter how bad the news, the person bearing the news is not to blame.

Imagine, for example, someone coming to a village bearing news that a flood threatens and a dam upstream that is about to burst.

If the villagers kill the messenger and ignore the message, the situation will almost certainly worsen and they will have lost the opportunity to avert disaster.

But have you ever considered that most of Western medicine today focuses on the messenger, not the message?

That’s what’s happening when we address symptoms—messengers—rather than the cause of many illnesses: misalignments of the spine called vertebral subluxations. These pinch off nerves that convey vital information to and from the brain, resulting in the brain being unable to send messages to correct and heal the body. Health problems inevitably follow.

Symptoms—pain, illness, fatigue—are the messenger of these injuries.

We can take pills to make symptoms go away, at least temporarily, but the problem is still there and will eventually manifest again, perhaps in a more dangerous way and we will have lost the opportunity to act pro-actively.

If a woman suffers from migraines, she is given pills to ease the symptoms.

If a child has asthma, he or she is given an inhaler or steroids.

If a child repeatedly gets sore throats or ear infections, he or she is given antibiotics or cold medicines to ease symptoms—or, silence the messenger.

But why does a woman get headaches, while her friends don’t?

Why do some people struggle with high blood pressure even as they do everything right in the way of exercise and diet?

Why do some children constantly suffer from sore throats, allergies, or asthma, while their friends don’t?

A chiropractor looks for the message by using x-rays to find the damage to the spine—damage which most people are unaware they have until they see their x-rays—that causes pain or illness.

Sometimes, chiropractors are even able, especially in young people, to intervene to correct spinal problems before the messengers, of illness and pain, happen.

Imagine, healing by focusing on cause—the message—rather than symptoms, the messenger.

Imagine preventing illness.

It just can’t get much better than that!

(Dr. Brad Fackrell owns Straight Chiropractic in Rio Rancho. His phone number is 891-2280.)