“For most people Friday is just a day before the weekend, but after this Friday things will never be the same.”
That’s a movie reference from an old comedy called Friday, but for me, those words were very true.
Where I come from, high school football is the biggest show in town. While attending a game when I was around 5-6 years old, my grandmother looked down at me and asked if I was feeling ok because she noticed that my breathing was labored. The next step was an appointment with the doctor where I was given the diagnosis…….asthma. After that Friday, I would never be the same.
According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI), asthma is a chronic disease involving the airways in the lungs. They go on to explain if you have asthma your airways are always inflamed. They become even more swollen and the muscles around the airways can tighten when something triggers your symptoms which makes it difficult for air to move in and out of the lungs. This can cause symptoms such as coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath and/or chest tightness.
Throughout my childhood I dealt with this terrible disease.
Asthma showed itself in everything I did or tried to do. During sports I always had my medicine within reach, when sleeping over at a friend’s house I always packed my inhaler, and when the seasons changed I began to prepare myself for another asthma attack. It was a horrible ordeal. My worst episode with asthma put me in the hospital for an extended period of the time. I can recall the plastic incubator I had to sleep in that caged me from the world, the constant checkups by the nurses and doctors throughout the day and night, and the horror of being away from school and friends.
The inhaler and occasional breathing treatments were the only treatments I knew, the only treatment my many doctors gave me.
There were only hopes of growing out of the disease, something I heard but never witnessed and the main question was never answered, “What caused this?” I enrolled in chiropractic school in 2008 and learned more and more about how the body was designed to heal itself. Unfortunately, I was not getting adjusted regularly at that time. Asthma struck again at the beginning of 2009 and I was admitted for one night. When I got back to school I was told to come to the front of the class and I received an adjustment to my upper thoracic spine, the region that innervated the lungs.
That adjustment in front of class turned out to be the moment I’ve been waiting for since I was at that high school football game. Since that adjustment I’ve been getting adjusted regularly. I HAVEN’T HAD AN ASTHMA ATTACK SINCE. I still have the inhaler I was prescribed in 2009 and it has never been used. All this time, the problem was with my spine.
All these years with all these doctor visits and no one told me to go see a chiropractor and get your spine checked.
Why get your spine checked? It’s the structure that protects the most important thing in your body, the brain and the nerves that control the lungs and entire body. My brain was not communicating with my lungs and not functioning at its best.
This is my chiropractic story. It doesn’t deal with low back pain, neck pain, or even mid-back pain. It tells how a misalignment in my back caused nerve pressure and decreased that nerve’s power and potential. It’s a story that proves that the body is designed to heal its self and that functioning at 100% is the definition of health!
Here’s my YouTube video explaining more…