Wow! It’s Been A Month?!

By Dr. Philip Cordova

November 4, 2015


“It’s been a month already?! No way. I was just here last week.” I have these types of conversations with patients on a regular basis. I just saw a patient that hadn’t been in for nearly a year, and they would have sworn it had been just a couple of months.

Time gets away from us, and that can lead to your health declining.

I’m not just talking about your chiropractic adjustment, but in how you take care of your health overall. When was the last time you worked out? Got a massage? Made a healthy meal at home? How much importance do you put on health maintenance vs waiting for a symptom to show up. Or, really, how bad does it have to get before you start to do something different?

Healthy habits accumulate

Unfortunately for some (but really, fortunately for people that want to have good health), our healthy habits accumulate and keep on building. So if you take good care of yourself occasionally, you’ll have the results to show for it. The same thing goes for those people that do a good job of caring for themselves; they have good results to show for it.

Think about going to the gym and lifting weights. That’s a perfect example of your body responding to your the workout you put on it. Workout once per year and you won’t see much difference. Workout intensely several times per week and there won’t be any question about whether or not it works.

What should you be doing on a consistent basis for health maintenance?

Exercise

I avoided this for years. I like to “check the box” with things on my To Do List. Exercise is just too important to not make a part of a regular routine. It really needs to be done more than once per month. Walking and gardening are good for activity and much better than sitting on couch, but you really need to do more than that.

Find something “intense” that you can do, and even better, something that you enjoy doing. It can be running, cycling, swimming, rollerblading, dancing… something that works up a good sweat. This will be good for keeping your stress levels down and will help maintain movement and strength.

Eating Healthy

This is a huge topic, and one that I know will be different for everyone. My goal is to continue to improve my diet. Any time I’ve tried to go extreme, this results in a short-lived change with an even worse fall back. Keep striving for small changes that will be your new healthy habit that you can continue to build on. Drinking more water, less alcohol, no soda, and more vegetables are “easy” things to implement that will a big difference.

Foam rolling

We’ve done a simple foam rolling video that shares how to help you implement this healthy activity. Especially for our patients that sit in front of computers all day (nearly all of them), this can make a big difference. Foam rolling a few times per week (the more days the better) will make a big difference in posture and alleviating ongoing neck and upper back tension.

Get a massage

There. You have permission. Go do it! Your muscles play a big part in how good you feel, and getting a massage is a great way to take care of them. Many patients believe that it’s just too expensive, takes up too much time, or is such a “luxury” that they can’t seem to do it for themselves.

We love working with Jeremy Runnels at The Body’s Source. He and his team are excellent and their prices are very reasonable. I’ve never had a patient be unhappy about going to visit their office.

Get adjusted

Duh! You knew I was going to say that, right? I’ve been getting adjusted at least once per month for the past 25+ years. I regularly see patients that have made chiropractic care a part of a healthy lifestyle and their x-rays show the difference.

These are patients that have been under wellness care for years. Their spines are free of degeneration and they’ve got range of motion better than most. They report being healthier overall when compared to co-workers and family. They continue to strive to do healthy things for themselves — and it shows!

Recently, I had a patient come in, a 64-year-old male. He was a smoker, overweight, doesn’t exercise, and is on more than a dozen daily medications (two of which he had no idea what they were for). In contrast, the next day I had a 75-year-old female new patient on zero medications who had been under chiropractic care for many years. Her x-rays showed the spine of a 35-year-old. Almost no degenerative changes in the spine, rare in 75-year-olds!

What else do you like to do consistently? Leave your comments below!

Dr. Philip Cordova

About the author

Dr. Philip Cordova is a chiropractor in Houston, Texas. He grew up in Phoenix, Arizona and decided to become a chiropractor after hurting his back as a teenager and getting help from chiropractic care. He is speaker on health & posture. Click Here To Read His Full Bio

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