What is wellness; and how does chiropractic care fit into the wellness equation?
Wellness seems to be an increasingly popular term utilized more and more nowadays. Wellness is used to describe everything from health drinks to hairbrushes but what does true wellness look like? What does wellness even mean?
The dictionary definition of wellness is “The condition of good physical and mental health, especially when actively maintained by proper diet, exercise, and avoidance of risky behavior.”
When I personally look at the word “wellness”, I think of two key features that are crucial to that definition. First, wellness truly means well or the absence of being unwell. When it comes to my profession as a chiropractor, I hear lines like “It just happened or the symptoms came out of nowhere and I didn’t do anything out the ordinary.” Unfortunately, many people think they are well when it comes to their movement patterns or biomechanics until an issue occurs. Typically, these issues occur out of nowhere or for some benign reason like picking up the trash or moving too quickly. As a doctor of Chiropractic, it is my job not to sugar coat the truth but help my patients understand that most of us carry around a lot of biomechanical issues, myself included. Without proper maintenance and care these little issues perpetuate, persist, and can become big issues in a hurry.
Secondly, I think about wellness needing to be actively maintained, something that requires constant input, energy and attention. To be truly well you need to be actively engaging in wellness activities. This does not mean that you hop on a treadmill for 15 minutes and call it a day either. It means looking at your strengths and weaknesses and honestly assessing what you need to work on. Chiropractic care can easily be one of the most potent tools in the wellness toolbox when used regularly. Chiropractic is one of the most efficient and effective ways at not only reducing pain and problems but also actively creating biomechanical wellness. I personally don’t wait until I’ve got a bunch of aches or pains to get adjusted, I get adjusted because it is a part of my wellness regimen along with exercise, diet, yoga weight training, etc.
I will end with a twist on one of my favorite old adages, “If you don’t use it or move it, you lose it.”
Call to action: Perform one movement wellness activity today.
Examples: Yoga, massage, chiropractic adjustment, weight train, walk, swim
