Last week, we started talking about healing; what it means to heal and the understanding that healing is not something that happens overnight.  When traveling by airplane, you do not go from zero to 25,000 feet in the blink of an eye.  It is a gradual incline.  Health is no different and an understanding of that FACT will take you far in your quest to become healthy.  Yet, without that understanding, you will never become healthy.  You might feel healthy, but health entails only a FRACTION of things that we can feel. 

There are an estimated 75 trillion cells in your body.  Each of those cells undergoes 200,000 chemical reactions every split second.  Interesting that it all began from just a couple of cells coming together, sparking an incredibly intelligent process that eventually builds up to nearly one hundred trillion.  Think of all the things that happen in your body that you cannot sense or feel.  You cannot feel your kidneys filtering waste or the manufacturing of red blood cells or your immune system routinely fighting things that shouldn't be there or any number of a few billion vital processes. 

So, we cannot make the mistake of thinking that just because we can't always feel healing that healing isn't actually taking place.  When you learned to ride a bike, you probably fell numerous times.  Did failing to ride the bike immediately mean, though, that you weren't still learning to ride a bike?  Of course not, for it is a process to learn.  Healing is a similar process.  There are going to be times when you don't think you are, but you have to remember that healing is a lot like learning - it can be frustrating and it is not always easy.  I struggled with math...but I learned it and I did well OVER TIME. 

Also, just like with learning, it's much easier to heal quickly when you are young.  Learning is easier because you are like a sponge soaking up everything during youth.  Healing is easier because you don't have much underlying damage working against you.  Learning and healing are both much faster in youth, as well.  Such is why I stress to you so often how important it is for kids to be checked, whether they have symptoms you feel need addressing or not.  One kid's growing pain is that same person's neck pain as an adult.  Another kid's tummy ache is that same person's chronic digestive problem as an adult. 

We live in a strange age in history.  Health and wellness has become a keyword in a lot of medical campaigns.  Doctors are talking about putting kids on cholesterol lowering meds and they're already telling folks to take aspirin to prevent heart attacks as preventative measures, but never in the history of time has an outside intervention of that sort had anything to do with HEALTH...just the alleviation of a particular symptom.  Taking them for anything else or passing them off as wellness practices is simply ridiculous.  Health is not that simple.  It's not that easy. 

In the past, you've read that I consider there to be two things you can never have enough of: health and wealth.  The latter, as we all know, takes a lot of work (arguably the hardest work of your life by whatever way you define wealth).  The former, though, we seem to think requires no effort; that pop, swallow, and boom the pill does it's thing and we're good to go.  That idea has lulled everyone into a false sense of security.  Health has to be worked at just as much as wealth.  Serious.  Work. 

So, go forth and start setting some goals with a new, and better understanding of what healing is all about.  Discuss it with your friends and help them gain that understanding.  Then, go do something about it...

Thinking good things for you,

Dr. Chad