Patient satisfaction: Proactive vs. reactive health care

We all want health for ourselves, our family, friends and loved ones and most of us try to go about getting it the best we know how - doing research, trying to eat right, sleep enough and get the right amount of exercise.

Finding a family doctor probably ranks pretty high on that list; someone you trust, who can answer your health questions, or will be there to help in an emergency. How often do you consider conventional versus alternative medicine? Alternative medicine, aka "holistic" or "complimentary," utilizes many natural remedies and strives to work with the body's natural processes to alleviate pain and heal. Chiropractic is all about healing from the inside-out by getting your nervous system and natural bodily process working as opposed to the outside-in approach with medications or surgery.

If you're worried about competency comparison, the schooling for a Doctorate in Chiropractic is a rigorous process. What about patient satisfaction? Although many alternative health-care providers are getting into the insurance system, it is mainstay in conventional medicine so quantity of patients seen is more conducive rather than quality of time spent with each one.

That is not saying there isn't a time and place for straight medical approach because there certainly is. But even with all our new technological advances, there still isn't a way to do nervous system transplants; we only get one and we need to take care of it. Our health-care system as a whole has lost focus - instead of trying to fix a problem, we should stop it before it even starts. Chiropractic should be something that starts at the beginning - maintain the spine in its best form and it will help us achieve our healthy lifestyle goals.

In a European study involving more than 23,000 Germans, it shows just how great a healthy lifestyle can be. The cumulative effects of just four healthy factors: not smoking, exercising regularly, eating a healthy diet and maintaining a healthy weight, resulted in:

• An average of 36 percent reduced risk of ALL cancers

• A 93 percent reduced risk of diabetes

• An 81 percent reduced risk of heart disease

The average cost of health care per year for Americans is about $8,000 - imagine how that cost could be drastically reduced if our bodies were given the conditions to operate and heal themselves like they are meant to.

To find out more about healthy nervous systems or to have yours checked today, call us at (208) 667-7434 or see us at our office at 370 E. Kathleen Ave., Suite 600, Coeur d'Alene. You can also visit our website at www.CDAHealth.com or find us on Facebook.