Growing up I suffered from pretty severe allergies and asthma attacks. My parents took me to pediatricians and allergists, gave me medicine, took me to receive biweekly allergy shots and often found themselves brining me to the hospital for treatments when my asthma attacks got bad. Thanks to my mom, my suffering came to a halt when I was 10. She did a lot of research and made some significant changes. She stopped taking me to get allergy shots, she stopped giving me medication, she did not take me to get any of the vaccine boosters (which she felt played a major role in my having allergies to begin with) and she took me to a family chiropractor. That was it – I never again had another asthma attack and my allergies were only seasonal and quite minor compared to what they were before. I will admit that my allergies did flare up again for a while when I was in college and ate junky food and did not go to get adjusted!
It’s been 25 years since my first adjustment and since then I have learned about the many benefits of chiropractic care; an aligned spine is key to a properly functioning body. I married the son of a chiropractor and we have gotten both of our children adjusted since their first week of birth, so chiropractic, for us, is a family matter.
I find that many people do not understand that chiropractors are more than just ‘back doctors’ and that regular adjustments really make a difference in keeping a person’s immune system at the top of its game. Because I am not a doctor of chiropractic myself, I decided at ask Dr. Anthony Carrino to write some guest posts educating families about the benefits of chiropractic care for all, especially children.
The following is the second post from Dr. Carrino. You can click on this link, Raising Kids Naturally Outside of the Traditional Model of Healthcare, to see his first post. In these two posts he discusses how the modern system of healthcare works in order to give people a better understanding of how and why chiropractic is different. His upcoming posts will focus on chiropractic care itself. If there is something specific that you would like him to focus on, please leave him a comment below!
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Is your Family Receiving True Healthcare?
A guest post by Dr. Anthony Carrino, who will be providing RNK readers with holistic insights into modern medicine, traditional medicine and the value of chiropractic care in upcoming posts!
Raising a child to be well in our society takes discipline, perseverance, consistency, and most of all, patience. True health is not based on how one feels or appears to be, but is founded on the individual’s ability to adapt to stress. Our survival, not only our health, is dependent on our body’s ability to consistently acknowledge, respond, adapt and overcome stress.
If the average parents were asked to comment on stress, they most likely would begin by telling you about their world of emotional stress. You know the job, the mortgage payment, a sister’s wedding out of state, a relationship with a significant other, a sick family member, etc. This would be an accurate assessment of emotional stress. We all hope that we can find the best way to make our relationships work. Are our emotional relationships with human beings the only relationships we should be concerned with? What about our relationship with the environment, our foods, the fragrances and makeup we wear, the cleaning products we use and the maintenance, or not, of our physical self? Stress is not only an emotional thing; it is a multitude of chemical and physical challenges that your body is exposed to on a daily basis.
If we were to evaluate you or your child’s present ability to adapt to life stressors, something that is a minimal thought process in a disease-based model, you would find two important things that are rarely addressed. 1. There are no two people alike and 2. There are no two people alike.
In most cases, when you or your child is examined in the traditional model of health care you are not looked upon as a unique individual. You are being categorized into a group of complaints (symptoms) that further lead you down the road of, I hope, physical examination and then, if necessary, to an array of diagnostic testing. These procedures are established as guidelines for standard of care with the findings providing the physician with a legal treating diagnosis. The treatment of course, in almost all cases, is drug therapy. The goal is symptom abatement and not necessarily overall health improvement. Think about it. How many times have you or your child been to a doctor and received a medication, experienced symptom improvement and never returned for a follow up? The only time you would think of going back was if you or your child’s symptoms did not improve. So where is the health care in that? There is none. No understanding of why these symptoms spontaneously occurred, no thoughts on prevention in the future and no consistent dialogue of lifestyle changes to improve and maintain health. It is no wonder America is one of the sickest, and the most medicated, industrialized country on the planet?
Now that we have a better understanding of the reality of our sick care system, we can move forward in a more applicable and self-responsible model of individualized healthcare. Having you and your child’s entire negative exposures evaluated is a straight forward but arduous process. There is no “easy as taking a pill” process here. In this model of thinking both you and your doctor become a team with the relationship based on mutual acceptance and respect. In this relationship both parties share the responsibility for creating a healthy adaptive body that you and your child can live, thrive and grow in.
Dr. Anthony Carrino is the immediate past president of the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association and present member of its board of directors. He is an international lecturer and has taught pediatric wellness protocols to thousands of doctors across the globe. He is a 1989 graduate of Life Chiropractic University and has been in private practice for 21 years as clinic director of the Chiropractic Family Wellness Centre in West Islip, New York.
Jessica McBain says
Please, I need to know more, how can chiropractic practice help my three year old with severe food/environmental allergies and asthma?
Natural Mom Raising Awareness says
Jessica – until Dr. Carrino is able to get back to you or write about it in an upcoming post, you can ask this question on the Raising Natural Kids facebook page – you’ll get lots of answers that way! Once you ask on the page, the questions will get reposted and you should check throughout that day or two for responses on the page! Dawn 🙂