The Terrible T’s
If you have come into our office you have probably heard us talking about the “Terrible T’s” quite a bit. But what are the terrible T’s and what impact do they have on your health? The 3 terrible T’s are traumas, toxins, and thoughts. Each one plays a pivotal role in health in its own unique way. Let’s break these down individually and dive into how they each can affect you.
We will start with traumas. Traumas are probably the most obvious T when it comes to the impact they have on your health. Traumas are defined as any injury, accident, fall, bump, scrape, bruise, etc. Traumas are the things you usually can easily remember. They are things that happen that you know caused some sort of pain or dysfunction in the body. For example you recall falling off your bike and hurting your knee or getting in a car accident and suddenly having neck pain. But sometimes traumas aren’t quite as obvious. Think about some repetitive traumas you go through daily. Do you sit at a desk all day? That’s a trauma for your low back. Every time you look down at your phone that’s a trauma for your neck. We are starting to see more and more cases of repetitive traumas causing problems for our patients. So how do we correct for these traumas? Chiropractic adjustments are wonderful for restoring proper joint motion and function following biomechanical injuries to the body. We love seeing the results our patients get even from just a few adjustments of the spine or even extremities! Chiropractic adjustments help to reduce pain, restore range of motion, and get people back to feeling like themselves.
The next T I would like to talk about is toxins. Toxins are things that get into your body and cause massive inflammation. That build-up of inflammation can lead to wide spread pain and discomfort. Most commonly toxins are found in our environment in the things we eat and expose ourselves to. Think of your daily routine getting ready. Do you use clean shampoo, do you use deodorant with aluminum, are you using toxic makeup products? It’s important to make the switch to clean and natural products for all of the above to make sure you are protecting yourself. Now think about the foods you eat? Are you eating enough fruits and vegetables? A majority of people are not. Do you eat fast food? Gluten? Dairy products? These things are commonly very toxic and inflammatory for people. This inflammation from food is not always present as symptoms of gastrointestinal discomfort. Sometimes inflammation from food can show up as joint pain, back pain, or even nerve pain. We have seen multiple people who don’t seem to respond to chiropractic care suddenly start to see amazing improvements when we start looking at what toxins are in their environment and remove them. Our bodies were made to thrive and heal and be healthy as long as we remove toxins interfering with that process!
The last T we need to discuss is thoughts. This is one of the most difficult T’s for most of our patients to wrap their heads around. Our thoughts are so powerful when it comes to our health. Patients who have a positive outlook on their health generally see much better results in our office. In Chinese medicine they discuss in depth how each emotion effects each organ. Anger congests the liver. Fear can cause problems in the kidneys. Sadness can affect the lungs. In our office one of the most common things we see is stress. Stress is often carried in the muscles of the neck and shoulders. We can help biomechanically by adjusting the neck and stretching the musculature but unless we address your stress levels we may never find the results you are looking for.
At Ply Family Wellness we always look at our patients as a whole, not just a list of symptoms. We don’t take neck pain as just neck pain. We will dig to the root of what exactly is causing that neck pain. Was it an accident? Was there some sort of trauma? Is there a toxic overload coming from your environment? Are you overly stressed and holding it in your neck and shoulders? Could it be something else entirely? At our office we won’t settle for just relieving your pain. We also want to make sure that it doesn’t come back. If you are interested in finding out what is causing your ailments please give us a call. We would love to work with you.
Written by: Kameron Bavender, DC