It is very true that we learn from our mistakes. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. But that said, it is one of my hopes that you will not only learn from your mistakes but from mine as well, at least with regard to issues of health. I offer advice all day long to both interested and disinterested patients. I have been saying the same things since January 1987 when I met my first patient. But for the first 13 years of my career I completely failed to heed my own advice, and I paid a price. I didn’t get adjustments as often as I should. I ate lousy and far too much. I didn’t exercise except going to the fridge. What were vitamins? I was fat. Water was for bathing, not drinking. Drinking is what coffee and soda were for. But it all came to a screeching halt on Memorial weekend in 2000 when my lifestyle finally caught up with me. How is your lifestyle? Will it benefit you as you age or will it wear you out?
Imagine you are driving your family for a Memorial Day weekend vacation and you live the same lifestyle I used to. While driving you experience chest pain and tightness and dizziness. You quickly get the car to the side of the road and into park just before you black out. Your wife/husband and kids don’t know if you are alive or dead. There is pandemonium in the car right now, raw fear. There are three possible outcomes, the first of which is sudden death. 30% of the time the first symptom of heart disease is death. If you die you will not be changing your lifestyle much. Too late. The second outcome is that you survive but you have a serious illness, such as heart disease. Now you are forced to change your lifestyle but you have heart muscle damage forever. Almost too late. The third is that no one ever figures out what went wrong, why you had that episode. That’s my story.
I now believe that God gave me a message and a second chance to live my life as an example, not as the hypocrite I was. My lesson was that when I am a 237 pound couch potato, eating whole pizzas and drinking only coffee and soda with borderline high blood pressure and back, hip, and leg pain that is causing me to limp and be in pain constantly that I can either wait for an early death or I can become the husband, father, and chiropractor that He expects me to be. I listened.
If any part of that story sounds at all like yourself or a loved one, it is my hope that you/they will use my story as a motivation and not wait for your own message because these messages often come too late with too high a price.
It’s my same mantra, build good habits one at a time. Get adjusted, eat better, lose weight, drink water, take supplements, exercise. Make your own list. Do it for yourself, your significant other, your kids. Be the example that I have tried to be since that life-changing day. In fact be a better example. It’s worth it.
Imagine you are driving your family for a Memorial Day weekend vacation and you live the same lifestyle I used to. While driving you experience chest pain and tightness and dizziness. You quickly get the car to the side of the road and into park just before you black out. Your wife/husband and kids don’t know if you are alive or dead. There is pandemonium in the car right now, raw fear. There are three possible outcomes, the first of which is sudden death. 30% of the time the first symptom of heart disease is death. If you die you will not be changing your lifestyle much. Too late. The second outcome is that you survive but you have a serious illness, such as heart disease. Now you are forced to change your lifestyle but you have heart muscle damage forever. Almost too late. The third is that no one ever figures out what went wrong, why you had that episode. That’s my story.
I now believe that God gave me a message and a second chance to live my life as an example, not as the hypocrite I was. My lesson was that when I am a 237 pound couch potato, eating whole pizzas and drinking only coffee and soda with borderline high blood pressure and back, hip, and leg pain that is causing me to limp and be in pain constantly that I can either wait for an early death or I can become the husband, father, and chiropractor that He expects me to be. I listened.
If any part of that story sounds at all like yourself or a loved one, it is my hope that you/they will use my story as a motivation and not wait for your own message because these messages often come too late with too high a price.
It’s my same mantra, build good habits one at a time. Get adjusted, eat better, lose weight, drink water, take supplements, exercise. Make your own list. Do it for yourself, your significant other, your kids. Be the example that I have tried to be since that life-changing day. In fact be a better example. It’s worth it.