​January is the traditional resolution time of year, coming just after a prolonged period of waist-line expansion that began at Thanksgiving dinner and ended at midnight on New Year’s Eve.  It is a time when we state our intentions for the coming year.  Some do it formally and broadcast their plans on social media.  Others do it silently so that no one else will know when they fail.  This is my preferenceJ  And still others show antipathy to this annual self-analysis, either ignoring their shortcomings or convincing themselves that they have nothing which needs improving.  Which are you? 
 
            For reasons beyond my control this past month I have been spending a great deal of time in places with names such as Urgent Care, Emergency Room, Intensive Care Unit, Telemetry Unit, Skilled Nursing Facility, Rehabilitation, etc.  There’s a lot of misery in these places, people suffering, and worse.  Some of them are there through no fault of their own.  Sometimes you just get sick.  Stuff happens.  Others are there simply because they are old and their bodies are wearing out.  But I would argue that more than half are there either because their actions did not mirror their intentions, or they made no intentions in the first place to take action upon.  In short, they didn’t take care of this very fragile temple we live in. 
 
            Have you spent time in one of these places either as on observer or participant?  What do you think about when you walk down their hallways?  I’ll tell you what I think about as I see bed after bed filled with folks recovering from any number of ailments.  I see people sitting around in wheel chairs as if waiting for…anything to happen.  Walkers.  Bedside commodes.  Bed pans.  Call buttons.  IV’s.  Fear.  Pain.  Despondency.  Crying for help.  I feel great empathy for these folks, but what I constantly think about is, “Am I doing all that I can or should to keep myself out of this place in my not very distant future?” 
 
            To address this question we have to quickly review the largest preventable reasons for admission to these places.  Did you know that the single largest cause of disability on the planet is the spine?  The vast majority of the money spent to treat this problem goes to back surgery and drugs (giving us the current opioid epidemic).  I could adjust you every week for over 100 years for the cost of one fusion back surgery!  After spine issues comes everything that can happen from a combination of eating too much, eating the wrong things, exercising too little, and of course, smoking (heart disease, cancer, diabetes, others).    
 
            So based upon the above paragraph, am I arguing that if you merely ate responsibly, exercised a little bit, reasonably managed your weight, didn’t smoke, and took moderate care of your spine (weekly adjustments and disc pump exercises), you would be much less likely to need a hospital, a skilled nursing facility, or any other critical or chronic care facility? Absolutely!!    
 
            If you accept my argument and decide that you are worth some effort, then state your intention to do these few things, consistently act on your intentions, and then reap the benefits years and decades from now.  It’ll be worth the effort.    

​So my grandkids like this cartoon called Blaze and the Monster Machines.  It’s an amalgam combining entertainment with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in which these talking trucks with giant tires solve a variety of problems and help each other.  During the show they involve the kids by having them repeat a STEM word to learn what it means.  In one episode they are launching pies from a giant slingshot toward the sort-of bad guys to teach about the concept of trajectory.  I can hear both Jackjack and Eli saying “trajectory” at the appointed moment.  It’s very cute. 
 
            Trajectory actually has more than one meaning, but in general it describes a directed path.  So let’s apply it to health and mobility, but in reverse order.  To do this I need you to play along.  Think of a person you know who has limited mobility due to arthritis.  It doesn’t matter if it’s arthritis of the spine or knees or hips or whatever.  It’s only important that your person has arthritis somewhere and can’t move well because of it.  Now imagine you have the magic ability to play this person’s life-tape backwards.  Do this in your head and take them to an age well before they even knew they had arthritis, a time when their mobility was 100% and they didn’t have an inkling of what was to come.  Are you there?  Perfect.  We are going to call their “health trajectory” the pathway that took them from where they were then to where they are now. 
 
            The boys learned by watching Blaze that a small change in trajectory made huge changes in the final destination of the pie, whether the target was or was not hit in the face.  So with your magic imagine you could reach into the past and tweak your loved one’s health trajectory just a bit so that today he/she would have full mobility.  I wonder what you would change?  There are lots of options of course, and of course this is academic since you don’t possess that magical ability.  Ah, but you do have that magic, but for your own life.
 
            You are on a trajectory.  You are heading down a path.  You must be first willing to open your eyes to the reality of that path to have the remotest ability to tweak it.  Are you willing?  I’m stubborn.  It took a hospital E.R. visit in 2000 to open my eyes.  I hope you are not as thick-headed as me.  Ask if you don’t know my story.  I have listed below a partial list of the changes I made to tweak my path.  I didn’t do them all at once.  Rather, one at a time, each when I was ready, willing and able.  Today, my trajectory is far from where it was in 2000. 
 
            Drink 64 oz. water per day.  Lose 50# and keep it off.  Regular aerobic exercise.  Cut out soda.  Cut back caffeine.  Take antioxidants (D, E, Omega 3).  Take anti-inflammatory supplement (Curcumin).  Develop and do my Disc Pump exercises daily.  Get adjusted at least once a week.    
 
            If you want to talk about your trajectory and how you can change it let’s talk.  I’ll help but only you can make it happen. 
 

I’m sitting in the co-pilot’s seat of a Cirrus G3 propeller driven 4-seater plane.  My right hand is on the control stick.  We took off from Santa Barbara airport heading south back to Fullerton, just passing over Oxnard air space.  My wife, Diana, is in the left rear seat.  The pilot, Aria, is to my left.  “See that mountain over there.  Head toward that and maintain our altitude at 5,500’… now bank to the right heading toward Point Loma and then take it down to 3,500’ at a descent rate of 500’/minute.  That’s a comfortable descent rate for passengers.”  My first and probably last flying lesson, lasting about 10-15 minutes.  I didn’t break the plane.  That’s a good thing.  How did I get here?
 
            It all started about 18 years ago when a young attorney walked into my office with terrible lower back pain.  He was bent over a bit.  Had a rough time getting out of a chair.  He was desperate.  It was not his first time like this either.  He had tried other chiropractors with no success.  But what else was there for him to do?  Drugs…not a viable option for this young man.  Surgery…not a candidate, nor a viable option either.  So in he walks into my office.  I listened to him.  I examined him.  I took his x-rays.  Then I did something no chiropractor had done before, or has been able to duplicate on him since.  To be just a bit technical, I did a base-posterior adjustment of the sacrum with a superior to inferior torque.  Right after the adjustment he got off the table nearly 100% pain-free, a rare but wonderful outcome.  A true success story.
 
I would take care of him, his then wife, his kids, and his brother for several years as he began his young law career.  He was one of those types that was self-assured, even cocky, some would think him arrogant.  Within about 5 years he had sold his house in Southridge and moved on.  I saw him a couple of times when he would limp into my office needing a fix and happened to be in the area.  He kept trying chiropractors wherever he was, since his back would “go out” far too often.  He even tried several chiropractors who were “experts” in the Gonstead technique, the same technique I use, the same technique that taught me the base-posterior adjustment that provides instantaneous relief to this young attorney.  And then I heard nothing from him for several years until last Friday.
 
I played the voice mail left by him on my cell.  “My back has gone out,” he says.  “I would really appreciate your help.  Are you willing to make a house call?  No other chiropractors can do what you do.  I’ve tried them all.  By the way, I live in Ojai now!!”  For those of you who don’t know, Ojai is inland, sort of in between Ventura and Santa Barbara, at least a 2-1/2 hour drive from here.  I’m not driving to Ojai to make a house call.  I don’t drive to Fontana from my home in Yorba Linda for house calls.  But he needed my help.  I couldn’t leave him high and dry.  So I called him back and we settled on a plan.
 
In the intervening years he had become quite successful, so he sent one of his three planes to pick up me and my wife in Fullerton and flew us to Santa Barbara where I had arranged for a very good Gonstead chiropractor to accept him as a new patient.  I adjusted his lower back to demonstrate the technique to the new doctor, got a Starbucks, got on the plane, took my flying lesson, and went home.  The longest house call of my career.  What a day.  You just never know what tomorrow may bring.