The importance of our nervous system
‘EVERY thought you’ve had, movement you’ve ever made and sensation you’ve ever experienced, has all been dependent on nerve messages flowing freely through your body. Your brain and spinal cord are protected by your skull and the 24 movable bones of your spine.’
So says Dr Jennifer Baham-Floreani, a chiropractic expert of more than 30 years, whose explicit description of the important yet largely misunderstood profession is one of the best I have come across in my brief study on the myths about chiropractors.
Even many medical doctors do not understand the work or chiropractors or do not want to accept them as part of the general health care in society. They have created myths that undermined the practice of chiropractors and that these myths have lingered on far too long.
In her book, Well Adjusted Babies, Dr Barham-Floreani points out that a person’s nervous system can be likened to "an information highway that delicately balances self-regulating mechanism”.
But the nerve messages could be interrupted or affected by vertebral subluxations (joint and nerve dysfunctions) which occur when there are misalignments of one or more vertebrae.
Many people are not aware of the dysfunctions because some subluxations are painless. They do not realise the presence of the subluxations in their body.
If the defects are not specifically treated and adjusted, the nervous system would not be able to coordinate with all bodily functions, including breathing, digestion and immune responses.
Dr Malcolm Rudd, who is treating my right thigh and neck, emphasises that the brain continuously produces vital messages that are decoded into electrical impulses, each with a purpose of performing an important function in a specific place within the body.
Millions of these messages are sent every second of a person’s life, passing from the brain to the body cells and then back to the brain.
Anything that interrupts the proper flow of electrical impulses through the nervous system should set off loud, beeping alarms in the body. But often it does not until a certain amount of damage has been done.
That’s what happened to me. I did not know what caused the pain in my right thigh. Neither the medical doctors nor the physiotherapists to whom I sought help mentioned any presence of subluxation or referred me to a chiropractor.
I had my regular morning exercises for years and my weekly massage. By any reckoning, I should be fit and, in fact, I am still fit.
Yet the pain occurred two years ago when I felt excruciating pain in my thigh. I had suffered in silence until my masseuse Eileen Reynolds insisted that I see a chiropractor.
Now, thanks to her and Dr Rudd, the pain has subsided considerably. It only appears when I sit too long at my computer. Otherwise I do not have any discomfort.
Dr Rudd tells of two interesting recent cases in which a man and a woman had their problems solved to their amazement.
For years the man had been able to climb a hill but could not come down from it without walking sideways in small steps at a time.
After some specific chiropractic treatment, he was able to walk up or down a hill without any problem.
The treatment on the woman has dramatically changed her from a very depressed state for years into a life of happiness and excitement that brought a remark from her husband: “You have given me back my wife.”
What is surprising to me is that chemical toxicity from foods, medications and the environment can cause reflexive stress to the spine.
Too much alcohol, sugar, preservatives and breathing environmental pollutants upset the body chemistry which, in turn, disrupts the tone of both muscles and ligaments resulting in vertebral subluxations.
I am told that regular consumption of sugar, which is commonly used in almost every kind of food, including breakfast products, biscuits, chocolate, coffee and tea, can depress the immune system. Its effectiveness can be reduced by 25% with as little as six teaspoon of sugar a day.
A child suffering cold or running nose consistently may find its cause at taking too much sugar daily. A tube of smarties, for example, contains 7.5 teaspoons of sugar.
The point here is to avoid sugar as much as possible and not to encourage children to take sugar in their early ages.
The question then comes to why a newborn baby needs to see a chiropractor?
Researches in numerous cases show that on average 85% of newborn babies have some forms of nerve dysfunctions or subluxations due to constraint or abnormal positioning in the uterus or spinal distress of the mother during delivery process.
The babies need to be checked and their spinal adjusted by chiropractors to enable them to grow healthy in their adult life.
Those interested to know more about a chiropractic guide for wholistic parenting from pregnancy through to early childhood should read Dr Barham-Floreani’s Well Adjusted Babies.
Big boost for Down Under Today
JUST over a month after its launch, Down Under Today has received the biggest boost in a Malaysian newspaper, Malay Mail, which also ran the second part of the story in its website.
Published in its CyberSpot page, the story was written by journalist Sheila Rahman whose style of writing is impressive as it is refreshing.
The Malay Mail, formerly part of the New Straits Times Group, is now privately owned by a group of shareholders. It has several interesting features and has shown, in a sense, what it can do in meeting the challenges of the readers for a quality newspaper in Malaysia.
It has received Malaysia's prestigious prize Winner of the 2008 MPI Petronas Best Investigative Journalism Award.
I think the Malay Mail deserves the support of the Malaysian readers, not because it has given me much publicity, but because it is a newspaper that provides different viewpoints and different types of stories on the day-to-day reporting. And I would be pleased if my Malaysian followers would fully support the Malay Mal just as it has done for downundertoday.com
To avoid any misconstrued perception, I would like to stress that the call for this support is not the result of any barter agreement between the Malay Mail and I. It is my belief that the Malay Mail knows how to pick a good story, in this case, it happens to be my life story and what I have done in my career and still continue to do for my supporters when I could have simply retired and take things easily.
But I can't find myself doing nothing -- that's my life style.
Having said that, here's story of my life as journalist Sheila Rahman of the Malay Mail sees it in an online interview:
| still_bleeding_in_blogosphere.pdf |
| File Size: | 917 kb |
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'Óne door closes another opens'
So the saying goes. And I believe in this simple axiom. To me this is a philosophy -- a philosophy of positiveness and determination; a philosophy that proves nothing is impossible if you have the will to overcome any adversity.
Not that the closure of my weekly column Insight Down Under in the Sunday Star is an adversity to me. I had expected this eventuality and had believed that it could happen in the wake of the worst-ever global recession impacting various countries, including Malaysia and Australia.
Let me make it clear that I do not blame anyone for what happened. It has become an unfortunate victim in the worst recession ever experienced by the world since the Great Depression of 1929. In fact, I take the view that it has given me the opportunity to focus what I really wanted to do and to revive my passion which has taken the back seat until now.
In opening this new door, it has given my followers of my newspaper column not only the continuation of the link to be informed of what is happening in Australia, but also a chance to explore in a more determined way my aspiration on other fields that I have been keenly interested over the years.
I have never been a person without an insight into many ventures however difficult they may seem. With sincere humility, I am a person of integrity and honesty, a survivor, or to put it more bluntly, a fighter in any untoward occurence.
My strength in character, which has been developed during my teenage years into a father-figure of my family with responsibility to provide for them, has been the central point of my life.
I don’t look back with doom and gloom on anything that some would consider as a disaster in their lives. I don’t mourn and groan and look back to the past on what I should have done or shouldn’t have done in my life.
Like many people in the pre-babyboomer days, especially in the early 1940s, I have had my fair share of hard life, leaving school in my early age to find whatever work I could get in difficult conditions and earning a small wage to help support my mother and younger brothers and sisters. Of course, my brothers and sisters have also helped in any way they could before going to school each morning.
What I am today is through hard work and perseverance and sweat and tears of having to go through my life without a father to advice, guide and encourage me to lead a successful life like he had. He died over complications of stone-in-the-kidney operation, which today seems quite a simple operation. I was only 12 then.
Frankly, I don’t regret what I have gone through. In fact, I think it made me a better person and now drives me to overcome all obstacles to lead a successful life on my own -- with a beautiful and caring wife and two grown-up intelligent sons who have done well for themselves in Australia. I am what many would agree a self-made man.
And I belive that my experiences in life should be a stepping stone for the young people of today. I have always encouraged young people to think of their future and what they want to become as they grow up.
That is my small contribution to society and that, in short, is the story of my life.
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