Wellness and maintenance care are often thought to be the same thing. However, the objective or goal in these types of health care are vastly different as are their results and benefits. What is most important to understand is all areas of our life - if we want them to continue to function properly - require regular maintenance.
To fully appreciate why our life requires maintenance we first must understand the natural law known as "The Second Law of Thermodynamics". When read for the first time it's definition may seem confusing but if you understand it's meaning then "everything" will become much more clear. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is actually a specific example from the universal law of Entropy, which is used as a measure of disorganization. Entropy tells us that everthing naturally moves toward a state of disorganization over time because organization requires energy.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics says, "The state of entropy in an isolated system, which is not currently in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium."
So what does this actually mean? Lets take a car as an example. A car when it is first manufactured represents a lot of organization and therefore has a very low measure of entropy. However, a car will gradually become more and more disorganized over time moving toward a higher measure of entropy (unless it is being stored in a climate controlled environment). The car reaches it greatest state of disorganization or entropy when it arrives at the junk yard and is fully disassembled.
What is important to note is that The Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to an "isolated system", which means that we are not adding extra energy to the system. In terms of the car - this means we are not adding the energy of maintenance. However, if we apply maintenance (adding energy and organization) to the car not only do we increase the life expectancy of the car but we significantly improve the performance of the car during it life.
This same laws apply to every aspect of our lives! Our car, our house, our teeth, our health, our relationships, and yes...our spines! So in any aspect of our life that we are not applying regular maintenance (adding energy and organization) over time it will breakdown and lead to a crisis. If you don't maintain your kitchen...crisis! If you don't maintain your bathroom...crisis! If you don't maintain your relationships...crisis! And of course, if you don't maintain your spine...crisis!
Because the vast majority of people today were not aware of the necessity of spine and nervous system maintenance from birth it is very likely that even with regular maintenance that a person will still experience the occasional relapse. Why? Imagine trying to maintain your teeth if you hadn't brushed them for the first thirty years of your life. Of course you would need to go through an extensive process of correcting the problem first just to get your teeth to a place where they can be maintained but even then with regular maintenance it is likely that you would still experience some problems over time.
Now we introduce "Wellness"! The profound difference between maintenance and wellness is that maintenance simply looks to "maintain" the current state by adding just enough energy or organization to try to maintain the current state. Whereas Wellness look to find even better states of organization through a process of "constant and never ending improvement".
If we use our kitchen as an example. We can look to maintain our kitchen in its current state of organization and over time we will realize that it requires more and more energy to simply maintain the kitchen in its current state. Whereas if we use a Wellness approach toward our kitchen we would not only be maintaining its current state but we would continue to look for ways to improve the level of organization thereby saving on the energy needed for maintaining it.
The exact same rule applies to every aspect of our lives. If we simply look to maintain our car, our home, our health, our teeth, our relationships, and yes our spines. We will find that over time it will naturally require more and more energy to simply maintain its current state. However, with Wellness care we can continue to look for and implement new strategies to actively organize our lives.
When we look at this in terms of our spine and nervous system we realize that using a Wellness approach toward our care is not only a wise investment it is a better way of life. When we look at what today's research says in relationship to wellness care we realize that maintaining the spine in a Wellness model offers our body the opportunity to learn new strategies for dealing with all the natural stresses in life. In fact, people who have been actively maintaining their spine in a Wellness model show increased healing and repair processes at levels which are not seen in otherwise healthy people.
Where do you see your health in 5 years? In 10 years? Do you simply want to maintain you current level of health or would you prefer to see you health continuing to improve every year for the next 10 years?
Commit to a process Wellness, of constant and never ending improvement, with your Chiropractic care and your dividends will be Optimal Health for life!