How do you know whether you are healthy or sick in Maplewood MN? That is a great question to ask yourself and a question that actually requires more thinking than you would assume. You see, most people say things like I am healthy because I feel great or I look great, that is the way we are programmed to think. When you were a kid and you woke up with a fever, or a sore throat, or had aches/pains your parents would usually let you stay home from school because you were not "healthy" or rather you were "sick." Now you are an adult and you still live by those same rules, you wake up each morning and as long as you do not have a sore throat, fever, cough, sinus issues, headache, you automatically assume you are healthy and well, and that you can carry out your day.

Are you healthy or sick in Maplewood MN?

Today I am writing this to challenge your "rules" on gauging whether you are healthy or sick. You really need to understand that health has absolutely very little to do with how you actually feel or how you look. And the most simple way to get my point across that health has very little to do with how you look or how you feel is by looking at two of the top killers in this country; heart disease and cancer.

These two diseases claim hundreds of thousands of lives every year in the United States alone, and they are both disease process that takes time to develop inside of your body. For instance, if you have heart disease progressing inside of your body you may have absolutely no idea because generally, the first sign of heart disease is having a heart attack or a stroke. Same with cancer. People need to understand that you can actually have stage 4 cancer inside of your body, and yet, have no symptoms.

This occurs more than people are aware of, a person goes to their doctor for an annual check-up and find out they have cancer, get told they may have only a couple of weeks/months/years to live, yet this person had no idea, they had no symptoms, they felt great, they looked great. If someone had a heart attack today, even though they felt great and looked great yesterday, does that mean that they were healthy yesterday? No, it does not. These two diseases take time, years & years & years, to develop inside of your body, they do not just show up overnight.

And therefore the greatest danger you can ever put yourself in or your family in is living your life according to the motto "I am healthy because I feel good or look good." You see when you base your health strictly off of symptoms well then that means you don't take care of yourself until you start feeling bad or looking bad, and for some people that means it is already too late. It literally seems crazy to me that of all the things we as humans value (cars, houses, clothes/accessories, vacations) that our health is taken for granted up until we lose it, then you wish you had it back.

Go up to a friend, or family member, or co-worker today and ask them, "if I could grant you one wish today what would it be?" I will guarantee they say something like; I wish to win the lottery, I wish to have a huge mansion, I wish I never had to work again, or I wish that I had a Ferrari. I almost guarantee that no one will say that they wish to live a healthy life. But to demonstrate how little we value our health until we lose it if you were to go up to a parent of a sick child at a hospital and ask them that same question, guaranteed 100% of the time, the answer would be I just want my child healthy again.

I think the Dalai Lama stated it best;

"Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or in the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived."

Maplewood MN 55109
Dr. Jason Schwietz
Maplewood MN Chiropractor