Can you really base your true state of health on how you feel?
We don’t mean to dive into your psyche with this post. Instead we are talking about the state of affairs where we find it all too easy to believe that if something doesn’t obviously feel wrong with us, then we must be in good health. “I’m as healthy as a horse,” as the old saying goes.
And in the majority of cases, this will be true. Why go looking for trouble where it doesn’t exist? As we have written before, the last thing you want to do is succumb to hypochondria, rushing to self-diagnose with the questionable assistance of Dr. Google.
On the other hand, many conditions that dog us, especially as we hit middle age, do come with few if any noticeable symptoms.
Take high blood pressure and its cohorts
This isn’t called the “silent killer” lightly. Most people who have high blood pressure show no symptoms and it can lead to a heart attack, heart failure, or stroke. According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, heart disease and stroke are leading causes of death, taking the lives of more than 66,000 Canadians every year, or about one every seven minutes.
Other diseases that can appear and progress with few if any symptoms include Type 2 Diabetes, serious cancers like ovarian and colon, and lupus.
That’s why, depending on your lifestyle habits, your family history and other risk factors, we are all advised to be regularly screened and checked for various conditions and diseases at or after a certain age.
It’s about being responsible
It doesn’t even have to be something as dire as cancer or heart disease. Take your teeth. Why do we schedule those regular trips to the dentist’s office if not to ensure we don’t have any new cavities?
This is responsible stewardship of your body. You only have the one, after all.
We can’t always rely on a serious problem to reveal itself with obvious symptoms. On the other hand, we can feel truly awful for reasons that will pass with no lasting harm – a touch of the flu, a mild case of food poisoning, an aching back after a hard day of yard work.
About your spinal health, too
The issue we occasionally see in our Kanata Chiropractic office is that people are diligent about addressing a health issue when they are suffering, but once they start feeling better, it’s all too easy to fall off the recommended care plan.
As we have said before, a chronic (or worsening) symptom like pain or stiffness or numbness or tingling or lost mobility may indicate there is a root cause to be identified and addressed. But the symptom itself is not the root cause. Relief from a symptom or the absence of one does not guarantee there is no longer an underlying problem in need of treatment.
It’s no different than deciding you can skip that scheduled dentist’s visit because you don’t have a tooth ache, or that you don’t have to lose weight and exercise because you don’t feel any obvious symptoms from your high blood pressure.
You can’t trust a symptom
We can’t trust in the presence, absence, or severity of a symptom to be a reliable indicator of our true state of health, whether that is our spinal health, or something else, like our dental or heart health. That’s why in our office we get to the root of it by using x-ray evidence for diagnosis and to track your progress.
As always, the ball is in your court when it comes to being proactive and diligent about your health.