Form Good Habits

Habits are wonderful things when properly employed. However, much is said about breaking bad habits. That is a difficult thing to do when you have allowed a bad habit to grow and take command.

Most success in life is based on the forming of good habits cultivated in a helpful way. Had you thought of that? Even simple things are subject to the proper exercise of habits. Habits of dressing, sleeping, awakening, eating, doing almost everything ultimately makes the day's work seem easier.

Doing almost everything a dozen times in the same way is the beginning of a habit, good or bad. Watch your step, be on your guard, outline what you want to do, and your pattern of life begins to be formed. Learn to remember. Plan ahead. repetition is the beginning of the thing you desire to remember.

A wise man once related, "I used to tell my troubles to everyone I knew, and the more I told my troubles, the more my troubles grew." Does it work that way for you? Haven't you found such repetition to be true? It is just as easy, therefore, to form good habits by developing helpful patterns relating to wise and happy thins you do.

Keep on keeping on is one way to make things right or wrong. You learn to save by saving. You learn to accomplish by doing repeating, exercising a will to win.

Isn't it just as easy to do right as to do wrong? It is wise, however, from time to time to analyze your daily pattern and its relationship to life. Consider the habit of saving, for instance. It is good but in so doing be careful, don't become a miser. The love you give away is the love you keep. Be a cheerful giver when the need is great, and it will open for you a worthy gate.

Do you say the state of your health prevents you from doing the things you would like to do? You may have headaches, pain, worries that drive you to taking aspirin, muscle relaxers, and things to give you relief. Soon you are developing a drug habit. What can you do to change the pattern?

Consider Chiropractic! We maintain that health is a natural state of being that comes from up, down, inside and outward; without the need of drugs and needless surgery. Does this seem credible?

The spinal column is said to the the strength and support of the body. The nervous system stems from the brain and spinal cord with its countless nerve fibers that form a direct medium of contact from brain cells to tissue cells, in close relationship with the spinal column.

From the good habit of spinal checkups and you will be in line for better health and a more fulfilling and abundant life.

We Still Have Pride

We have a wonderful country, a beautiful country, a prosperous country, a free, rich and happy country. Of course our country has blemishes, things of which we may be ashamed. There's our treatment of Veterans, our period of slavery, our current and past racial intolerance, needless cruel wars, inequality, crime, immortality, injustice, political and industrial corruption found at a level few have witnessed.

But, we still have pride. We are proud of the opportunities that are ours, and we are sure that no other country equals ours in so many respects. Thus, even with all the quirks, we still have pride, hope, and love with assurances that much is well despite the dark spots. We know that all will grow better as time goes on, it always does.

Of course, there are times we tend to complain, find fault, and make rash judgments. But what are we doing, you and I, to correct the trouble we find? What are we doing about pollution, high prices, inequality, and the high cost of medical care and living expenses. The corruption of the whole begins with the shortcomings found in the individual. Are you doing something about the wrongs you see?

Let us consider the health equation. Why are you ill? What are you doing to renew health in yourself and your family? Are you merely getting shots, doctoring the effects, depending on aspirin and other nsaids, tranquilizers, wonder drugs, and such? Does this sort of treatment do more than modify the effects? Must there not be a better way, something to correct the basic cause of the health problem rather than the use of pain killers? We may still have pride in great medical centers and hospitals, but are they doing much to eliminate disease rather that fight the effects? Is the search to eliminate disease rather than fight the effects? Is the search for wonder drugs the right course of action - fighting fire with fire?

One of the Psalms tells us the body is fearfully and wonderfully made. Another calls the body God's masterpiece. If we accept these conclusions, is it not logical that treating the masterpiece with drugs, shots and surgery is NOT God's way, or at least only a part.

What does all this mean? It becomes apparent that the spinal column must be in proper posture mode and adjusted or else nerves will be pinched resulting in disturbed function, lowered resistance, and symptoms common to dis-ease. You are always given a choice -- just make it the right one for you.

You deserve the pride of making the correct decision regarding your health.

Be Kind

Did you ever stop to think about the wonderful art of being kind? Nothing will open more doors to friendship or quiet more turbulent waves of anger than just being kind.

Friendship is a wonderful asset, love smooths many a hurt, charity has its place, but being kind is the pathway to all that is good, all that is wise, all that is uplifting, all that makes life worth living. No one can resist kindness, even the worst brute is mellowed by kindness and friction gives way to its wonderful power.

"Love one another as I have loved you," said a gentle and great man. No injunction is more powerful any time, any place; but kindness is basic even for love because its approach makes contacts possible. Be kind and all the world will smile a welcome to you.

Perhaps you will say that you are ill and indisposed. You can't help resenting the things others do to annoy you. Even so, just be kind and your own disposition will improve which in turn will remove the barrier that now separates potential friends.

If you are ill, what has created this handicap? It could be an emotional conflict. Change your way of thinking, be kind, and the barrier will usually disappear.

"But," you may protest, "I am nervous, I have a headache, I can't sleep, indigestion is making me miserable. How can I be kind under such circumstances?"

Did you ever consult a chiropractor about your health problems? Bear this in mind. the chiropractor has a different approach to health -- no medicine, no shots, no tranquilizers, no treatment of effects, for such treatment seldom has lasting results. Doctors of Chiropractic assure you that health, as kindness, comes from within outward but is expressed in a different manner.

Your body is composed of material things; bones, muscles, glands, organs, blood vessels, and nerves -- all of which are arranged in systems coordinated by an intangible force animated through the nervous system that stems from the brain and spinal cord. Does this begin to make sense?

Your body has been called God's masterpiece. It is built around a skeletal framework of bones, the spine being the strength and support of the body. A good chiropractor will find the problems associated with you body, and treat the related symptoms by fixing the cause. This provides a kindness to the n
ervous system thus health returns naturally making possible a greater quality of life.

The Struggle For Expression

Everyone is more or less dedicated to the struggle for existence and expression. Even a baby smiles or coos, kicks and waves its hands, all in a struggle for expression or attention. Failing to get attention, the baby yells or cries, then hesitates to note the effect. If not satisfied it yells again.

When children are at play, each tries to excel. "Now watch me," is what the backward child is inclined to say. And so it is all through life whether it be choosing clothing, in games, in workmanship, in politics, in love. "Watch me, do it my way." There is a degree of competition, a struggle to excel. Perhaps that is as it should be. For without competition, without a degree of competitive struggle, there would tend to be decline. As you sow, so shall you reap.

Even with health problems there is a tendency toward excellence. You want to feel good because you can do better work. If you have a headache, you take something, not only to relive the pain but to enable you to do better work. When your work is inferior, it makes you nervous or irritable. Not a good thing. Children in school compete for better grades, for promotion, and for leadership. So it is in the game of life, there is a struggle to excel. To gain relief from pain and/or discomfort tranquilizers are used or other forms of treatment are employed.

In all forms of salesmanship there is a struggle for expression. Each tries to excel in salesmanship or in quality of product. In the healing arts it is much the same. Different so-called remedies make various claims for their respective product, and the patient is the goat. The competition between different forms of medication is keen. Makers of remedies seek wonder drugs. Chiropractors stress that drugs are superfluous and generally should be avoided. Do you wonder why? This is the explanation: The chiropractic profession maintains that health is a natural state of being that comes from within outward, expressed through the nervous system that stems from the brain and spinal cord, in conjunction with the spinal column.

The spinal column has been called the strength and support of the body. The spine consists of twenty-four movable vertebrae, with the sacrum and ilia supporting the rest of the spine. The spinal column has various functions. It serves for the articulation of all the larger bones and the attachment of the major ligaments and muscles. The vertebrae are separated by discs that enable bending and act as "shock absorbers" for the entire spine.

But this is not all. Between the vertebrae openings spinal nerve bundles emit from the spinal cord. These are a great cable of nerves encased within the spinal column extending downward from the brain to entire length of the spinal column. This make the spine the distributing center for the entire nervous system.

This anatomical arrangement is vital to health because accidents and trauma sometimes shock or strain the spine. When this occurs, one or more vertebrae may become displaced to a degree that nerves are pinched resulting in dis-ease (want of ease) and the symptoms that follow.

The normal expression of health should be restored and a more abundant life is made possible.

Make it happen!

Heat Stroke Kills Children and Pets

Here are several tips for preventing injuries or deaths to children and/or pets left in cars:

• Get in the habit of always opening the back door of your vehicle every time you reach your destination to check to make sure no child - or pet - has been left behind.
• Keep a large stuffed animal in the child's car seat. Right before the child is placed in the seat, move the stuffed animal to the front passenger seat as a visual reminder that your child is in the back seat.
• Put something you'll need on the floorboard in the back seat in front of your child's car seat (cellphone, handbag, employee ID, briefcase, left shoe, etc.). This ensures you open the back door of your vehicle to retrieve your belongings.
• Make arrangements with your daycare provider or babysitter to call you within 10 minutes if your child does not arrive as expected.
• Never leave children or pets alone in or around cars, not even for a minute. Instead, use drive-thru services when available.
• Keep vehicles locked at all times, even in the garage or driveway, and keep car keys and remote openers out of reach of children.

Opioid, Heroin Deaths Continue to Climb

Overdose deaths from both prescription opioids and heroin continued to rise in 2011, the most recent year for which data were available, according to the CDC. While prescription opioid deaths followed a more than decade-long trend and increased about 2% to 16,917, heroin deaths jumped by 44% -- from 3,036 in 2010 to 4,397.

Officials with the CDC said the increase in heroin deaths may be partly due to users having less access to prescription opioids and switching to the illicit drug. It can be said that about 75% of heroin users say they started out by using prescription opioids.

The increasing number of heroin deaths also coincides with anecdotal reports about rising heroin use among people who have had diminished access to prescription opioid painkillers. The prescription opioid death number is getting close to stabilizing, but added that it's "still bad because it hasn't gone down." That number has been on the rise since 1999, when it was 4,030. In 2010, the figure was 16,651.

Doctors are trying, but they need to do a better of job of screening for opioid abusers by checking prescription drug monitoring programs in their states for patients who are doctor shopping, and by using urine screens to detect if they are using illicit drugs.

Andrew Kolodny, MD, a long-time advocate of tighter controls on opioids, said the growing deaths from heroin and opioids is something that could have been predicted 10 years ago. "I see this as all the same problem, an epidemic of people addicted to opioids," said Kolodny, chief medical officer of Phoenix House, a national addiction treatment organization. "Treatment has to be easier to access than pills or heroin."

We are seeing more heroin use, and presumably the new users of heroin are people who run out of their ability to get prescription opioids. In a way it is an unintended consequence.

Deaths involving benzodiazepines, which are commonly used concomitantly with opioids, also continued to rise, showing up in 31% of opioid overdose deaths in 2011, up from 30% in 2010.

Prescription drug overdoses more than doubled in the past 13 years in Orange County, a deadly increase that has closely mirrored the popularity of their illicit use, according to a report recently released. Illegal drugs – such as cocaine and heroin – used to make up the majority of overdose deaths. In 2012, however, 57 percent of overdose deaths in the county involved prescription drugs, such as Vicodin, Oxycontin and Codeine, the report states.

The steep increase in prescription drug deaths has been nearly in sync with the increasing use of them among addicts, officials said, with users over the years seeking out pain medication to obtain a high similar to heroin.

Last year, 2013, illegal drugs were behind 20 percent of Orange County’s 330 overdose incidents.

Prescription drugs were involved in 57 percent of the cases, 188 deaths. The remaining 23 percent of cases involved both illegal and prescription drugs, the report found. The report detailed all death investigations by the coroner’s office for 2012, but officials singled out the increasing appearance of prescription drugs, noting the flip from illegal to prescription drugs.

Drugs such as Oxycontin, Opana, Codeine and Vicodin are increasingly being used, and sold, by people seeking a high, officials said, often with deadly consequences. Narcotics investigators in Orange County have been seeing the trend for years on the street, he said, and it’s a trend that’s occurring across the country.

There has been a surge in the use of opioid drug - heroin and prescription painkillers - in the United States, and this rise in popularity has some calling it an “epidemic.” Here in Orange County, public health officials say there is a growing problem with opioid abuse and subsequent overdoses.

The increase in heroin use across the country is interconnected with an expanding opioid market, driven by the high demand for prescription painkillers, such as Oxycontin and hydrocodone. As a general class of drugs, opioids have a high potential for abuse.

Across North Carolina, there has been a more than 300 percent increase in opioid overdose deaths since 1999, according to the state Center for Health Statistics.

One important part of that approach is the use of the medication, naloxone, which can quickly reverse an overdose caused by opioid medications and even heroin. This was possible due to a state law passed in 2013 that gave doctors the ability to prescribe naloxone to a person at risk of opioid overdose, as well as that person’s friends and family members. Naloxone is just one piece of a larger effort to address substance abuse and misuse, particularly with prescription and other opioids.

Simply put ... THERE IS NO "MAGIC" PILL ... WITHOUT SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES!

Today - Begin Where You Are

Do you wish to succeed in life? Try beginning where you now are. Utilize the tools you have at hand. Expect the best and then follow through and DO your best. That is all it takes.

Of course you must have a goal, whether it be immediate, intermediate or long term. You must know what you want. You must have an ideal, you must have vision. The Bible says, "Where there is no vision the people perish." Those with no vision wander about in a desert of non-belief, fear, and doubt until despair enters their mind. This is true of the individual or the mass. There seems no way out, and you can't win unless you believe you can be changed.

What is your problem? could it be ill health? Do you suffer pain? Are you nervous? Are you groggy from taking too much medicine, too many drugs, tranquilizers, aspirin, and/or perhaps even alcohol? Begin now to get rid of these false idols. There is a better way, a right way, and most importantly - the proper way. You will never find answers in a bottle or drug. You may ask what you can do. What other way is open to you?

Your body is fearfully and wonderfully made, as has often been said. This being true, what have you to fear? Why doubt the laws of nature? Begin now, where you are, to set nature's laws to work for you and you will find the way to approach a more abundant life. What does this mean, you may ask?

Chiropractors have a different approach to health problems. No drugs, no surgery, nothing to swallow, and no shots. It's not that we do not "believe" that modern medicine is injurious, but it would be a last resort unless a true emergency should present. Have you wondered how this works?

I point out that health comes from "up down inside and outward" and in no other way. Health depends entirely upon the nervous system that stems from the brain and spinal cord with its network of nerve fibers forming a direct medium of contact between brain cells and tissue cells.

You may have heard it said that the spine is the strength and support of the body. This is true, but the use of the spine has many ramifications. The spinal column supports the head housing the brain. It also serves for the articulation of all the larger bones and the attachments of major muscles and ligaments. Through this medium you are enabled to have strength, activity, and function; however, more is needed. this is supplied through the brain, spinal cord, and its nerve fibers already mentioned.

The spinal cord is a great cable of nerves that descends from the base of the skull down through the greater length of the spinal column. the spinal column is provided with openings between the vertebrae where nerve bundles emit separating into countless nerve fibers that form a direct contact between the brain cells and all structures of the body. Through this medium all activity and function take place enabling the body to perform a more perfect state of health.

Sometimes however, there is dis-ease (want of ease) with its various symptoms and you may become ill. You have pains, indigestion, nervousness, and various other disorders. As a result you take something for it, or you go to a doctor for a prescription to be filled at a pharmacy. These sometimes work, but more often cause side effects worse than the original complaint. "A drug is not a drug unless it causes side effects." Eli Lilly.

What has caused these problems? We point out that in everyday life you are subject to falls, accidents, and mishaps that sometimes displace one or more vertebrae to a degree so nerves are pinched. This in conjunction with malfunction and the emotions results in various health problems.

X-rays of the spine and other tests can determine the spinal cause of the problem. Then gentle spinal adjustments are given, and in due time health can be restored again. Are you in doubt?

Begin now, where you are. Go to your chiropractor and perhaps you too can discard your medicines. The way will be opened to a more abundant life.