It’s finally happening. Our country is realizing that you need to study health—not just disease or sickness.

Diane Schetka, of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, notes in her online column that research is currently taking place on woman who are pregnant or may become pregnant to follow the lifestyle of healthy habits that infants and children are benefiting from.

This study has been compared to the Framingham Study, which was the largest study on cardiovascular disease. Will this current research change its angle and study health instead of disease for infants and children? 

In his book, Enhance Your Life Experience, Joe Strauss, D.C., says that health and disease are two polar opposites; very similar to light and darkness. Health would be the light and disease the darkness. Light is the entity and darkness is the nonentity. That means when light is present, darkness cannot be. This concept is true for health, too—when it’s present disease is absent. 

The current trend in our health industry is to study and research the nonentity. That’s beneficial for people who lack health and vitality. But what about infants and children growing up in Woodbury who currently have no signs or symptoms of disease?

Are they healthy just because disease isn’t showing? Are they sick just because they have symptoms? Are their bodies functioning to their potential?

Answers to these questions depend on many variables. This is true, though: anytime the body is challenged with too many external invasive stressors, it creates a less-than-optimal functioning body, irrelevant of how the infant or child feels. 

Chiropractic philosophy teaches us there are three types of stressors that infants and children are affected by from birth: physical, chemical and emotional. Any time these stressors are too much for the infant or child to resist, it will hinder health and vitality.

The Foundation for the Advancement of Chiropractic Education says, “By the time the first symptoms appear, the body has already been malfunctioning for some period of time—often years.” This is why it’s so important to invest in children’s health no differently than adults do.

Chiropractic procedures focus on enhancing health and vitality by removing stress in the spine. The physical, chemical and emotional stressors that infants and children encounter everyday lead to misalignments in the spine and less health and vitality over time.

Health maintenance is the key for our next generation to grow up stronger and healthier. Anytime a parent invests into their children’s health through regular maintenance of the spinal integrity, that child will look back upon their experience as a positive approach that made their future brighter.