How Can You Add to a House if it is Burning? Archetype Health Centers, we spend a lot of time getting the word out about the five foundations of health. We find that about 99.9 percent of what ails people can be traced back to addressing these five core principles. One of the five foundations cannot fix everything, but all five of them together are very close to unstoppable. The problem that most people are faced with is their perception on how to take care of xyz issue that is going on in their life. We often try to use metaphors to explain what is going on with certain conditions. One that is a favorite in the chiropractic community is the water hose metaphor.Take a water hose, for example. Water travels down the hose and out the end to the plants in your garden. Well, what happens if one day your garden gnome gets knocked over and falls on your hose? It’s not that the gnome isn’t supposed to be in the garden, it’s just in the wrong place, but after a little time, your flowers start to wither. So what are you going to do? You add more fertilizer. But to your surprise, the plants keep withering. So next you go out and buy a new lamp with a UV bulb, so that the plants get plenty of light, yet they are still dying. What do you have to do ... That’s right, you need to take the gnome off of your hose so that your plants get water, right? Just like a subluxation, your nervous system is the lifeline to your entire body and it doesn’t matter what you do to your body to “fix it,” your body will not heal until you remove the interference that is cutting off life from above-down-inside-out!Another great metaphor that I discovered recently when chatting with one of the docs in our practice is that of the difference between chiropractors and medical doctors. For the rest of this article, when I refer to chiropractors I am referring to chiropractors that are addressing the complete patient—lifestyle-based chiropractors. At Friends and Family Health Centers, we are looking at exactly what you need to gain your health back and maintain it. We developed the five foundations of health to achieve this. After a little bit of research on this topic of medical doctors versus chiropractors, I found that Dr. James Chestnut originally came up with the metaphor.Imagine that MDs are firefighters and chiropractors are carpenters. When something goes wrong and your house catches fire, you should call the fire department. They will get there quickly with their axes and firehoses (drugs and surgery) and prevent your house from burning to the ground. Chiropractors are the carpenters that give you a plan for how to rebuild the house. Their tools are hammers, nails, wood, and blueprints (adjustments, exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle advice) to get the house running smoothly for years to come. Picture in your mind’s eye what the scenario would look like if you called the fire department to come back and repair the house with axes and firehoses (drugs and surgery). Now think about what it looks like when carpenters try to put out a fire with hammers and nails (adjustments and exercise). One more time, imagine how illogical it would be for firemen to convince everyone to judge carpenters on how well they put out fires. What if the firemen were judged by how well they could rebuild or maintain houses? Both groups are necessary, but they serve in different capacities. We are committed to helping as many people get better as possible through the five foundations of health. We have people approach us with every sort of acute and chronic pain issue and we get symptoms to go away. We show people how to maintain their “house” rather than constantly putting out fires. We can show you how to regain health and maintain it. This article is part of an ongoing series of articles based on the five foundations of health written by Birmingham, Alabama, chiropractor
April 10, 2023