Innate Part 2: Learning to Trust

[This is the 2nd post of a 3 part series, looking at Innate Intelligence – the inborn wisdom and healing potential of the human body. Click here to read Part 1, and here for Part 3]

Did you know that you get a new layer of skin every 2 weeks?

That red blood cells live 120 days before retiring and being replaced?

Or that when you go to higher elevations, your body automatically secretes a hormone that stimulates red blood cell production because it sensed the decrease in partial pressure of oxygen?

We abuse our bodies. Not only do they face a continuous onslaught of environmental antigens, but we place a lot of self-induced pressure on them as well. Our bodies are amazing. When I see the multitude of stressors our bodies withstand everyday, it becomes readily apparent at just how grand our capacity for self-regulation can be.

I think back to my senior year of high school, when we could leave for lunch. My friends and I ate fast-food 5 days a week for a year. YIKES! Talk about a self-induced load of crud.

And yet, we can go years living lives completely incongruent with health, and many times have few symptoms. As a survival mechanism, our bodies assimilate these lifestyle choices to varying degrees, keeping us in relative homeostasis and living our lives. Oh – there are signs to be sure. Asthma, allergies, IBS, unwanted weight gain, skin irregularities, irritability, headaches…etc. But these have all become ‘normal’ in society.

There was a TV show The New Normal, which to be honest I’ve never seen. But in America, the real new normal is chronic illness. I can’t tell you how often I hear people talk about their ‘normal’ headaches. As if that’s ever normal. Common? Yes. Normal? No.

I’ve been arguing that we need to stop thinking about health in terms of symptoms. But, we also need to stop writing off common signs and symptoms as ‘normal.’ Instead of assuming that we are sick because ‘it’s going around,’ I’d ask the obvious question: if it’s going around, how come EVERYONE isn’t sick? Or even more interesting, how come some folks get over it quicker?

If we are supporting our innate ability to self-heal and self-regulate, chances are colds & flus will pass right by largely unnoticed. Or, if you do experience some symptoms, it will certainly not be life threatening.

I’d like to impress on you the importance of trusting your innate intelligence.

You should marvel at your capacity to be healthy, even in-spite of less than optimal conditions. A true health care revolution starts with each individual, making healthy choices to support their internal physician. As my friend Dr. Kurt Perkins likes to say, we need “more HEALTH and less health care.”

One last interesting fact: One of the few cells that DON’T replace themselves are the neurons (nerve cells) of the cerebral cortex. That’s right – your brain and nervous system. I think that makes them important.

In chiropractic, the nervous system is traditionally viewed as the component of the body that directs and coordinates innate intelligence. It’s no surprise then, that we put so much emphasis on taking care of the nervous system by maintaining a healthy spine paired with physiologically congruent movement patterns, proper diet and adequate stress management.

In the last segment of this innate series, I’ll lay out in more detail some basic steps we can all take to unlock and support the physician within.

Yours in Health,

Dr. Scott

Last modified: February 28, 2018