Thoughts and Opinions

Wellness Care Should Be Mainstream

January 2, 2019 by Claire Fitzpatrick

Wellness Care is More Honest

I cannot stomach doing something dishonest or manipulative. It is soul-crushing to me. The health care industry is, by and large, conducted dishonestly.

It has replaced care, concern, and the mission to help people get better for mechanistic technicalities like insurance, cost, and containment.

Doctors have become commodities by which the mainstream health care industry can make its money. The more money a doctor can earn the wider industrial complex, the more of an inclusive place that doctor holds within the industry.

Therefore, medical doctors, with their ability to minimize the time they spend with people and therefore maximize the quantity of people they see a day, as well as their role as delegates for diagnostics, prescription drugs, and surgery, is the preferred physician type in the industry. Medical care the cog around which the entire industry revolves, and it ironically has the least power to help you or itself.

For the mainstream health industry, people are avenues for enrichment and, simultaneously, threats of cost liability that must be contained, rather than the front-and-center focus of health care delivery around which all else should revolve.

Therefore, medical hospitals advertise themselves in terms of your sickness, instead of your wellness. They tout medicine as the primary source of health, instead of one tool among many (and a hazardous tool at that!) to control your pain and sickness.

They advise us, either directly or by inference, to seek care only when we feel pain or disfunction, and to seek medicine as our first line of care instead of the last resort.

These are bald-faced lies

Because, you and I both know we should see a primary care physician regularly. Our physicians should be members of our immediate circle-of-influence and direct members of our personal community instead of the last people we want to see in the world.

Meanwhile, societies with single payer systems struggle with keeping health care costs and salaries to a minimum. Societies that rely on insurance models for health care are victims of a war between this mechanized health care delivery and the insurance industry, with the pharmaceutical industry winning out over all.

Doctors and patients are also the resulting victims in this model, and sadly, pitted against one another in the unrealistic expectation that the doctors’s job is to magically get a patient well for the least amount of money in the shortest amount of time, and the patient’s job is to not give the overworked and undermined doctor any trouble.

When you absolutely, positively have to

Knowing this, by and large, people only see a health care provider when they absolutely, positively, cannot function anymore in their self-determined place in society, and only if they feel like they can pay for care. If the latter qualification fails, they end up going under extreme diress and emergency to the hospital.

Wellness care is ignored by a health care industry that seeks maximum profitability, and by the population as a luxury they can neither afford in time nor money.

The irony is, both the health care industry and the population at large are wrong.

Wellness care is the logical answer

Wellness care can maximize profitability of the health care industry by minimizing losses and can save the public at large billions a year in devastating health care costs by maximizing health and quality of life like medicine never could on its own.

As far as chiropractic is concerned, it currently falls in a populist grey area, because many of us chiropractors have agreed to define ourselves within merely a musculoskeletal model that deals with pain and function; and therefore in direct competition with physical therapy.

In reality, chiropractic is in competition with no one. Chiropractic is different. It is a form of health care delivery that maximizes the body’s ability to heal, adapt, and grow.

But this isn’t an article about chiropractic care. That’s a discussion for another time.

Primary health

I happen to have attended a chiropractic school that trained us to act as primary care physicians as well as chiropractors.

That means, in addition to my chiropractic specialty, I have been trained to know when, in addition to chiropractic care, you need emergency care by a medical doctor, nutritional, herbal, and lifestyle guidance from a naturopathic physician or Chinese herbalist.

I also know when you need psychological help by a psychologist; coaching by a health coach; acupuncture from an acupuncturist; and physical therapy from a physical therapist.

There’s more to this list. I refer to hypnotists, yogis, personal trainers, spiritualists…anyone I know who I think can help you in addition to chiropractic care.

Most primary health care physicians aren’t as versatile as chiropractors who are also primary health care physicians. That is a luxury that I have as a wellness care physican.

Wellness care is versatile and inclusive

Naturopathic physicans have this versatility as well. I am not sure about other types of physicians. Medical physicians and primary nurses could, but most don’t.

In short, wellness care physicians know how to build a wellness team that can help you best, with doctors who are NOT commodities for the mainstream health care industry, and we know how to help you out before you become a tool for the health care industry to use and discard.

That’s why I created Joy Health and Body. We doctors all need to take a team approach — not a combative, competitive approach — to surround you with the care you need and deserve.

That’s it.

Sometimes Healing Hurts, Pt. 2

May 1, 2018 by Claire Fitzpatrick

“May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face.
May the rain fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.”

— An Irish Blessing, author unknown

My aunt was a nun. She was Sister Theresa Fitzpatrick, from Garden City, Long Island (New York).

As a child, and into adulthood, I knew her as Aunt Rita.

Aunt Rita once gave my family a wall plaque with that prayer on it.

I used to stare at it and consider it, thinking that it was a beautiful wish, created by a beautiful someone among my cherished ancestry who had a flair for poetry.

The Irish love their poetry

As a child and a young teenager, I fell in love with the English language, and started to write every chance I got.

It made me feel connected to the Earth and her creatures, to God and to mankind.

As a budding young writer, I became a keen observer; and as I observed, I became aware of that which is not pleasant in human nature.

And as I later researched what I observed, I realized horrible truths that the Bible did not immediately reveal to me, but became self-evident upon observation:

That mankind was both God and The Devil, that we chose to act the way of The Devil, and that, because of our tendency for greed, visciousness, apathy, fear, and cruelty, we were making Hell out of paradise here on Earth.

I began to see my writing as a mission. I was going to be a great novelist, a great poet, a great playwright…my words were going to move the masses of sleepy destroyers into woke (before that was a thing) saviors of humanity and our planetary home.

It was all about communication

But as I passed into high school, as a nerdy, cerebral, emotional teen, I experienced cruelty, shunning, viciousness and apathy from my peers and adults outside my home.

My optimism for my and our collective future waned.

Truthfully, the only reason I did not commit suicide in those days was the Catholic belief that that there was something worse beyond this planet for those who took their own life. So later, when I no longer counted myself among those who call themselves Catholic, my faith system served its purpose for me at the time.

Instead, I searched for ways to “get in front of death.” I drank, I smoked, I took drugs. I took unnecessary risks with my mind and my body.

I hung out with angry, violent societal misfits who were frustrated like me, but more on a micro level. Their home lives and careers were their hell, so I felt like at least on that level, I had it better than them.

That would change.

My anger became both micro and macro. It turns out, when you hang out with people who give up on their loved ones, chances are, you lose faith in loved ones, too.

As I grew older, as an angsty teenager and a frustrated adult, I kept Aunt Rita’s plaque above my door out of a strange sense of loyalty to the child in me who once who saw beauty in those words.

But I would scoff at them as I passed under it to face another day of disappointment in life. I thought them fairy tale wishes, from a people who feasted on fairy tales, who were beaten into submission, almost to extinction, by centuries of usurpers who had nothing but contempt for my people, usurpers who had other ideas for the innocent.

The wounded Irish, the wounded me

Still, my inner child still wanted the beauty. She still believed, somehow, that life could be beautiful.

She was still alive, and she wanted to live.

And as I moved into my twenties, I tried to reclaim the passion for life and my dreams of poetry that I once had.

But,

The road seemed long and seemed to move farther away.
The wind seemed to push against my chest.
The sun seemed to burn my face if I dared to turn it upward.
The rain seemed either rare, or flooded my dry fields.
When I met those who loved me, I turned away.
God was a lie. I was on my own.

Fear breeds lonliness

For a long time, I shunned a life of service. I abandoned hope, so I created my own hell.

I became that which I feared most: angry, resentful, poor in spirit and home, and afraid.

All the time, afraid.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Because the mind follows the body, and the body follows the mind.

I ended up with pain from my reckless lifestyle, and that’s how I found chiropractic.

And that’s how chiropractic found me.

Moving from a pain model to a healing model

I was a pain patient for years before I realized that chiropractic was helping connect me to my inner child again, helping her cry out for life, helping her claw for hope.

This has not been an easy, nor a fast, healing process.

My home and career life fell apart three separate times before I decided to take a right-hand turn and become a chiropractic student.

I became a chiropractic student, and then a chiropractic doctor, long before I realized that my career choice was helping me heal myself, and that with every adjustment I received AND delivered, I was reconnecting my spirit with my body.

Only happy while serving is not enough

For a long time, the only time I was happy was when I was learning how to help others through chiropractic care.

Later, the only time I was happy was when I was serving through chiropractic.

But I still struggled for years with anxiety and the health consequenses to my body and life, and therefore, to my family and community.

Reclaiming my health one adjustment at a time

It has only been in the last few years I have begun to reclaim my inner and outer health, and the beauty I once saw in the world. It has only been in these last few years that I have been able to see through the clouds of my hopelessness to my own power and purpose.

Now, on this May Day 2018, I emerged from the Metro to a cold, windy, rainy Amsterdam day.

It was a short, inviting trek along the road to my office.
The wind was at my back, merrily quickening my pace.
The sun shines in my smile at my day ahead
The rain is falling softly on these fields ahead of me
My inner child and my wiser self are walking side by side
God is in my healing hands, and I am in Hers.

I was, and am, still healing.

I still see the mysery. I see it more, actually.

But thanks to years of reconnecting my nervous system with my physiology, I have reconnected to something I lost a long time ago.

I have faith. I have hope. I have joy. I have love.

Because of this, I have reclaimed a great deal of my physical and mental health.

You are not alone. Neither am I.

In my office, I see in others the hell that I created for myself on a micro level.

They walk into my office with shoulder pain, with low back pain, with neck pain. Of course.

They also walk in with flawed neural patterning that began years and years ago, when something happend in their lives that they couldn’t integrate.

Maybe it was abuse. Maybe it was sorrow, disappointment, or the terrible realization that life is not what they thougth is should be.

If we are lucky…

If they are lucky, their imbalance expresses itself in pain, and they find the right help.

The pain is a cry for help. It is a sign that your neural system is not firing properly, that there is improper feed to your body due to a buildup of stress.

Chiropractic helps you repattern your body and mind so that our bodies AND our minds are more flexible, more adaptable, more able to heal properly.

But sometimes healing hurts.

Many times, we think that if our pain goes away, we are healed, and that the goal of their chiropractic care is to go back to our desperate lives, pain free at least.

But they sometimes find something else. They sometimes hurt more after an adjustment.

Awareness brings consequences. As we heal, as our brains reconnect with our bodies, we can sometimes become aware that there is a bigger problem than the pain.

Awareness also brings us choices.

We now have a chance to face life full on, with awareness of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful.

Many cannot stomach this awareness right away, and blame everyone and everything for the way they respond to their inner and outer environment.

We must be patient with ourselves and others during this healing process. While we must ultimately take responsibility for our choices, while we are subluxated (i.e., in a state of less light, less awareness, inflexibilty, inadaptability, holding nerve system interference), we often cannot make the right choices right away.

While we are subluxated, our ability to access our full capacity is still limited.

We must be gentle with ourselves while healing

We musn’t be hard on ourselves during the healing process, just as we musn’t be unduly harsh to others during this time.

It’s the people who are “painless,” who are disconnected from their bodies, yet who have a sense of dis-ease and dissatisfaction with their lives who are often the most dangerous to themselves and those around them.

Pain as a blessing

People who have pain symptoms at least have the blessings of awareness. There is a chance at reorganizing their patterning. But this patterning happened over a lifetime. We must have faith in the process and give ourselves the love we need to heal.

It also gives us the chance to grow in ways that we would never have been aware of without the pain.

We need inner connection desperately. That’s what chiropractic offers us.

The state of the profession

Chiropractic has earned the dubious reputation as a pain-reducing modality.

That’s because, sometimes healing reduces pain, and it looks like chiropractic is doing that.

It is actually you that is doing that.

Chiropractic is just helping your nervous system reorganize so that you can do that.

Early on, on a professional level, we lost our way.

Without going into too much history, almost form the beginning, we had egoistic infighting.

We lost faith in one another

Because we lost faith in one another, we allowed our environment — in this case, other health professionals and insurance companies — to define us.

Because of this, many of us, myself included, were and are confused as to the true benefits of what we deliver.

That’s why our messaging is often so confusing.

We are still subluxated as a profession.

Yet, with each adjustment to our profession, with each voice within us communicating the truth, we gain strength in the system that is chiropractic.

When we understand the power of the chirorpactic adjustment, when we start to have faith that we are helping facilitate healing on a profound level, we are better able to communicate with others the real promise of chiropractic.

When we do this, others respond with the innate wisdom that they need this.

The state of the world

On the supermacro level, our planet is crying out in pain. Animals are crying out in pain. Plants, rivers, mountains, are crying out in pain.

Our planet is responding like a body in a dis-ease state. She’s running a temperature. She is raising her immune system defenses (methane, ancient microbes, new, complex viruses) in order to destroy a pathogen that threatens all her life systems.

In this case, the pathogen is a cancer, a set of cells that is in runaway expansion, that is aggresively and recklessly using up all of the resources that she has evolved over the millenia that sustain life for the whole.

Guess what — or who — that pathogen is?

The state of humanity

Humanity is crying out in pain. We are cruel with one another and with ourselves. We are in denial of our sickness, and lash out angrily when confronted.

However, thankfully, we are finally waking to the realization of what we are doing, and how we can can repair the damage to ourselves and our posterity.

There is no more time to not know what chiropractic can do for us. We have to get in front of this crisis now.

Chiropractic is crucial to this process

Chiropractic care is essential to this process of healing.

We have to heal ourselves now so that we have the inner capacity to heal our planetary home.

We have to face who we are, what we are, and our power now. We have to wield our power wisely now.

Wisdom — healing — sometimes hurts. The pain is sometimes a necessary aspect of our evolution.

Chiropractic is an essential tool for speeding up this healing process, and helping us evolve into the creatures that we need to be in order to fix this hell that we have collectively created.

What ever happened to Aunt Rita?

You know, I never really knew my Aunt Rita well. She lived hundreds of kilometers away from me. I only ever saw her on summer holidays or at weddings.

But my Aunt Rita lived a life of service, one in which she cared for hundreds of children nad families in the school systems and churches of Garden City. She touched many lives whom I only know from witnessing the staggeringly long line of mourners that wrapped around the block of the school gymnasium in which her wake was held.

Aunt Rita died of skin cancer in 1998.

She she didn’t know she had it until pain got in the way of her service. By the time she felt pain, it was already too late for conventional medicine to help her.

In the absence of pain we must be vigilant

Maybe if chiropractic care played an additional role in her life, she would still be here today to serve.

It’s a question that is academic at this point; however, knowning what I know now, I have a pretty good idea that she would.

Now you know like I know

But I didn’t yet know that each chiropractic adjustment builds on the last to help the brain reorganize its patterning in order to give the mind and body the energy and resources to heal and evolve.

But now I do. And you do, too.

Spread the word, the love, and get checked and adjusted. Today.

What I learned about myself at a wine and chocolate tasting event last week

November 21, 2017 by Claire Fitzpatrick

This is the story of what I learned about myself at a wine and chocolate tasting event last week.

You may know of my fondness for good chocolate. You may even know my fondness for good, red wines, too.

I try to eat and drink them within due bounds. I also like to choose products that I feel were produced with care and concern. Quality organic, ethical, responsible, fresh, reasonably priced food and drink are always on my watchlist.

So, imagine my delight when I found out about a charitable wine and chocolate tasting event in Amsterdam last week.

For a donation of 25 euro, I could taste my favorite combination of goodness since the discovery of peanut butter and chocolate (yes; chocolate is always in my internal equation).

And I could help people at the same time.

YESSSS!

Good, ethically-created, fair-trade, quality chocolate paired with the best European wines, and all proceeds going to help stop human trafficking.

This event was made just for me.

I finished up work on Wednesday and trotted town to the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam’s bustling Centre district.

I was about ten minutes late (a dreadful habit that is a real crime in Dutch culture, and one in which I am trying to remedy), so they party had started by the time I got there.

I hung up my coat, checked my hair and lipstick in an old-fashioned doorknob, and began to tip-toe my way past a group of people at a slide-show presentation of toward a far door where the festivities must have commenced…

…when I realized that this slide show presentation WAS the party.

There were two wooden tables in the high-ceilinged room with people sitting – empty handed – while a demure gentleman explained the importance of the mission of his company and the derivation of free-trade cacao in the world.

Great expectations

Now, I like a good slide show presentation. Don’t get me wrong.

But in case you missed it, there were two words in the last paragraph that wound up giving me great consternation.

Empty handed.

The adults were sitting like schoolchildren at their seats watching the little man progress from slide to slide, solemnly and meaningfully, while no one had as much as a taste of chocolate or wine in front of them.

A stern looking woman (I swear she was stern looking) directed me to an empty seat at the front of the room, directly in front of the speaker.

Yeah, no one likes that seat.

But I dutifully filled the spot and tried to engage my brain.

It is for a good, just cause…

He was speaking about the cause and the good that his company was doing, the hard efforts and the personal stories, and this was all fine and well…

…except that the perpetual adolescent that lives in my head kept looking furtively around the room and shouting at me, “Where’s the chocolate? Where’s the wine?”

“HUSH!” I told my inner adolescent. “It’s coming. This is important. Listen.”

So my inner adolescent sat grumpily behind my carefully constructed expression as the nice, knowledgeable, caring, dedicated man continued his lecture.

20…30…40…50 minutes…

I looked around the room. All the grown-ups there looked like they were pleased to be where they were. They looked almost self-satisfied to me, as if they felt that their attention to this lecture made them better people.

I was not a “Better People.” It was going on 8:00 p.m. and I wanted my chocolate.

My impatience actually shocked me. I even felt guilty, despite the fact that no one else knew my mind.

This was serious business! Human trafficking is no joke! The least I could do was be patient and listen with the intensity that the subject demanded.

That did not stop me from feeling incredibly irritated that I didn’t have my goodies!

I was so embarrassed (for whom??? this was all in my head!) and disappointed with my own irritation!

Which one was it? Was I greedy or pious? My own absurdity was so incredible to me that I started to laugh at myself. Literally.

“STOP!” I shouted at my inner teenager. I composed my face again and swatted her on her imaginary head. She continued to giggle.

At 8:00 on the dot, (this is the Dutch, after all,) we moved onto the actual tasting.

Okay, good. My inner shame of my inner self could cease. I could forget it. I won. I was patient, like a good middle-aged woman, and now the revelries could commence.

I thought we were going to get up and walk into the adjacent room where surely, as I had been dreaming, there were tables full of yummy chocolates, truffles, confections, bon-bons, cakes, cookes, ice cream and the like (I had had a long time to think about this while the man spoke); next to multiple bottles of wine from all of the best vineyards in Europe.

I would grab the first, big, round, wine glass and fill it 1/3^rd of the way full with a luscious French red. Only a third of the way full. I didn’t want to appear greedy. I could always fill it after I drained it with a beautiful Italian red.

This fantasy was never to reveal itself.

This is what happened instead.

The hosts placed a tiny, short, sippy-cup of a glass in front of each of us, along with a full glass of water.

A tray was passed among us, containing small, broken chips off of a chocolate bar. We were each allowed two of the stukjes of chocolate (stukjes means pieces in Dutch. It’s so much more descriptive of the portions allotted that I thought I would throw it in here).

As we chose our stukjes carefully, another woman came around with a bottle of white wine and dribbled a few drops in each of our glasses.

She literally dribbled, pulled back, thought a moment, and dribbled a bit more. Just a bit.

Priests at Catholic mass serve more wine during communion than we were served at this tasting.

I’m not kidding.

We were to rub the chocolate. We were to smell the chocolate. We were to break the chocolate and listen to the way it “clicked” when it broke. We were to notice the color. We were to roll the stukje around in our mouths and taste its character. Then, we were to take a sip of wine and notice how it changed in character on our palate and in our nose.

Oh, my gods….

This was an actual tasting.

This was the real deal. This wasn’t the classy-but-Baucean wine and chocolate party I had dreamed up in my head. We were being “edjumacated” as to the delicate dance of chocolate and wine pairing.

Do you remember the movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Not the Johnny Dep one. The one with Gene Wilder, from years ago.

There was a character named Augustus Gloop. He was the gluttonous child who ignored his host’s verbal celebration of the beautiful chocolate room and began scooping liquid chocolate into his maw from the river of chocolate.

I felt like Augustus Gloop at that moment. I wanted to stick my gullet into a river of chocolate. I had worked my imagination so far out of whack of this particular situation that I was a mental glutton.

Am I alone in this?

I tried to make eye contact with the others in the room, to see if anyone else was trying to quiet their inner thirteen-year-old.

No one seemed in the least perturbed. One fellow, in fact, thought that I was “making eyes” at him and gave a “flirty look” back at me.

Uh, no…

I broke the tiny chocolate stukje (to examine the “click”). It flew out of my fingers and ricocheted loudly under the table.

That’s when a few people finally noticed the inner child that is the real me.

Two women sitting across from me on the bench stopped their chocolate stukje sniffing and looked at me.

I widened my eyes, looked around the ceiling, and sucked in my lips to create a deliberate “not me” look that made them burst into laughter.

Finally. A reasonable, human response.

Coda

After that evening, I decided that really have some thinking to do about myself.

As much as I like to think of myself as a person who can meet any challenge I set in front of myself, I still have a teenage girl living in my soul.

The lecture, as well as the tasting lesson, were both delivered with love and respect for their subject matters. I was privileged to attend, and I am grateful that my small donation could help this organization.

I suppose I am a long way from being the perfect person whom I think I should be. In my mind, with my audacious dreams, I feel like the “me” that should be at the helm of these dreams should be a lot more “grown up” than I actually feel.

But I don’t suppose it would help me or anyone if I gave up my dreams because I’m not there yet. Maybe the pursuit will help me be that person.

Or maybe that perfect person really does have a silly, goofy, teenager inside her. As that tasting showed me, my preconception of the way things should be don’t always match the authenticity of the thing.

As long as my intentions are healthy and my actions considerate, I think I’ll let go of my expectations and accept myself the way I am.

How about you? Of what expectations do you need to let go?