NEWSLETTER: April, 2010
Welcome to the Newsletter

Spring is upon us!
A time of renewal and growth and so as good a time as any for me to launch my new newsletter. About once a month or so I will be sending out these newsletters with (what I think) are interesting health facts and stories that I come across. I hope that you will find them interesting as well.

At our office we strive to offer more than the just the treatment of symptoms, the treatment of pain, but the realization of our true potential. Health is more than just the the absence of disease, much more. The World Health Organization (the health authority branch of the U.N.) thinks so too, defining health as being:

"A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity"

So, hopefully the improving weather is encouraging you to get out there and run, bike, do Tai Chi, whatever makes you feel more alive. True health is money in the bank, something we can draw upon when needed.

Those of us running in the Rat Race are continually bombarded with demands upon our well-being. Stress, poor diet, lack of proper excercise and lack of proper rest all take their toll. The media tells us to take NSAIDS ( those over the counter anti-inflamatories like Asprin, Ibuprofin, or Tylenol) to deal with those "everyday aches and pains". First of all, if you are having "everyday" aches and pains you better call for a treatment today! Secondly, do you really know the true price to your health of long term taking of NSAIDS?

The U.S. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) has an idea. The AHCPR guidelines warned that "high doses of acetaminophen can lead to liver damage, and massive single doses sometimes lead to fatal hepatic necrosis."

A study just released in the New England Journal of Medicine1 suggests that 8-10 percent of the 50,000 annual kidney failures in the United States are caused by acetaminophen. A person who takes more than one tablet per day exposes themselves to twice the likelihood of kidney failure.

The paper concludes that a person taking a "cumulative dose of 5,000 or more pills containing NSAIDs" will be almost nine times (8.8) more likely to experience kidney failure. While this sounds like an astronomical intake, it averages out to just one pill every four days throughout the life of an average adult.

You do the math. Are you taking NSAIDS before or after going to the gym for muscle sorness? On NSAIDS after a dental or medical procedure? Taking Asprin for your heart? (don't get me started on that one!). You see how quickly it all adds up.

Instead of just masking "symptoms", how about allowing the machine (your body) to work the way it has been designed to? How? (you haven't being paying attention, have you???)

Proper diet, excercise, rest AND proper Maitainence of the frame (Chiropractic).

"The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest her or his patients in the care of the human frame, in a proper diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease".
- Thomas A. Edison

Enough reading already! Get out there and live!

Until next time, be well.
Stephan Howard-Cooper, DC