Preventative Care

Posted: June 12, 2015 in Health & Nutrition Updates

by Elise Bowerman

Prevention is the most valuable tool to be working with regarding your health. Ensuring your body and mind are running most efficiently and effectively will keep you out of the doctor's office, and out doing whatever it is you enjoy! If you liken the body to a car, it is maintenance for the body. We take our cars in for oil changes, rotating tires, diagnostic testing, and such periodically. If you were driving your new car and it started to make unusual noises or the "check engine" light turned on, would you wait to get it checked out? No, you would make it a priority to take it in. If the car goes for too long without being checked out and maintained, it may have to sit in the garage until you can pay to have it fixed (because the damage got worse over time) or even buy a new car. Would you like to spend time in a hospital recovering from a surgery because you waited too long to get your heart checked? Often times we take better care of our cars, than our bodies... the big difference: we can buy a new car; not a new body.

Preventative care can be in conjunction with allopathic medical treatment, or on its own as the primary treatment. Whichever way works best for you - is the best.

I strongly encourage everyone to have some kind of holistic practitioner who can help them maintain their health and help when healing is needed. Having a relationship with a holistic practitioner prior to being ill or injured is most helpful for them as they are looking at the entire person (physical, mental, and emotional aspects) during treatment.

When an actively involved parent takes themselves and their healthy children to a holistic practitioner on a maintenance schedule, that parent has the comfort of knowing their children will most likely be well while other children struggle through chronic colds, asthma, allergies, coughs, rashes, and the list goes on. Also, when a parent wakes up to a child who is sick, has pinkeye, an unusual rash, etc. that parent already is prepared to make the call to their holistic practitioner before it gets worse to avoid medications, urgent care, ER, etc.

Lastly, preventative care allows the patient to begin to take responsibility and have resources readily available to treat themselves (and sometimes others) for minor situations. Slowly, over time the patient will begin to notice what remedies, supplements, ointments,

tinctures, etc. work best for them for acute/minor situations that come up from time to time in life, giving them freedom to choose their healing modality.

Preventative Care Options

There are numerous avenues of preventative care such as (in alpha order):

Accupressure
Accupuncture
Ayurveda
Cardiovascular Exercise
Chiropractic Care
Craniosacral Therapy
Energy Healing / Reiki
Essential Oils
Foam Roller Massage/Exercise
Homeopathy
Lymphatic [Drainage] Massage
Massage
Mayofascial Release
Meditation
MELT Method^®
Naturopathy
Nutrition
Nutrition Response Testing^SM
Polarity Therapy
Psychotherapy/Counseling
Rolfing
Tai Chi
Walking/Hiking (especially in nature)
Weight Lifting
Yoga (private sessions or group classes)