I had the opportunity recently to see Dr. Jack Wolfson speak at the Maine Chiropractic Conference. What a dynamic speaker! For those of you that haven’t heard of him, he’s dubbed “The Paleo Cardiologist”. Essentially, he is a cardiologist that was the head of a large cardiology practice when he married a chiropractor. Through conversations with his wife, he learned a lot about how chiropractic helps to removed restrictions from the nervous system allowing the body to function at its highest potential. He started to correlate it quite a bit with his practice and started to see that a lot of the medications that he was giving to his patients were treating the symptoms and not the cause of the cardiac issues.
In his original practice, other practitioners didn’t love that he was now telling the patients to come off of cardiac medication, change their diets and seek chiropractic care. Dr. Jack Wolfson ended up parting ways with this booming practice, so he and his wife could open a practice in Arizona that treats cardiac issues holistically and now they have a 3 month waiting list just to get in!
His talk had a wealth of information on the negative sides to certain medications and how they affect the body. He also talked a lot about Leaky Gut Syndrome, Celiac disease, heart disease and hypertension. What I loved about his talk is that he had the research to support what he is saying. Too often, we are told something by a PCP that we take a truth because “They are a doctor, they took an oath, and certainly they are telling us the truth.” Sadly the truth is that many physicians today aren’t trained in how to heal the body holistically and how to treat the true cause of dis-ease.
The biggest take away from the talk was that he brings health down to 3 main efforts that we need to do on a daily basis to be healthy. First is getting out into the sun. We’ve been taught to stay out of the sun due to skin cancer, however, sunburns are bad, but sunshine is good! The sun helps to convert cholesterol to Vitamin D. It also improves your mood and some studies have shown that it can actually decrease cancer. In Maine, this is a challenge, so we really need to try to get out when it’s sunny to maximize exposure. As a backup, take a good vitamin D supplement, but the sun is best.
Limit environmental toxins is the second portion. We are bombarded with all sorts of chemicals throughout our day. Just by the time that we have left for work, chemicals are in: toothpaste, face lotion, shampoo, soap, makeup, hair products, coffee, mugs, laundry detergent, room deodorizers, deodorant etc. Our body has to fight off all of those chemicals that we are exposed to. I haven’t even mentioned the ones that are in our food! Start reading labels. Look for products with all natural ingredients that are safer for our body. An app that I really like is called “Think Dirty”. You can scan the barcode or search for the product and the app will give you an idea of how clean or dirty the product is based on its ingredients. It shouldn’t take the place of reading labels, but it’s a start.
Third is chiropractic care. I may be preaching to the choir here, but regular adjustments remove restrictions from the nervous system which helps the body to not only feel better but also to heal better. Health goes beyond the absence of pain. How our body is functioning internally is where the focus needs to be. Dr. Wolfson reminded us that the first sign of a heart attack….is the heart attack. Keeping the body functioning at its highest potential is the key to a long and wonderful life. Check out drswolfson.com for more info on lifestyle changes.
