The drug problem!
In the past decade, there has been an obvious shift in society of how one thinks of health care. A few decades ago, there was just a blanket acceptance that drugs and surgery would solve all our health problems. Through numerous surveys and studies in the last decade, a growing percentage of the population is moving more towards the thought that a more natural form of health care is what they want, rather than having to deal with a life of drugs and surgery.
Here is just one study of the many: Harvard Medical School in 1990 calculated that in the United States there were 388 million visits to medical doctors and 426 million visits to natural health practitioners. In 1997 they calculated that there were 386 million visits to medical doctors and 686 million visits to natural health practitioners. There is an obvious trend developing that people are looking for health through means other than medicine. They are looking for a natural approach.
One of the main reasons that this is happening is because of the acknowledgement that there are more adverse effects to drugs than ever realized before, and it is obvious that this scares people. Through research, we know now that the 4th leading cause of death in our society is prescription medication. Some of the newer research now argues that it is actually number 3. In Canada, researchers maintain that the numbers of deaths are over 20,000 people a year as a direct result of the medication they took. Chiropractors are faced every day with people who either don’t want to begin a drug regime, or who realize it is in their best interest to change their health in a natural way, so they rid themselves of the drugs they have been on for a long period of time, thereby alleviating the side affects they have been plagued with.
The place where medicine shines in our health care system is with crises care. They are the best we have at saving lives for those who have severe health crises. Advancements in health care, as a result of the billions of dollars spent on research, has shown us that medicine is great for crises situations, however not very effective with long term health.
The profession of Chiropractic is the leading natural health care profession world wide educating people how to have a natural and healthy existence from the moment of birth to the day they leave this world. The more we use natural approaches to build the strength of our bodies, the less we will find ourselves in crisis care situations.