Most people naturally assume that health and disease are opposites. If you are healthy, you have no diseases and if you have a disease, you are not healthy. That is not necessarily true. There are thousands of people who have no disease right now but who at the same time are far from healthy. With disease, if there are no symptoms, no recognisable signs or indicators, do you have a disease? I think any reasonable person would agree that if a person has no disease today but the symptoms will be evident tomorrow, or next week, or next month, they are not healthy today. So you can definitely be lacking health but not manifesting disease. In fact, I would suggest that the majority of people in the world today are not healthy, many of them with no indications that they have a disease. Loss of health then is not the opposite of disease, it is a precursor, a cause of disease.

The problem is that while those in the so-called health field have been focused on disease, until recently they have not been able to recognise or define health. They have been satisfied with describing health as an absence of disease. Defining something by what it is not is a far cry from adequately describing and understanding it. However, recently some health care professionals have begun to examine this elusive concept of health and have come to realise that health is really easy to define. Health is when every organ, tissue and cell in the body is working in a harmonious manner, all parts working together for the good of the body. It would seem that such a state would preclude the possibility of a person having a disease, but that is not necessarily so. A body that is fighting off an overwhelming invasive microorganism could manifest the symptoms of a cold and yet be working in a harmonious manner. If an individual has an organ or a part missing then the body can never expect to work in a completely harmonious manner, but the parts that are there and capable of working properly should be kept working at their maximum level. This is a relative degree of health and is the best that all of us can expect.

Our ability to possess health, to function harmoniously, is limited by the material of our body, including our genetic potential for health. Given healthy parts and apart from being subjected to overwhelming abnormal environmental stresses, we can enjoy a life of proper body function and health. The question arises as to how one can keep this organism functioning in a coordinated, healthy manner? Well, you must do all the common sense things that are important to health. Eating properly, getting the necessary rest and exercise and maintaining healthy mental attitudes.

One more thing that must be done is to keep the nervous system free of any interference. It is the nervous system that is directly or indirectly responsible for keeping every single cell in the body functioning in a coordinated and harmonious manner. This becomes obvious when a neurological disease affects the nerves that control muscular activity. The individual either moves about in an uncoordinated manner, or the muscles do not work at all. In a similar manner but to a lesser degree, when a vertebra misaligns and interferes with the nervous system, the organs, tissues, and cells affected will work in an uncoordinated manner. This misalignment, called a vertebral subluxation, is the chiropractor’s area of focus and he or she will analyse the spine, and locate and correct any vertebral subluxations. In this way your body is able to function in a harmonious manner and better health will result.