The family doctor of one of our patients tells him “there are 3 stages of pain. The first stage is when the pain is bad enough to catch your attention. The second stage is it takes hold of you, and at the third stage it finally compels you to do something about it.” So then my patient asks his doctor, “when it gets to stage three what should I do?” Without a blink his doctor turns to him and says “take some Motrin…” (True story)

The worst part of this story is this patient actually believed it was good advice. So I asked him “if your smoke detector went off in your home, the 1st time it would probably catch your attention. If it went off a 2nd time it would most likely take hold of you. But if it went off a 3rd time and finally compelled you to do something, would you take the batteries out of the smoke detector so you wouldn’t have to hear it anymore? “Of course not,” he replied “that would be stupid…” He got the point!

The moral of the story… Symptoms are your body’s attempt to heal itself. Masking your symptoms (whether it be pain, nausea, diarrhea or fever) with drugs isnʼt smart… it’s better to find the cause of the problem and correct it. That’s why they call Chiropractors “DC’s” because we are Doctors of finding the Cause!

Tags: Dr. Ben Smetana, Dr. Heidi Salonek