Check Engine Light

You are driving down the highway, listening to the radio, obeying the traffic laws, excited to be leaving for the weekend. Then all of the sudden you hear the "dinging" noise that causes your eyes to quickly peer at the dashboard of your car. What do you see???



A mixture of thoughts come over you. What's wrong? How serious is it? Can I make it to my destination before checking it? Should I stop now? How much is it going to cost? Ultimately, what do you end up doing? Eventually you bring the car in to get checked out. After you find out what's wrong, you can then figure out what needs to be done from there.

Okay, now you might be wondering what does this have to do with wellness or chiropractic because, after all, that is what this blog is about. Well, the CHECK ENGINE light is a warning sign or "symptom" that tells you something is wrong inside the car. It's telling you that it needs to get checked and something needs to change in order for the car to run properly or optimally.

That is the same thing that happens in our own bodies. We can experience different symptoms like headaches, fever and upset stomach. As much as it is NOT fun to experience these symptoms it is a good thing that our bodies give us these warning signals. Symptoms let us know that the body is working to get healthy but something is happening inside our bodies that should be checked our and followed up with.

Now think about that CHECK ENGINE light again. What if we just took a piece of masking tape and put it over the light so we no longer would be able to see it? Is the car fixed? Is it better? Absolutely not. We just covered up the symptom and ignored the warning.

This is what happens a lot of time with people. We start experiencing a symptom i.e. a headache and instead of finding out what's causing the headache we pop a couple pills and the symptom goes away for awhile. But since we didn't look into or fix the problem, the symptom comes back again and again. It's just masking the symptom. Wouldn't it make more sense to fix the problem? Then or bodies could heal and be healthier.

So next time you experience some unwanted symptoms, decide if you want to cover them up temporarily or to fix them and move towards a healthier you. It's you choice.