VALLEY — Dr. Brenton Jones of West Point Family Chiropractic was the guest speaker at Wednesday’s noon hour meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Valley and sought to shed a little light on the field of chiropractic care.

He said that it all boils down to three basic questions: What’s good health? How much do we need it? and How do we keep it?

“There are people in hospitals every day who would do anything to have good health,” he said.

“I am blessed to be with you here today,” Jones added, recounting a vehicle accident he was in when he was young. “I was in the hospital for two months and later learned of the long-term effects to your health for having had an injury to your spine or not taking good care of it.

“People judge themselves by the way they feel,” he added. “The problem is that you can be pain free and symptom free and not be healthy. If you are not taking good care of yourself it will get worse somewhere along the way. Sometimes it can be a good thing to have a pain or a fever. It gives you a chance to have a healthy response to it.”

Jones is the first to say that it’s fun to be healthy and capable of doing lots of things. “Health is not the way we feel, it’s the way we function,” he said. “We need all our parts working together to be functional.”

He made the case that the brain and the spinal cord are the two most important organs in the human body.

“It is so important to have a healthy spine to function properly,” he
said.

A chiropractor often hears from people they were great just before they woke up feeling bad. Most of the time, Dr. Jones said, something happened that they may have forgotten about – a fall or a minor collision with a door or a counter, maybe just the position they slept in.

“A five mile per hour fender bender that you walk away from can hurt you,” he said. “Delayed effects can get you later. A bad diet or too much stress can impact you as well. Ninety percent of perception comes from the nerves in your spine. It’s important to keep it healthy.”

The equivalent weight of a dime on a nerve can reduce its functioning by 60 percent.”

Poor posture can present a variety of problems, osteoporosis, hemorrhoids, varicose veins among them. Jones compared pressure on the spine to an old tire lying in a flower bed. If its removed, some beautiful flowers will be growing in that spot.

“It’s sad to see people walking in dragging their leg and beautiful to see them leave walking normally,” Jones said. “Some people come in with headaches and leave feeling much better. The five worst words in the world are ‘maybe it will go away.’”

“You will feel tons better when you go to see a chiropractor,” said Kiwanis Club member Bethany Roughton. “There was a time when I wasn’t sleeping well at night. I went to see a chiropractor and now I’m waking up feeling rested.”

Dr. Jones added, “The purpose of chiropractic is to put good health in your life. Above, down and inside out is the way it moves. It’s the way to be awesome and to be blessed.”