Newsletter For Healthy Living
Dr. Paula Batterton & Dr. Michele Miller
Batterton Chiropractic Clinic
621 W. 19th St.
Houston, TX 77008
713-861-9168
www.battertonchiroclinic.com
battertonclinic@yahoo.com
This newsletter is dedicated to your good health. Please accept our personal invitation to explore its contents and forward it to others you care about!
In This Issue:
Medical Myths
Meet Our Staff
JJ Virgin/Vaccines and Junk Food
Your Childs Posture
Our Gift To You and Your Loved Ones
Medical Myths
In order to establish a system that is truly focused on health care, we need to expose some "myths" that will allow us to unlock the door to creating a more efficient and successful healthcare delivery system.
Myth #1- Technology has improved healthcare
Ask any physician if he believes that technology has improved health care and you will get a resounding "Yes!" Advances in medical technology now enable us to look inside the human body with relative ease and with great detail. Our surgical tools allow us to operate on all parts of the body with a minimum of trauma and blood loss. Technology has helped us improve the quality of life for millions of patients every year. It has enabled us to save countless lives as well. Therefore, it is certainly a foregone conclusion that technology has, in fact, improved our health. Or has it?
Statistically, since the age of technology, there has been an onslaught of increasing pathology. The amount of illness and morbidity in our society is dramatically rising. There are now more cases of cancer, heart disease, arthritis, auto-immune illnesses, endocrine disorders, developmental disorders, allergies, respiratory problems, infectious diseases, neurological problems, musculo-skeletal pathology, gastro-intestinal disorders, psychological illness, etc., than ever before.
While it is true that our technology has enabled us to better handle the enormity of disorders now facing mankind, it has done literally nothing for "health care." If it had, we would have seen a decrease in the amount of illness and pathology in society. Pharmaceutical companies would not be as rich and powerful as they are if people would be less dependent on medication to "feel well". If anything, advances in technology have fostered a narrow field of vision, focused more on early detection and intervention than on prevention. If, by definition, health care means "the maintenance of good health," then technology has failed miserably to produce any measurable improvement in the overall state of health of mankind.
Myth #2 - Inflammation is bad
Ask any doctor what to do about inflammation and the answer will be a uniform, "Take an anti-inflammatory." While it is true that taking medication to suppress inflammation can certainly lead to increased comfort, should we be doing that in the first place? Is inflammation bad? Is it something that occurs by freak accident, some physiologic aberration, that occurs and causes great distress and suffering amongst mankind? We have been conditioned to think of inflammation as something bad because it causes pain and makes us miserable, therefore it should be medicated and suppressed. Right? Wrong.
Inflammation is a directed response by the immune system designed to detoxify, repair and protect tissues under any form of functional or metabolic stress. It is important to understand the purpose of inflammation in order to see why we should not work to suppress it, but rather to support it.
Whenever there are tissues in our body under any form of functional or metabolic stress, the problem will be immediately identified by the immune system. It first recruits a pathway called primary inflammation. This pathway is employed by the body in order to detoxify the tissues under stress (as tissues under stress increase their metabolic rate and produce more toxic by-products) as well as facilitate the repair of any injured cells. A primary inflammatory response will produce no symptoms in low-level stress situations, as long as it is efficient in managing the problem. You would not even know that this process is going on because there are no identifiable symptoms such as pain, swelling, redness and heat. Cardinal signs of inflammation will occur only when there is rapid, high level stress in an area such as in acute trauma, repetitive stress episodes, allergic/toxic reactions and metabolic disease.
In situations where the stress on the tissues is beyond the capability of the primary pathway, or in situations where there is an inefficient inflammatory response (we will discuss this later in the treatise), the immune system will then incorporate the secondary, or chronic, inflammatory pathway. This pathway is a protective pathway. It prevents rapid tissue destruction by allowing for cellular adaptation to the stress as well as the release of pain-causing chemicals to prevent continued "overuse and abuse" of the involved part. Therefore, the patient becomes aware that there is a problem because they are in pain.
Now that you understand this simplified explanation of inflammation, you can see that inflammation is actually a good thing. It is the body's way of trying to help itself deal with these kinds of issues. It should be obvious then, that anti-inflammatory medications actually impair the body's ability to detoxify, repair and protect itself. Additionally, these medications add toxic load to the body and are responsible for many varied side effects.
What makes more sense, empirically, is to treat these problems mechanistically and supportively. In other words, we want to work to help make the pathway of primary inflammation more efficient, with supportive, rather than suppressive, protocols. There are many natural ways to accomplish the task of supporting our bodies. We need to be able to identify the reason(s) that this pathway is not functioning efficiently.
It is imperative that we look more comprehensively into our patient's physiology in order to detect reasons why the immune system is not up to the task it is being called upon to perform. To do this, we need to understand our patient's lifestyle, diet, adrenal health, the presence of food sensitivities, the presence of Spinal Subluxations, etc. In other words, we must work to comprehensively understand our patient's total health picture and not just concentrate on the body part involved in the pathology.
Meet Our Staff
Dr. Batterton performed her undergraduate studies in biology at the University of Texas in San Antonio. She attended Texas Chiropractic College for her doctorate studies, where she graduated Valedictorian of her class. Dr. Batterton has practiced in the Heights for 16 years and is committed to educating her community about the benefits of Chiropractic. She is an active member of Houston’s First Baptist Church, where she teaches first grade Sunday School. She is also very involved in foreign missions. She is dedicated to being your family doctor and providing holistic, effective, proactive health care for you and your family.
Dr. Michele Miller was born in Williamsport, PA (home of the Little League World Series) and moved to Texas at the age of 10. After moving around and living overseas for several years came back to Richmond, Texas and graduated from Lamar Consolidated High School in Rosenberg, Texas. She attended undergraduate at Southwest Texas State University (now known a Texas State University) in San Marcos, Texas and attended Texas Chiropractic College (TCC) in Pasadena, Texas graduating with a Doctor of Chiropractic and Bachelors in Human Biology. She furthered in training in Acupuncture at the Post-Graduate Division of the Texas Chiropractic Board. Unsure of what to major in Dr. Michele shadowed a chiropractor and fell in love with chiropractic and its natural healing abilities. She has been working in the Chiropractic setting since her freshman year of college as a Chiropractic assistant for 6 years and transitioning into the Chiropractor role upon graduation from TCC. She is a member of the American Chiropractic Association and active in the community. In her spare time she enjoys reading, spending time with her family and rescued Boxer, Bailey, riding horses, and baking. She is passionate about chiropractic and its benefits and helping patients reach their goals and live a balanced, healthier life.
JJ Virgin/Vaccines and Junk Food
Will vaccinate my baby for food!" That seems to be the goal of a program launched last year by the UnitedHealthcare health insurance company of Michigan. "Get a FREE $20 McDonalds, Rite Aid, Target or Meijer Gift Card when your child gets recommended shots before their second birthday."
Childhood vaccines, of course, are loaded with extremely toxic chemical adjuvants -- chemicals designed to cause neurological inflammation in order to invoke an immunological reaction. Vaccines also contain both mercury and aluminum, both of which are highly toxic brain poisons.
While the fundamental science of inoculation is debatable, the adding of neuro-toxic chemicals to today's vaccines -- which are then injected into children in huge numbers (over 100 vaccines given to a typical child) -- turns them into chemical weapons being used to medically assault innocent children. Marrying this chemical weapons program with a junk food incentive program is confusing at best!
Your Child’s Health/ Posture
Posture and normal physiology are interrelated. Posture affects and moderates every physiological function from breathing to hormonal production. Abnormal posture is evident in patients with chronic and stress related illnesses. Homeostasis and nervous system function are ultimately connected with posture. Despite the considerable evidence that posture affects physiology and function, the significant influence of posture on health is not addressed by most physicians.
Health care is slowly changing from a symptom and disease based system to a function and performance based system in which the structure of the human body is restored
and maintained. Correction and maintenance of the structure of the spine is of paramount importance in the pursuit of optimal health.
Doctors of Chiropractic are experts in spinal structure and body mechanics. Chiropractic adjustments are aimed at restoring and maintaining the structural integrity of the body by correcting spinal and postural distortions. Chiropractors emphasize the importance of posture to overall health, a concept that has been often overlooked in traditional methods of health care.
“The beginning of the disease process begins with postural distortions” ....Dr. Hans Seyle, Nobel Laureate
Our Gift To You and Your Loved Ones/Health Pass
February is Health Pass month! If you have a friend or loved one that you feel could benefit from our Chiropractic care please use a Health Pass. This enables any loved one or friend you feel could benefit from Chiropractic care to receive their first visit for $35 as a gift from you!
This includes consultation, examination, and any needed x-rays. When you or the person you wish to send in calls in for their appointment, simply have them mention the Health Pass program! (This Special Program Expires February 29th.)
Please call our office for your appointment today!
Thank You
We want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for referring your family and friends to us!! We are honored by your confidence in us and we thank you for your generosity and your loving concern for others. We extend a warm welcome to all of our new practice members!!!
