Season 1 Chapter 2 - Health, Healing and Dis-ease

Welcome to the Synergy Life Podcast. Our purpose is to help multiply the positive experiences of your life in all areas. Dr. Janowitz, best selling author of the Synergy Health Solution, is the creator of the Synergy Success Cycle, a framework that helps uncover what makes top achievers successful in areas of their life. We interview amazing people who are excelling in light and help our listeners gain valuable insights so they can apply them to achieve their best life possible.

Chapter 2 Health, healing and dis ease. Dr. Janowitz, you start this next segment off by talking about disease, but you introduce it as dis ease versus disease. Can you explain that to us?

Yes. So back when I was in chiropractic school, this was a great concept. The person who founded chiropractic, BJ Palmer, talked about disease. And so health really is a continuum, right? And so it's not like you go to bed on Thursday night and you wake up on Friday morning and go, I'm sick, right? It's this continuum. So you have disease, which is a full blown pathology. So I remember when I looked at pathology books, you can just look at a pathology book and look at a physiology book and you can just tell, even without form, formal education, when you saw something diseased, you can just tell that it looked odd. You have a visceral response, almost like if you were shopping for food in the grocery store and that food was bad, you have this sense of knowing that it's bad. Well, that's disease, that's pathology. And dis ease is lack of proper function. It's lack of ease. And so, so many times people are going to doctors and they're frustrated, right? They're anxious, they're scared, and they go to a doctor. And one of the best things and one of the worst things is to go to a doctor and the doctor says, well, we found nothing wrong with you, right? And they evaluate you and you get nowhere. And actually you start to think, well, is this just in my head, is it just quote, unquote stress? Well, a lot of times most health problems are a dis ease or a lack of proper function. So, you know, if death was 100% off and, well, let's just actually reverse it. If life is 100% and death is 0% function, right, what would happen is somewhere along the line, say around 60 to 70, could be a disease process, right? Where you have disease and you have pathology, where your body is definitely not doing well. And there are things that are not looking or acting or functioning at all, right? Well, between that range, between 0 and 60 and 70 is this continuum where the body is not quite diseased and it's not quite optimally healthy, it's dis eased. And that's where the vast majority of problems that people are dealing with are functional problems. And as a result of that, they don't know where to go. And our current healthcare system is frankly, just not equipped to take care of those.

So when you start experiencing a form of dis ease, you need to address it at that point before it becomes a disease.

That's right. You know, most problems, unless they are induced by some sort of a trauma. Right. The majority of things that kill us, that destroy the quality of our life, are a result of a small fire. Right. That was never contained and it became a raging forest fire. And so when you have that element of dis ease where, you know, most people have this kind of innate understanding that something is not right, like, I just feel off.

Right, right. But they push through.

They push through it. I mean, if. If I had a dollar for every time somebody said I just pushed through it, I'd be a very.

I'm guilty of using that phrase.

Every patient we interview, we ask them, I push through it or I ignore it. And that's what most people do because busy and we don't know what it is. We just know something is off, and that's when someone's in a state of disease. And again, our current healthcare system, if it's not something that we can diagnose with some sort of a special test and then prescribe a medicine or cut it out or do a surgery, then it's really limited in our. In our mainstream medicine, which is frustrating for a lot of people.

Right, right. They will either write you off or they'll give you, you know, a fibromyalgia, you know, diagnosis or something. You know, they'll still let you walk away with a lot of questions, basically. And you're on this hunt to find your health.

That's right.

And so we talked about pushing through and we might get away with that, you know, in our teens and twenties.

Yeah.

But over the decades, healing changes.

Yes.

Right, yes. So tell us about.

How over the decades that process changes from our 20s to our 50s. Is there really a significant difference in the ability to push through?

I remember on my 40th birthday, it's like, I woke up and all of a sudden my Lasik expired. Like, I woke up and I was, like, blind. Like, happy birthday. You can't see. And it's interesting with working with family practice, so I've done pediatric work where I worked side by side with a pediatrician and, and I've worked with people. I'll see a baby and then I'll go to the next room and it might be a 93 year old. Right. And so you can't help but recognize patterns. And what I've noticed is, you know, in your 20s, for most people, if you have a health issue, an ache or a pain or something going on, a good night's sleep is all that you need, typically, right? It's amazing the body's ability to recover. I mean, obviously as a teenager, but even in your 20s and then in your 30s, it might take a day or two, right. But most things go away. The problem really occurs is when you get to your 40s, I think I kiddingly say that's when the lease on the body expires, you know, because what happens is in your 40s, whatever you have going on there, if not addressed, really can become chronic. So I think the 40s is the decade where you really need to buckle down and you really need to. If you haven't protected your health or done things or have regimens and processes and strategies, your 40s is definitely the time to do that, because otherwise that's going to set the stage. Because in your 50s, then you're really setting the stage for chronicity. And then you look at this. I mean, people are living longer, right? The question is, how is that second half of your life? What is the quality of that? It's like, I don't want to live long, longer to have a second half of chronic pain and poor quality. I want to live life where I can have strong health. You know, I kiddingly tell people, you know, in my practice, I say, you get free care when you get to be 100 years old in the office, you know, instead of being on a smucker's jar, right? Or something like that. And people laugh at me and they'll say, well, I don't want to live to 100, because they view living to 100 as this awful thing like I'm going to be in pain and miserable and lack of mobility. But what if you can have great health? What if you can have an inspiring life? What if you can have your faculties and have that what we call synergy, life all the way through the end of your life. I mean, that would be my vision for what I want, and obviously the vision that I would love to inspire other people to have. And so the decades are so different and so wherever you are is where you need to start. So if you are 25 years old and you're waking up with headaches and you're having these issues, or you're dealing with fatigue and energy issues, or high stress, start where you are. And if you're 55 years old or 65 years old and you're dealing with these issues, it's not too late to start either. So I just want to encourage who's ever listening to this to, to really say now is the time, acknowledge what you've done. There's a great quote that says what got you here won't get you there. And so what got you here is a culmination of all the things that you've done. But if you want to go to the next level, then you have to make a decision to do that and start right away.

I have heard people say that once they reach a certain age, they really had to start making decisions because initially we take our health for granted when we feel great in our 20s, but there comes a time when we do have to make a decision to be more conscious about our health care. And you mention in the book how important it is to start when you are starting to feel those symptoms or starting to feel different because you run the risk of changing your self identity at some point.

That's so true. You know, what happens is a lot of times, you know, a person might say, I have, you know, I'm dealing with back pain or they have these sort of issues. You know, we obviously see a lot of back issues, which is, you know, a massive. It's amazing how much back problems impact your life because so much of what you are able to do is dependent upon your core, right? And so a lot of times people start to become like, I'm a back pain sufferer or I have depression or I'm anxious. And then our health issue that we're dealing with at the moment becomes literally our identity and then we become that. And once you become that and that's your identity, then one of the greatest human needs is to be consistent with what we believe and what we believe to be our identity. So we want to act congruent in that way. So you have to be very careful when you identify and you label yourself and create an identity. Like I'm a diabetic, right? Or I'm a high blood pressure sufferer, or I have heart disease, or I have cancer. And so all these areas become who we are. And those are just things that we're, that we are dealing with and they're serious and they're important. But that doesn't need to be who we are. Throughout our entire life. There are ways to show that our lifestyle can be improved. We might talk about epigenetics later on, but there's aspects of what you do. The beautiful thing about life is that what you do on a day to day basis can impact even your genetic expression and what you can create in your health and in your life.

You mentioned the popularity of back pain. Unfortunately, it's real and it's amongst many of us. Especially if you suffered a car accident, which is how I came to know Dr. Janowitz. I suffered a car accident. And when I met you, I was at that cross point of having an identity crisis. Because I started.

Before my car accident. I was an actor, I was a model, I was a beauty queen, I was wearing high heels. I was functioning at a very high level. Then I had my car accident. I ended up in a wheelchair for a year. I went through all of the traditional doctor's appointments, orthopedic offices, exams, MRIs, X rays that I could go through. They couldn't find a good solution for me and basically tried to put a label on me and said if I wasn't walking within six months, then I would never walk again. And honestly, it was through prayer and a lot of research that eventually led me to you because I realized I had to start thinking outside of the box. I did not want that to become my identity. I didn't see myself as a disabled person for the rest of my life. I was still very young. My son was only five years old. I actually taught him how to ride his bicycle from my wheelchair, which was really challenging. So there was a lot of.

Self talk that I had to go through to keep my mindset right and to battle this identity that wanted to take over my life. And so when I came to you, I was still in between the crutches and the wheelchair.

It was something completely new for me. I'd never been to a chiropractic doctor before. So you helped change my mindset and introduce a more holistic approach to health care and helped me, I should say, preserve my self identity. Yes, absolutely. And not allow me to go down that path of a permanently disabled person.

Yeah.

So what would you say? I mean, I think that's pretty encouraging on its own for, for me to say that I'm actually wearing heels. You can't. I don't know if you can see my feet right now, but every now and then I'll wear my heels again. Thanks to Dr. Janowitz, help. But how do you convince someone to start thinking outside of the box, you know, to change their mindset from the traditional health care to a more functional medicine type health approach?

Well, first of all, I want to acknowledge you because that is, you know, your story. You know, you're why people become a doctor. You're why I wanted to be a doctor. I mean, I felt very disempowered with my own health. I had my own health issues. That's how I got involved with chiropractic with my own scoliosis and these issues. And my chiropractor saw greater potential in me than I saw. And so I think the first step is to help people, when they're at that low point, see themselves as greater than they could even see themselves. Right. And so you are very inspiring to me in my time, in my practice, too. And if I recall, you lived about an hour away and you drove three times a week for a good three to four months, an hour drive to the practice. And so, you know, it's patients like you who inspire caring doctors to be able to rise to our greatness as well. And what's so great about it is it's not the things that we do in chiropractic we recognize and in functional doctors recognize, is that the power that made the body, the power that made your body and the power that made your body is the power that heals the body as well, like God gave us the ability to heal. And so the key for this is how do we remove the interferences, thus preventing us to fully express all the amazing things that God and our life has in store for us. And so I just want to encourage people that are dealing with whatever health issue or life issue that they have going on to take a step back and say, not.

What is my limiting vision of what I see for myself or. Or the new label that I might have created over the weeks, months, or years, but what might be God's vision for my health? What might be the greater vision for what I can achieve in my. In my life? Right.

I don't know if you know how I came to find you. I said I had been praying, which I had been, and I had been doing a lot of research, but I actually got this newspaper advertisement, and you had a list of symptoms on there. You know, nerve pain, back pain, numbness in the legs, numbness down the arms. You name it, I had every single one of them. And you had a. I don't remember exactly what the quote was, but you had A quote on there. And you said, I can help you. And I cried when I saw the ad. I cried and I prayed over the ad. I said, this is it. I have nothing else to lose. This is like my last option. Right. And I came here dragging my legs in through your door, and I spoke to you about my experience, and you were so compassionate, which I appreciated. You actually cried at our appointment. I never seen a doctor cry before, said, okay, I found the right place. And you had. You have all these wonderful motivational quotes around your walls. And you had one in that office that said, said, I move the bones. God does the healing. And that was so impactful to me that you're that conscious at so many different levels when it comes to treating your patients. So I really appreciate that, and I think you have so much to offer your patients.

Well, thank you for that.

You're welcome.

Before we go on to the next segment, there's another concept that I really want to address, and it's related to everything we just talked about. It's the concept of common versus normal.

Oh, yeah. I have this conversation just about every patient consultation, you know, in the practice now. We've been here for 20 years, and we served about a new patient every hour since we've opened the practice. So I have this conversation easily three or four times a day. And so I'll talk to a patient. And this is the most common setting, is. Is. Little play on words, the most common setting. But the. What happens is people say, I have headaches. And I'll say, well, what kind of headaches or how often? Well, just, you know, just the common headaches. You know, just, just, just the, just the normal headaches. Just normal headaches. They say. I say, well, how often do you have those normal headaches? Oh, you know, every week or every couple days. I said, really? So do you think that those headaches are normal or do you think they're common? And so what happens is people tend to equate in their life what is common in their life as normal. Like, it may be common for you to have headaches, or it might be common for you to have low energy or common for you to be sad or depressed a lot of the time. It doesn't mean that it's normal, and it doesn't mean that it's. Right. Right. And I'll tell them jokingly, I'm like, okay, well, does your thumb hurt right now? You know, no. Well, if your thumb was hurting all the time, would that be normal? They say, well, no, that wouldn't be normal, but you know, headaches or other areas of people's health and life, they really have just done that. And when you, when you do that, and we talk about it in other chapters, you lower the standard of your life when you start to accept things. It's like being in a, you know, in a relationship that might not be that great, but not that bad. You know, the worst place to be is this kind of in between. And people are that way with many areas of their life, relationships, experience. It could be their career, it could be their health, which again, is the most important thing. And so you want to start seeing are the things that are occurring in my life, if I look at them objectively, are they just happening in my life with a frequency that I've started to gotten used to, or starting to accept which is worse or create as my identity, which we talked about earlier, or are this, or is this the way that my body is supposed to normally function if everything was working correct?

Right, right.

So we got to raise our standards.

Yes, absolutely. And had I not raised my standards, I'd probably be doing this interview from a wheelchair or wouldn't even be sitting here, to be honest with you.

That's right.

Thank you, everyone. I hope you took away a lot of good information from this segment. This is very life changing. So stay tuned for what's coming up next.

Thank you. And thank you for sharing your heart and your story as well.

My pleasure.