Congratulations you woke up this morning. A new day ahead of you, full of many new possibilities and decisions that you need to make. As exciting as that is many of us forget to realize that we are a new person each day we get up, and we will never be the person we were yesterday ever again. This can be good and this can be bad, but at the end of the day that’s what it is.

I began thinking about the graduating seniors from this years class and thinking back to my own graduation and the decisions and changes that took place in order to get me to where I am today. And then I started thinking about the little book, ‘Who Moved My Cheese’ by Spenser Johnson M.D. If you have never read the book I highly recommend it, and if you read it a while ago it’s a good one to go back to. I won’t give it all away but the premise of the book denotes the constant changes that are always happening and when it happens we can be ready for it, we can roll with it, or we can sit and sulk and complain that things are not like the good old days and wither away.

This same principle needs to be understood from a healthcare perspective too. I wasn’t kidding in the first paragraph when I said we are a different person each day we wake up from the previous day. In our bodies our cells are constantly changing and working to keep us alive and in a balanced state of homeostasis. The amazing thing is in seven years you will have a completely different body then you do today because of cell turnover and the building of new cells and the dying of old cells. Therefore you need to remember that the choices that are made today can have a significant difference on the person you are tomorrow.

So what choices and what changes am I talking about that happen so quickly? Lets look at a simple example, exercise. When you exercise your body gets hot, it sweats, you push around heavy things or propel your body over great distances. The body then has to replenish what was lost and rebuild the tissues that were broken down so that they can then become stronger and more conditioned to do the exercise again. Well let’s say that you go on vacation and you fall out of your routine. Now you are no longer as in shape as you were and you can’t do the same things you did a month ago, you changed.

Now lets consider our physiology, if it can change so quickly in a few short weeks with exercise it can change many other aspects of our health just as quickly too. Most of us have experienced the onset of the flu or similar sickness where one minute your going along just fine and the next you feel like your on deaths door as your body is purging both ends of the spectrum at the same time. Or the effects a poison has on the body. A poison changes your body chemistry so quickly that the body shuts down and you die.

Enough of the doom and gloom, what we want to do is think about the changes that are happening in our body because there are many good changes that are taking place too. As with “Sniff” and “Scurry” from the book ‘Who Moved My Cheese’, you have to be ready to react to change and move on as it is happening. Some changes we can affect and anticipate better than others, but if we know we are going to change and don’t do anything about it, we get caught up with the “Hems” and “Haws” of the world. This is important in healthcare because we have many opportunities to make choices to make our changes better every day. When we are hungry we get to make a choice about what we want to eat, and based on that choice it will determine your change. You can grab a candy bar and feel satisfied for a little while, but you spiked your blood sugar, did not give your body any sustenance or nutrients to help heal your damaged cells, and weakened the immune system and made yourself more susceptible to disease. You could choose a healthy snack and have more long lasting energy, more nutrients and minerals to help heal the body, or you could just choose not to eat all together and fast which will cause other changes with detoxification and body physiology. The bottom line is when your faced with a choice you are faced with a change too.

The most important message I want to get across to you is all these changes are happening constantly and we are constantly being challenged to make choices that are going to affect our lives. We are not going to make the right choice all the time, but if make more right choices than wrong choices we will come out on top and we can start to influence the changes our bodies are making. If you change your eating habits and eat a healthy diet, and if you change your activity level and get in shape and if you change your thoughts and look more on the bright side of things then your body will change constantly for the better.

Dr. Phil Cameron DC is the owner of the Bozeman Wellness Center. He is a Chiropractic Physician and Professional Applied Kinesiologist. He Treats every patient as an individual and strives to help each patient Live Healthy, Live Naturally, and Live Optimally.