What does retirement mean to you?

(In last week's Citizen)  In this month's article I want to discuss retirement. I get to work with a lot of retired people, and I must admit that I am jealous. I shouldn't it hold it against them. After all they put in many years of work ahead of me. For now, I get to share in the their adventures as their chiropractor.


I had one practice member, God rest his soul, who entered retirement about the time I started preschool. Statistics show the average number of years in retirement is about eighteen, so this gentlemen far exceeded that.


Many folks are not ready to leave the work force so they are doing some type of consulting in their field or they are trying out a brand new vocation. The others are busy with sports, hobbies and volunteering. One thing they have in common is they value their time now that they have more flexibility with the activities they choose.


There are also many people of retirement age who aren't living the life of leisure. Sixty-five percent of Americans don't have enough money saved for retirement. The average cost for a married couple's medical care is $215,000. And by the time someone turns sixty-five, about 29% of that person's friends will already be dead.


I had one practice member tell me he had to retire to get healthy. That sounds unusual, but it was very true for his situation and I don't doubt he is alone. It can be a full time endeavor to regain health.
For all of us, younger or older, this should make us think about the ways we spend our time now. Will the things we do today make us better people in the future, or will we have regrets?


The best part of my job is that that no one needs to be turned away from chiropractic. There is always room for improvement. Whether someone has great heath or poor health, we can always work together to to achieve a better quality of life.


If you have concerns about mental or physical well being, I will help you understand why an organized nervous system is necessary for the body. Health breaks down because the nervous system becomes overwhelmed. Over time the overwhelmed nervous system can't send healing messages, and the messages become destructive to the body.


Chiropractic addresses the delivery of healing messages that are impacted by spinal stress. While you can change the stress in your life, you still need chiropractic to undo the negative patterns that were already memorized by the nervous system.


The type of chiropractic approaches and techniques used always differ from person person. This is because we all have varying levels of stress and damage. For the retired people I work with, they won't settle for less. They have big plans and want good health in order to meet their goals.



If you're not retired yet, get ready now with your chiropractor. Today should be the day you plan your long term health strategy in the similar way you are saving and investing with you financial planner.