Ok, if you follow me at all, you have probably heard me talk about my daughter being her own feather in her own breeze. It’s hands down my favorite thing about her! Earlier this spring, she and I were out back watering the new flowers we had planted about a week earlier. I see “side plant” coming up from out of the soil and as a farm girl, I instantly recognize what this plant is . . . it’s corn! She had taken a handful of corn that her papa had given her and went around planting seeds throughout all of our oasis of a backyard. And low and behold, one little guy decided to grow!! She was beyond excited! I mean this girl went all out. We checked on it multiple times a day, watered (maybe too much) and took pictures to measure growth. We had it all planned out, 55,000 kernels to a bushel of corn, we’d watch the corn to market and let papa know when we would like to sell to help fund her college (grandma said she’d round up and “make it right”)! We now have 2 ears of corn growing, BUT, I had to break her heart. Fun Fact: corn needs a mate to actually put kernels on! Yep, it needs to be pollinated! Heartbreak city! Now, to make a long story short, as her mama, I couldn’t handle those puppy dog eyes so I did something about it. I won’t tell you where I got the other corn, but her corn has been pollinated and our fingers are crossed!

In every situation I try to find the lesson and in this one I think about how much one person depends on another for survival. As we walk through the Max Living 5 Essentials of health (Core Chiropractic, Nutrition, Mindset, Oxygen & Exercise, Minimize Toxins) we need to understand that it’s not a menu and we can’t pick and choose which essential to leave out. However, I do understand that each family may need to focus on one above another. 

As a prenatal and pediatric chiropractor I find that almost 95 percent of my progress evaluation conversations lead back to one essential, minimizing toxins. Toxins can be found everywhere, from the food we eat, the air we breathe, the stress we carry, the products we choose to put on our skin, in our hair, in our mouth, the medication/shots/ or even supplements we take. To me, there’s no bigger responsibility than to eliminate the toxins we can control and help our body detox from the toxins we can’t. Why? Toxicity or deficiency (more on that in a later blog) is the foundation of almost every disease process we have and it starts in the womb. Toxicity is accumulative and if we’re not doing our part to eliminate it from our family’s life, are we really setting our kids up for health success later in life? An apple today is not the same as an apple was 50 years ago. Toxins today are not the same as toxins 50 years ago.