Are You Normal or Average?

Dr. Brian Dower, DC

You weigh yourself on the scales. You take the temperature of your child. A doctor takes your pulse and measures your blood pressure. Perhaps a blood sample is drawn. These measurements are compared with hundreds of other people from which averages are obtained. Which begs the question, is average necessarily normal?

Averages have a place, but they can distort reality and treat us as if we were mere mechanisms, like a watch that’s running too slow or too fast. It’s great when our wristwatch remains accurate. But most watches don’t know when you’ve changed time zones, or that daylight savings time has ended, or when a leap year day has occurred. In other words, your wristwatch doesn’t have the intelligence to adapt to the environment.  But your body does.

That’s why chiropractors don’t see fevers, elevated blood pressure or other such findings as the problem. They’re just signs that the body is adapting to something. While it’s tempting to artificially lower the temperature or decrease the pressure, we should not always act so fast! What’s really going on? Is this a recent problem? A lifestyle issue? The result of a new stress in your life?

We’re interested in you, not your symptoms. Because what’s normal for you may not be normal for me.

Have a look at the following “averages” and consider if you’re a true average:

• The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
• On average, right-handed people live 9 years longer than their left-handed counterparts.
• Pregnancy in humans lasts on average about 270 days.
• The average age of menopause is 48-49 years.
• Smokers are likely to die on average six and a half years earlier than non-smokers.
• The average yawn lasts about 6 seconds.
• The average person laughs about 15 times a day.
• The average person walks the equivalent of twice around the world in a lifetime.
• The average human uses the bathroom about 6 times per day.

If you’re interested in finding out how you, as an individual, are faring on the health scale, ask a professional for an assessment that is tailored to you and your needs. Only then will you be able to have a true sense of your health.

Dr. Brian Dower

Chiropractor at Park Road Healing Arts

 

 

 

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