Zeno, Achilles, and the Tortoise

Regular Chiropractic Care and Long-Term Wellness

When you are engaged in the process of enhancing your overall health and well-being, it's important to pay attention to the details. This implies taking care of what's going on beneath the surface as well as what you may easily notice and observe. As most of us know, when we finally become aware of symptoms, that particular disease process has been going on for quite a while. For example, dizziness and nausea in a person over the age of 50 may likely represent undetected, and therefore unmanaged, high blood pressure. Similarly, the onset of sciatica usually represents the final outcome of a longstanding process of spinal nerve irritation and spinal joint dysfunction. Chiropractic care is a unique method of health care that investigates the causes of a person's biomechanical symptoms, analyzing and detecting the spinal nerve and joint progenitors of such problems. Regular chiropractic care helps reduce nerve interference and restore spinal function, thus helping you and your family attain greater levels of health and well-being.

The Eleatic philosopher Zeno, writing almost 2500 years ago, famously propounded several paradoxes purportedly proving that various conceptions of the physical universe were false. The most famous of these involves the Greek hero Achilles and a tortoise, stating that if the tortoise started ahead of Achilles in a race, the fleet-footed Achaean warrior could never catch the plodding turtle. Zeno also claimed to prove that a moving arrow is actually at rest. His main purpose was to defend the philosophy of the "one" of his great teacher, Parmenides, as against the "many" of competing philosophies such as those of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus. Parmenides wished to demonstrate that reality is a unity, and that the world as interpreted by the senses is unreal. Zeno's paradoxes have stumped many thinkers over the ensuing millennia. The main flaw in his brilliant puzzles is that he blurred the distinction between "discrete" and "continuous" phenomena. We can put the solutions to Zeno's paradoxes to work in our understanding of the best method by which to approach our philosophy of exercise.

Many of us prevent ourselves from beginning an exercise program by focusing on the daunting perspective of the necessity of doing exercise for one's entire life. We allow the enormity of the ongoing, continuous nature of such an enterprise to deflate our resolve. The result of this flawed point of view is that we stop ourselves before we can even get started. But if we radically modify our interpretation of the "continuous" nature of the work to be done and instead approach our exercise activities from the "discrete" standpoint, we would then be able to take each exercise session on its own merits. Whole and complete in itself, today's exercise only needs to be done today. Tomorrow's exercise, which when it arrives is now "today's" exercise, is done similarly. Do today's work today. Over time, the discrete method results in a continuum of results. We accomplish our long-term goals step-by-step, giving our full attention, focus, and concentration to what needs to be done right now, today.^1,2

Once we become willing to take on this deeper understanding of the nature of the process of exercise, the next step is to investigate and choose our preferred types of exercise activities. The good news is that, other than making sure we're doing both cardiovascular and strength training exercises, the specific type of exercise doesn't matter. As long as we're doing some form of cardiovascular exercise on a regular basis, whether we run, walk, swim, bike, or cross-country ski is up to us. Similarly, as long as we're doing some form of strength training on a regular basis, whether we use kettle bells, medicine balls, or a combination of free weights and stationary equipment is our choice. The key, overall, is to avoid Zeno's critical error, and be well aware of the distinction between "discrete" and "continuous" events. This empowering distinction will be of value, not only in terms of exercise, but in all aspects of life.³


1Innes KE, Selfe TK: Yoga for Adults with Type 2 Diabetes: A Systematic Review of Controlled Trials. J Diabetes Res 2016;2016:6979370. doi: 10.1155/2016/6979370. Epub 2015 Dec 14.


2Skórkowska-Telichowska K, et al: Nordic walking in the second half of life. Aging Clin Exp Res 2016 Jan 23. [Epub ahead of print]


3Haider T, et al: Yoga as an Alternative and Complementary Therapy for Cardiovascular Disease: A Systematic Review. J Evid Based Complementary Altern Med 2016 Jan 19. pii: 2156587215627390. [Epub ahead of print]

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The Platonic Ideal

Regular Chiropractic Care and Ongoing Wellness

Regular chiropractic care is an important component of any health, fitness, and wellness program. Whether you're engaged in upgrading your diet, beginning or enhancing a program of regular, vigorous exercise, or launching a meditation or awareness practice, regular chiropractic care helps provide the physiologic framework by which you can achieve the greatest benefit from your wellness activities. In order to derive optimum benefit from your diet, fitness, and wellness programs, your nerve system must be functioning at peak capacity. Your nerve system is your body's master system. Accurate and timely flow of information is required between your nerve system and other systems, such as your digestive, hormonal, and cardiorespiratory systems. Interruptions in the flow of these signals or miscommunications will prevent you from obtaining maximum value from your healthy diet and exercise activities. By detecting and correcting spinal misalignments that cause nerve irritation, regular chiropractic care helps ensure that all your body systems are working together in harmony. As a result, regular chiropractic care helps you and your family achieve long-term health and well-being.

Plato's Ideas were perfect templates, of which everything we perceive are tangible representations. But the Ideas were not to be found in the world around us. Rather, they were conceptions of rational thought, transcendental objects of knowledge existing in a realm beyond our own. And yet, Plato's Ideas continue to be a source of inspiration and wonder, more than 2400 years after he first described them. These ethereal notions continue to function as critical guideposts, significant markers along our various life journeys, standing for ideal outcomes we are striving for and hope to achieve.
For example, we all have our own ideal image of what physical fitness is supposed to look like. These ideal images may vary from person to person, but each image ultimately derives from a Platonic Idea of physical human beauty, strength, and musculoskeletal proportion. Our conundrum, if we care about health, wellness, and fitness, is how we're going to go about achieving our ideal. As we proceed along our path to optimal physical fitness, it's very important to keep in mind that the Idea, as such, is not an actual part of our world. We will fail if we seek to achieve such perfection. A reasonable goal is to do what needs to be done and continue to do our best in all such endeavors.
A primary major access to physical fitness is starting and maintaining a healthy, nutritious diet. Such a diet involves making consistent choices from all of the five food groups, that is, fruits, vegetables, grains, protein foods, and dairy products. Each of us has our own specific preferences, and some of us may have specific requirements, such as being gluten-free or lactose-free, but the requirement for variety and obtaining the nutrition provided by each group remains the same for everyone. Importantly, international health agencies strongly recommend eating five portions of fresh fruits and vegetables every day. In the United States, this recommendation has been termed, "Five to Stay Alive".
A healthy diet, maintained over months and years, provides across-the-board benefits for fitness and wellness. When combined with a program of regular vigorous exercise, healthy eating results in conversion of unneeded fat to lean muscle mass, weight loss, and an enhanced sense of well-being. Research consistently demonstrates that a healthy diet reduces the risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke.¹ A healthy diet reduces the risk of cancer, diabetes, and obesity.² Thus, a healthy diet not only helps us achieve our own representation of the Platonic Idea of physical fitness. A healthy diet helps us achieve our own demonstration of other important Platonic Ideas, those of happiness and harmony.^3
1Koutsos A, et al: Apples and cardiovascular health--is the gut microbiota a core consideration? Nutrients 7(6):3959-3998, 2015
²Esposito K, et al: A journey into a Mediterranean diet and type 2 diabetes: a systematic review with meta-analyses. BMJ Open 2015 Aug 10;5(8):e008222. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2015-008222
³Richard A, et al: Associations between fruit and vegetable consumption and psychological distress: results from a population-based study. BMC Psychiatry 2015 Oct 1;15(1):213. doi: 10.1186/s12888-015-0597-4

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Dr. Parrish Skrien has been freeing people from pain in the clinic in Mankato, MN. As a Chiropractor with experience, Dr. Skrien is committed to promoting optimal health and well being of  patients.
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Dr. Skrien uses a "whole person approach". This approach to wellness means looking for underlying causes of any disturbance or disruption (which may or may not be causing symptoms at the time) and make whatever interventions and lifestyle adjustments that would optimize the conditions for normal function. Using this unique approach, Dr. Skrien is able to help you to accelerate and/or maintain your journey to good health.
Dr. Skrien has been in practice since 1993, and is a graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic. He is a Certified Medical Examiner for DOT Exams #3288071785, and specialises in the Gonstead Technique.  He has been in the Mankato area since 1996, and in his current location since 2005. He is dedicated to helping his patients reach their optimum health in a drug free manner. He treats patients of all ages from newborns as young as a day old to patients in their 90's. He has a number of athletes under care ranging from grade school, high school, college, and the weekend warriors. He has helped some of them get to their personal best including  try outs for the Olympic games, and pro baseball.