Most people call the fire truck and never ask why the building keeps burning.
Here is what I mean.
When something goes wrong with your health, the default response is to call in emergency help. A painkiller for the back. An antacid for the stomach. A prescription for the blood pressure. The fire truck arrives, puts out the flames, and everyone goes home relieved.
Until the next fire.
And the one after that.
We have built an entire healthcare system around fire trucks. It is extraordinarily good at what it does. If you are having a heart attack, if you break your arm, if you need surgery, the fire truck is exactly what you need and you should be grateful it exists.
But a fire truck cannot tell you why your building keeps catching fire. That is not its job.
Here is a number that puts this into perspective. Less than 3% of the NHS budget is spent on prevention. The rest goes on treating illness that has already arrived. We are not a health service. We are a sickness service that occasionally does remarkable things.
The buildings that never burn are not lucky. They were built differently.
Strong foundations. Good materials. Careful construction over time. Nobody sees the work that went into them because there is never an emergency to report.
Your health works the same way.
The daily inputs that most people treat as optional extras — how you move, how you sleep, how you manage stress, what you eat, how your nervous system functions — these are not wellness luxuries. They are the building materials. Get them right consistently and the fires stop happening. Get them wrong consistently and no amount of fire trucks will keep up.
This is the shift I try to help families make.
Not away from medicine. Medicine has its place and a very important one. But towards something medicine cannot provide on its own — a body that is genuinely well built, from the inside out, before the emergency arrives.
The question worth asking is not just how do I put this fire out.
It is why does this building keep burning.
Jacob
Jacob Palmer is a chiropractor based in Gosforth, Newcastle. He writes about health, family, and how the body really works.