CornerStone Chiropractic of Minot recently became a Creating Wellness center.
Creating Wellness is a program developed to address three areas of health: physical fitness, emotional health and nutrition. Participants in the program undergo an assessment to address their health challenges, and can choose from different program options to meet their needs.
"We can help a person tailor their goals. We'll talk about the three dimensions of health. People typically do well for awhile and slide back to where they were before when you have programs that focus on just one thing. In order for it to last, it has to be a lifestyle change," said Staci Borkhuis of CornerStone Chiropractic.
Article Photos
Submitted Photo - - Creating Wellness staffer Staci Borkhuis, kneeling, demonstrates a testing of Deborah Hemstad’s strength.
"The program teaches people new lifestyle habits they can use," she added. "They can use different tools to work for them."
The first thing participants in the program do is complete a wellness questionnaire. The questionnaire assesses their health history and gauges how the individual views their health in the three different areas.
After filling out the questionnaire, participants undergo health assessment testing, including blood pressure, lung capacity, strength, stress responsivity and body fat percentage.
The questionnaire and the assessment help generate a wellness quotient number, and determine which areas an individual might need help in.
"Everything is individualized," Borkhuis said. "We have some patients who do well with exercise, but don't know enough about nutrition. They would receive more help in the nutrition area. If they're having trouble exercising because of low energy levels, we can start them out with an exercise program that they're able to do."
The Creating Wellness program works through various online tracking tools and audio advice delivered to program participants' e-mail inboxes each day. Program participants meet with their wellness coach once a week to discuss their goals and to learn more about different wellness topics.
"I've seen many different sites for tracking nutrition and meal planning," Borkhuis said. "One of the major areas Creating Wellness exceeded my expectations was in the (realism) of the meals. Rather than obscure items, they're things we can find in the local market. It's normal food that people are used to, and it takes 10 to 15 minutes to prepare."
Participants in the Creating Wellness program can choose a basic plan to an all inclusive one, with basic plans costing $12 a month for use of all the online tools and an initial assessment. More inclusive plans are the eight-week and 16-week programs, in which participants will meet with a wellness coach.
Borkhuis said she chose to participate in the program because it focused on many areas of wellness and it can be individually tailored to fit into a person's lifestyle. Also, she said, it fits with CornerStone's definition of wellness, which is the degree to which an individual experiences health and vitality in any dimension of life.
"It's all about optimal health and vitality," Borkhuis said. "Unless you give people the tools to attain that, they'll always be struggling to find it."