Faced with immune system health problems myself during the last 40 years, I have had a lot of time to observe, listen and discover answers to many of my health related questions and to situations I found myself, members of my family or our friends and acquaintances in.
Its largely because I have taken responsibility for my own health that I have been able to work full time (as a health professional) almost all my adult life. During that time I spent a lot of hours teaching patients how to best help themselves to a healthier, happier and more active and fulfilled life.
Here’s a few ideas and issues worth discussing, subjects I’ve given thought to through the years.
Have you ever wondered why some people get sick far more often than other people? Why them and not that other person?
I have a old friend who quite often gets sick. The culprit is usually an unidentifiable ‘virus’. The most perfectly acceptable and plausible reason to be sick in our culture is to have a ‘virus’.
I view much of this epidemic of ‘virus’ illness as a cop out, a built in ‘illness’ to allow us to live an undisciplined over indulgent life, a life of never having to take resposibility for ones own health. If people actually ate better, drank less alcohol and drinks loaded with sugar and caffeine, exercised more, smoked less and consistently had more positive subconscious thought input there would be much less sickness and unhappiness. If people took more responsibility for their own health, their own lives in general, there would be far less demand for hospital beds or emergency health services in general.
Lets start with what people eat. When I go grocery shopping it never ceases to amaze me when I look at the contents in other people’s shopping trolleys. I can’t believe that people actually eat all that processed stuff in cardboard packets, in foil containers, in plastic packs, plastic bottles and cans. Most of it is coloured, flavoured, contains preservatives, bleaches, stabilizers, emulsifiers, and much of it is loaded with bad fats or oils, sugar and salt. People seem to be duped by convincing advertising, for example, 99% fat free but they fail to see the amount of sugar and salt (just for starters) in the product.
Much of this processed or manufactured food is ‘non food’. It is dead. It is toxic. It does not resemble living whole food in any way. The body struggles to digest it. It leaves behind toxins and oxidants that the body has difficulty dealing with. I liken it to just eating poison. At times especially whilst on overseas travel I have had to eat marinated or fried ‘fast food’ as a last resort and as a result my body has gone into freefall. Afterwards I have experienced a variety of symptoms…….headaches, diarrhoea, limb aches and pains, mucous in my eyes and have even developed haemorrhoids, temporarily thank goodness! Imagine what state other people’s bodies must be in if they eat this stuff regularly!
Do you have health expectations?
I remember a lecture I attended some years ago where the speaker described to us the expectations of some of his patients. He recounted questions he had asked patients, for example. ” Do you have a cough?” When the patient replied yes, he then asked the patient to describe the cough. “Well, you know, the usual cough we all have in the morning”. Another patient was asked about a headache she complained of, the patient replied, “you know the usual headache that we all get every day.”
Do you live a life with the expectation that you’ll have a cough or a headache every day of your life? I certainly don’t. I think it says a lot about the very poor basic health expectations that many people have of their own lives and of their understanding of good health in general.
Getting back to my friend, she eats her share of processed and ‘non food’, I know, I remember seeing it in her fridge and pantry and interestingly enough it is often after a weekend binge of comfort or ‘non food’ that she gets her ‘virus’ or migraine. My analogy of putting water into the petrol tank of a car relates to this. What do people reasonably expect of their bodies….. quite obviously, miracles.
Who or what do you blame?
I have two highly intelligent acquaintances who were both devastated when their doctor told them that their cholesterol levels were unacceptably high. They acted like the world was coming to an end when dietary changes were suggested and Statin drugs were prescribed to lower their cholesterol levels. “…..but I love my cheese and wine?” “I can’t possibly survive without my chocolate fix while watching tele!” “Life won’t be worth living”! “My social life will go down the drain”!
Worse still, another intelligent, excessively overweight, under-exercised colleague was gobsmacked with disbelief, and fell into a protracted depressive state when she was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. I came across her at a party a year or two ago sitting with a circle of her friends – it was like they were all in mourning with her because of her new lifestyle restrictions.
A couple of issues surrounded her situation. The first one was that her mother had had mature age diabetes so her response to that was, well I obviously inherited the tendancy from her, it wasn’t my fault. Taking responsibility for her own health didn’t even enter into the equation.
And secondly, even with that knowledge of her mother she had made absolutely no effort at all to reverse that probability by totally ignoring lifestyle factors involved in the causation of type II Diabetes. She considered she had been hard done by. Amazing but true!
In a similar vein, I have a relative, a secondary school teacher who told me after his second coronary occlusion when he was 30 years old, (referring to his weight particularly) “its hereditary, my family are all big people, we are all big boned.” What a cop out! He was overweight, drank far too much beer, smoked and did no exercise. What did he expect? He had never heard the words, “taking responsibiity for your own health”.
Where do these people live? On another planet? In fairy land? What do we have to do to get the message across to these so called intelligent people?
It is my theory that there is absolutely no connection between intelligence and common sense. Many people are on the heredity, genetic train. Someone or something else to blame….never accept responsibility for themselves.
Sure there is a hereditary link in many diseases but diseases caused through self indulgent, compulsive, ill disciplined lifestyles can be helped. The hereditary link can be diluted, if only by not emulating the family tradition of overindulgent, ill disciplined lifestyle.
An earlier blog of mine speaks of doing things differently if we expect a different, better outcome, of breaking the mold. These people would give themelves a better than average chance of escaping the genetic influence as well as so called ‘bad luck’.
We all know what happens when we put water or the wrong blend of petrol in the petrol tank of our car. It just stops or won’t work efficiently.
Just maybe if people valued their lives a bit more, treated their life as if it were a treasured gift, fed their bodies with nourishing, mind and body food habits, then we would be a far healthier and happier society.
Our hospitals would not be overcrowded. Imagine if our health insurance funds rewarded us generously for taking steps to improve our health status and trying hard to remain healthy and taking responsibility for our own health, we would all be richer.
Elizabeth Gray has a self management program for arthritis sufferers and for those with chronic, severe constipation.
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