We should have a class while we are school age to learn how to listen to our bodies. I know when I was growing up I abused the heck out of mine. I would explore boundaries that perhaps should have been left alone. Silly things such as how would I feel staying up for three days straight. Staying in the winter playing with damp clothes until my skin and muscles became numb and stiff from cold – which is very painful during the thaw out process. Letting myself get badly sunburned when there was no real need to. Taking risks I should not have taken because of the possible long term injuries I could have suffered.
There are other more subtle things I did I never really paid attention to because I didn’t know they were important. Eating that last slice of pizza with my third glass of soda. Experimenting with tobacco and alcohol. Ignoring my body telling me it did not appreciate being poisoned. Trying to get by on too little sleep, or not getting the right kind of exercise.
There are a lot of signals our bodies give us that we should take notice of. I imagine that most people are not aware their body performs much better when properly maintained. I was taught as a young child that my body existed and I was in it. Other than eating, bathing and brushing my teeth, nothing else really needed to be done. My body would happily do its thing while I did mine.
 We eventually reach an age where our body starts giving stronger signals about what it does and does not like concerning how it is being treated. Some of the signs are: indigestion, anxiety, stress, tiredness, lethargy, and so on. We start to notice that we do not feel as good as we used to. At first we tend to project these feelings off on something else. Our body is getting old, we have bad genes, the air is polluted, our work is stressful. We make excuses rather than admit listen to our body.
Some people go on ignoring the signs their body gives them telling them something needs to change. In the mean time our body goes on doing the best it can with what it has to work with. When someone discovers they have acid indigestion they are more likely to take an antacid than give up eating greasy foods. We internalize it is our body failing us, rather than us failing our body. We take a pill to mask our symptoms of poor diet and maintenance.
If our heartburn goes away we think all is well once more. What we do not see, is the internal damage going on inside our body. All that extra fat in our diet is coursing through our blood stream. Animal fats are acidy and etch away some of the walls of our blood vessels. Our body in trying to keep everything working applies a cholesterol patch to the etched away areas. As our body is concerned, as it can do no more, but it creates other health problems.
Something I never knew, and it may be news to you too, is these health problems we develop as we go through life are our bodies way of calling attention to itself. When our bodies speak we need to listen. Instead of reaching for a pill, we should evaluate what we are eating and whether it is good for us or only tastes good.
If we are tired all the time, perhaps we should look at our lifestyle. Maybe more than our diet that needs changing. Better sleep patterns and exercise help. Alternatively finding ways to eliminate stress in our life makes us healthier.
Our bodies I have discovered are wonderful and amazing vehicles for us to toodle around in. Our bodies can take an amazing amount of neglect and punishment without slowing down. Eventually there comes a time when all the abuse and neglect on our bodies is too much, and our bodies respond by signaling us something is not right. When those signals happen, it is in our best interest to slow down and evaluate what we think may be wrong and try to correct the situation.
As you cruise into your thirties, you start to notice that possibly you are mortal like everyone else. Nothing specific happening between you and your body, but now and then there are little signs that you are not a teenager any longer. Some things unlike childhood days where you played all day long. You can not multi-sport unless you do it all the time. If you eat as if you are seventeen, you pay a price later in the day or night, or the next day.
One other thing you may have noticed is you start to pay a little more attention to your overall health. You may decide it is time to see a doctor for a first in a long time checkup. Perhaps you really aren’t feeling as good as you used to and you want to find out why. Want to or not, sooner or later you find yourself making that first phone call to the doctor.
Initially when you visit your Doctor, he or she will may some pretty firm ideas on how you are tending to your body. You will be quizzed on what and how you eat, exercise, sleep and a few more intimate questions. It is a good idea to do some thinking about your life style before you are asked these questions. Your doctor can only make decisions on the information you supply. Lying to your doctor, or letting your doctor guess is not the best course of action. Your doctor has heard it all and there probably nothing you can say that will be a surprise or shock.
 In my experience we tend to lie to our doctors. We modify our life story as we tell the doctor what we are doing or not doing. If we drink every day, we tell the Doctor we have a few drinks a week. If we live on coffee and doughnuts we modify that to two small cups of coffee and an occasional doughnut. Our fifty step daily walk from our car to the job, or store becomes a twenty minute stroll, or perhaps a daily mile jog.
While it feels good to tell our doctor we are living healthier than we do, it is a mistake to do so. First off your doctor will order up blood tests. These tests are thorough enough to separate fact from fiction of your story. At the very least they are precise enough to raise some doubt about your real life. The downside is, when your doctor questions you again, and you again fudge how you are living, you are painting a picture of your over all health that is not accurate.
It is no secret that we tell little half truths and partial omissions every day. Mostly we do this to keep the peace or save someone’s feelings. We all do it to some extent and we all except that everyone around does it too. There are too places where you need to be brutally honest in what you admit to. The first place is between your ears. If you can not be true to yourself and acknowledge what you know to be true, your life is less than should could be. If you are not truthful with your doctor, your doctor can not be as effective in helping you as they could be if you tell the truth.
As your life progresses from this point on, you will discover there are things you never knew about until now. Suddenly pizza gives you heartburn, and too much sitting makes one knee stiff. You may discover are more serious problem, as in a ‘health condition’.
Welcome to the real world. Like it or not, all of us as we age, discover body problems we never knew we had. We slowly start to fall apart. We share this with everyone who ever drew a breath. Most health problems you will have are not new problems. In fact they have probably been present since the day you were born. Until now they stayed in the background unnoticed. It is a tough thing to accept at first that like everyone else, you are slowly getting older, and eventually like everyone before you, you will get old
Acceptance is taking a positive approach to a life situation you can not change, denial is putting off until tomorrow what is easier to start accepting today. Be truthful to your doctor and yourself when it comes to you. It is natural that sooner or later, something about your body will not work as well as it used to. Do yourself a favor at the Doctor’s office; tell the truth about you.
It has been four months now since I have been eating a Celiac or wheat gluten free diet. If you are not sure what that means, my understanding is Celiac is intolerance for wheat type gluten. This type of gluten is found in Wheat, Barley, and Rye for starters and perhaps a few lesser known grains too. Anything with malt or malt extract is code for gluten. Modified something you do not understand exactly what it is, is a phrase to be wary of. In my earlier Celiac post, I went over some of the symptoms that have been experienced both by myself and others.
It seems a Celiac diet is generally misunderstood, I read and have been told following a gluten free diet is a poor lifestyle choice which is simply not true. Lots of people around the world live quite happily on a gluten free diet. I suggest a lot of thought on going on a Celiac diet just for fun. It is a very restrictive diet if you are not adventurous. Eliminating gluten from your diet is no small undertaking.
After eliminating all the common places gluten sources exist in the average diet, there are other places gluten lurks. It is important to read each and every food label every time you shop because gluten lurks in almost every food you can imagine, from ice cream, to protein powders, some peanut butter, vitamins, and some medicines. What may be free of gluten this time, may have gluten in it the next time because the manufacturing of the product changed.
 A Celiac diet properly undertaken is very healthy and nutritious. A Celiac diet done wrong can also turn into a monster. If you are not open to trying new foods, food combinations, and tastes, the Celiac diet is very expensive and fairly bland. Trying to eat the same type of foods you always ate such as different forms of breads and pasta’s will send the cost of eating into the upper limits. If a loaf of bread used to cost you $2.50, you can now plan on paying two to three times or more for bread that never quite matches your memories.
If you enjoy snacking on an occasional pretzel, cookie, or doughnut, get ready to pay much more for the pleasure. If you like pancakes or waffles guess what? The price of pancake mix and waffles goes up too. If you always wanted to expand what you eat, and you can get excited about new vegetables, and fruits, you will find life pretty exciting. You can practically start at one side of your favorite produce section and eat your way around to the other side.
If you are in the middle in your eating needs, you will find your food bill has gone up, and you may find yourself eating more of the types of foods that you previously ate less of. Going to a buffet for example where everyone can find something they want to eat, your choices once you leave the salad area becomes limited. Most thick soups are out, so is most chili, cheese, croutons, crackers, and everyone’s favorite – most of the desert section. You are left with vegetables and some of the meats. You can eat those meats which are not breaded, barbequed, or marinated with a soy based sauce, because they are likely to contain gluten.
On the bright side, I have noticed the taste of wheat in some food is obvious. The first bite often tells me if there is wheat hiding in the food somewhere. If I do not notice which has happened a few times, upset stomach of some form is not far away. Talk about negative reinforcement, it only needs to happen a few times before the awareness level and attention to what I am eating went way up.
Contrary to some of what I have read, being gluten free is not the end of the world. With some willingness to say goodbye to what your diet used to be and hello to the world of vegetables and fruits you never tasted before, a Celiac diet is healthy and can be quite reasonable both in taste and expense.
If you do have a gluten allergy, you will know generally within a few weeks because you should feel better, and not just different. In my case, it was only a few days before I started feeling a difference, and a few weeks before feeling healthier
An acquaintance mentioned many people have an allergy to many foods, but our bodies for the most part are able to handle the reaction without our even noticing. Again though that is conjecture and opinion, so take it with a grain of e-salt.
If you are serious about a celiac diet, or have health concerns, you need opinion and advice from a more informed source than myself. While I have done my reading and research, I am by no more than a beginning novice on Celiacs, and much of what I say may not be correct or correct for you. I have some small gluten tolerance, as some people do, so my thoughts and opinions may not be correct for you.
Living in a capitalistic society at times seems as if it is the responsibility of everyone else to help others part with their money, in a way that is a benefit to themselves. Capitalism has intruded into personal areas of life. In nature and in old primitive societies of the past, some African, and Eskimo cultures as an example, when someone became old and felt they were of no use, or a burden to the family, the elderly or the family took care of the situation.
In Africa, an old sick person would be taken outside of the village at dusk and left. In the northern tiers where Eskimos lived they were pulled out on the ice a long way from the village and left. I am sure every society around the world had a system that worked for them. Whether it was cruel or violates the importance of human life, it was how things were done.
 Today I see an artificial value on human life prompted by greed. Medicine has progressed to a point where if you have health insurance doctors can fend off heart disease and other potentially quick death diseases. What this does is keep someone alive as the odds of developing cancer become an increasing possibility.
I don’t know if it holds true any longer, but I read the odds of developing cancer go up one-hundred percent each year after the age of seventy. Cancer by its nature is expensive to treat. Many insurance plans require individual financial participation on top of the premiums paid monthly. If the going rate is perhaps twenty percent of the cost, the cost of cancer treatment could cost one individual tens of thousands of dollars.
Arriving at the age of retirement, cancer is a growing concern added on to other health concerns. Diabetes and high blood pressure appear as prevalent health issues starting around middle age. So what does this have to do with capitalism? The cost of living as long as possible has everything to do with capitalism.
It seems medicine has moved away from, or perhaps never really was well rooted in, a deep need to help fellow humans. The cost of becoming a doctor, and practicing medicine, to include use of hospitals, and belonging to HMO’s has made the cost of receiving medical care so incredibly expensive, doctors are now as much accountants as they are practitioners of medicine.
Colleges of medicine, hospitals, doctors, and HMO’s, medical equipment makers all make a profit. Not profit to live on, but as large a profit as the receiver of their wares will bear. The business of medicine has no primary goal of curing you. The new medical business model revolves around making you a patient as early in your life as possible for as long as possible.
This focus on your current health is about your future worth. If, or recently when you are diagnosed having Type II Diabetes, or a heart or artery condition, emphasis is placed on your prescribed medications. Other health promoting choices are almost an afterthought. Serious diet help is for the most part window dressing. You are now an income stream for the business of medicine. The whole system would collapse if you opted out, or recovered to the point where you did not require frequent doctor visits with expensive tests, etc. In other words more of your income spent on your health each year.
Some medicines being touted in commercials, have possible side effects much worse than the disease; if any side effects occur, a new income stream is created by your [now] more serious health condition. Once you are depleted of your liquid assets, the cost of keeping you alive moves on to the state. The state at times has very deep pockets which capitalistic medicine takes advantage of.
This is my perspective and opinion, of course, and you are free to disagree. I feel we have been coerced, or maybe influenced that our life regardless of the quality of that life and the financial consequence does not matter. There comes a time towards the end of life when the cure is not worth the price of admission.
I like to eat out, my cooking gets old. My normal run of the mill eating out is generally a buffet of some type; salads, mexican, barbecue, chinese, or home style cooking, if the price is reasonable, I will check them out.
I have noticed a long time trend seemingly absent when I was a kid. Today for example, I was at a fast food place, and a young man filled his cup to the rim with ice, and then dumped it all out and refilled it halfway with ice. His friend asked him why he did that, and the young man answered, “Because I overfilled my cup.”
 I see people all the time follow an identical pattern with napkins, condiments, and at the buffets. Plates of food piled higher than a party of three could eat in one sitting – for themselves, or taking an excessive amount of condiments. Most of the extra food goes into the trash. It seems the food industry has been evolved into an industry that now caters to gluttony, and sloth. It seems to be okay with the people on both sides of the counter.
Looking a little farther away from the food industry I see this ‘waste’ mindset is pervasive in many areas of our life. For example, salt has been used in oral hygiene for as long as salt has been around. Recently it is not good enough. Today salt and warm water has been replaced by expensive mixtures of alcohol, water, flavorings, and a few other exotic ingredients. Men and women are losing their hair at an alarming rate because they ‘need’ the sealers, conditioners, and gels, to get the right look.
I wish I could blame it all on the younger generations, like it was something they created, but it is not. With the recent economic bailout, it is obvious this condition has been simmering since I was a kid. I was probably one of the founders of wasteful living. Mega companies, business oriented men and women, and almost every charity imaginable stand in line with their mouths open, and hands out, demanding that someone place an excessive amount of money on their palms, because they need it.
The idea that any company, group, or individual may not need free money is not important today. Self sufficiency and pride has gone out the window. Begging has become the new standard for the American Way. ‘What is in it for me’, is what seems to compel begging all the way from Capitol Hill, to the street corner. It does not matter what you really need, what matters is how much you can get.
When the Christmas holidays roll around this year and the ‘giving’ trees are up, take a look at what children are asking for. Gone are the days of a board game, a pair of jeans, or perhaps some new shoes. Those items are already mainlined to the nations needy by others. Looking at the wish list of the needy, you will see requests for game counsels, cell phones, and designer purses. Nothing is out of the question when it comes to asking.
I like to think I am kind, and I think I am generous with my life. I grew up poor, and I understand the feelings that being poor can have. I understand that something happens, and we find ourselves needing. But when people are asking me for things that I choose not to buy myself because they are out of my budget range, I find myself drawing a line in the sand.
I used to hear about the poor starving children in Africa when I was a child. I now listen to parents hearing from their children how their life is a tragedy because they do not have a two hundred dollar cell phone, at least two of the latest gaming stations, a new sports car, and half the family income for spending money each week.
Is this the America I helped create when I was not paying attention? No matter, I am ashamed of what I see. It is time we have some respect for what we need and use, and live gorging ourselves on what we can get. We do not have the right to expect our government and others to cut back while we live a porkfest life.
What are you really worth? As a society we like to think that the value of any human life is infinite, and very difficult to place a price tag on. With that thought in mind, the medical field followed closely by numerous non profit organizations, work twenty-four seven to keep us alive and fix us if we hurt ourselves.
Medicine aside, there are right to life organizations, organizations for children, mothers, teens, and the elderly. We collectively spend an enormous amount of effort and money preserving and protecting human life. Many charities have been formed to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and educate the illiterate.
If I were to become incapacitated, some institution will pick me up and charge the collective governments thousands of dollars a month to keep me alive if I can not pay for my own care. The governments will happily pay any reasonable fees for my care and hopefully my well being.
We have passed laws and created barriers to ending our own life. Those laws we have agreed to, silly as they are, make suicide a crime. We have social and religious mores, with strong family values programming us against suicide. For most of us, any serious contemplation of suicide has never been entertained. It is a category of thought we are programmed to flush out of our thoughts if it ever makes an appearance.
In the mean time, while all this is swirling through your head, have you given any thought to how much is your own individual life worth to you? From my perspective my life is worth much less to me than it is to others. My family will have to get through strong grief and learn a new way to live when I am no longer around.
For ‘care givers’ who would profit from our living body, our body is worth gold, almost literally. Policeman, firemen, paramedics, and who knows who else are standing by at all hours of the day and night to come to my aid. As I mentioned there are hospitals and nursing homes with open beds waiting for me to land in one. While the quality of life may leave something to be desired, the dollar amount for the ‘care’ given my remaining years would cause many to gasp at the total. And it is not over yet once I am dead, the funeral home is patiently waiting for their share.
Yet, we generally give little value to our own individual lives. If you find yourself disagreeing, stop for a moment and reflect on everything you do. Think about what you ate today. Even with the wide array of healthy food choices, chances are food choices were unhealthy to very poor.
Driving to work or two shop is the same with little concern for our singular well being. We only slow down and drive reasonably if we believe finances may be harmed in the form of a ticket, or our insurance going up. Otherwise we drive like we do not care. We also take unnecessary risks at home when we are repairing, fixing, or building something around our home.
In light of how much our life is worth to others, maybe we should evaluate how much our own life should be worth to us? Unfortunately day and time, most of us will not have the luxury of falling over dead. We have a better chance of languishing in a hospital bed for decades than we do of a peaceful exit. If that is not enough with the wide choice of medicines not only curtail or cure also can calm to the point of not caring. We run the risk of becoming voiceless, money machines with no say so of our own.
Think wisely about the choices we are making each day. Try to make choices that others would for us if they were in charge of us. Eat healthy tasty food, and get some exercise. Find things in life that arouse a passion no matter what they may be, and enjoy them.
Diet choices are simple, eat tasty healthy food now, or eat healthy tasteless institutional food later. Exercise is simple, walking every day is a good start.
By valuing ourselves as much as companies and institutions will value our bodies if they get them, we give ourselves a better chance of living a long, healthy, enjoyable life. When the end gets near, perhaps we will get lucky and simply fall over.
|
