Quick and easy. That’s what we all clamor for. We have “health” in a bottle, food in a box, and energy in a drink. But is it in our best interest? Our quick and easy lifestyle has made things, well, not so quick and easy.
Because we want things so quick and easy, we have sacrificed our health. Now we spend more time at doctor’s offices, in the hospital, recovering from or rehabilitating from illness or surgery, or waiting for our prescriptions to be filled. If we spent that time instead, working on our health, life would be so much better for us. And we would probably have more time!
We want everything. We want the nice home, the fancy car, the best home decorations and the most up-to-date clothing fashions. In order to get that, we have to work harder, work longer hours, go more places, and do more shopping. We want to have lots of exciting things to talk about, to make us more interesting, so we travel more, go to movies more, do more fun things. We live in a society that life is more thrilling than ever before. There is more to do – more of life to experience. If not for ourselves, but for our children.
No longer are we happy with our children playing quiet games in their rooms, riding bikes or playing in the hills behind our homes. Now we want them to have the experiences life has to offer. We schedule in games, and dance, music and drama. We have scheduled activities from the time they get home from school until bedtime. However good or bad this is, it costs money and takes more time away from you. In order to fit it all in, we have to sacrifice something.
Most of what gets sacrificed is the food we eat. We eat microwaveable foods, boxed foods or eat out at fast food restaurants, not only because it’s fast, but because it’s cheap too. Don’t you realize you can’t get cheap and easy without a cost? To get fast, cheap and easy we have to sacrifice something. What we sacrifice is quality. Quality of food and ultimately quality of health.
To make fast and easy food, we have to make the food last long – on the shelves in the market and on the shelves at home. To do this, they have to take out all the good stuff that may go bad. This includes the vital enzymes – the very essence of what creates life and the biological activity of the nutrients once in the body. You have to take out the good fats and replace them with a plasticized form that doesn’t spoil. In fact, insects won’t dare touch it! That alone should tell us something! You need good fats for hundreds of functions in the body, and without them, those functions become sub-optimal. Fake fats just won’t do those functions and they actually make you worse.
We want a smooth texture and not have to work so hard to get the nutrients out. We don’t want to have to chew tough meat (so we “age” it – rot it longer), we don’t want the rough texture or brown color of wheat or rice, so we take the important roughage (fiber) out of it, and instead turn it into a glue-like, nutritionally devoid substance. We don’t want the oils to get rancid so we hydrogenate it – make it a damaging fat. Our taste buds have become so numb that we have to overly salt and add sugar to everything to make it palatable. Somehow, we think we can do better than mother nature.
Because our quick and easy lifestyle makes us ill, we turn to another quick and easy solution – medications. It takes time, money and effort to get well. If we don’t have the time, and money has other priorities, we head for the drugs. We take drugs to cover our symptoms, help us feel more energy or help us feel less emotionally. Is it any wonder our kids head for street drugs when they want to feel better or different?
Drugs aren’t designed to heal us. They are designed to enable you to live with how you feel, easier. Medical doctors are not healers. They do what you want them to do – give you something to make you feel better, so you can go about your life doing things like you have always done. If you want to actually get well, you have to be willing to do things differently than you’ve always done. You have to see a natural health care provider. If you want crisis management, your medical doctor is your saving grace. If you want wellness, you have to be willing to go a different route.
I know this will upset a lot of people, but you can’t buy health in a bottle. There is no ‘one pill cures all’. There is no magic drink, no magic formula, no magic one treatment (even if it’s natural) that will cure you. Good health is a multi-faceted approach that means you’ll have to sacrifice a few things. Things like pre-packaged foods, you’ll have to find stress-relieving activities, spend more money in healthier foods, supplements and treatments than the fast food, medication continuum.
Many supplements on the market make you sick. I’m sorry to say that. Many of you are so desperate to feel well, that you’ll grab for anything promising. You unknowingly think that because something says it’s “natural” or healthy for you or “the best” that you are actually getting something that will solve all your health problems. However, most of you are simply wasting your money. Supplements are by design supposed to supplement your body with the nutrients not in your foods. But most supplements are artificial. They are counterfeit vitamins masquerading as good stuff. The dealers of these supplements are misled by those who train them. Those who train them are interested in the bottom line profits, and to their defense, even they don’t know how bad they are. A well respected doctor that writes a lot about artificial supplements and about “enriching” foods says this (paraphrased): “Enriching foods is akin to walking down the street in a bad area of town and you are suddenly accosted. The man robs you of a hundred dollars, then feeling bad “enriches” you will $6.00 – but it’s with monopoly money!” Most of your vitamins fall into this description, as well as your cereals and other foods that are “enriched”.
Every day cells are dying in the body, and every day the body needs to make new ones. The body cannot make new healthy cells out of chemical substitutes erroneously called “vitamins” – I don’t care how “natural” they make them sound. If the vitamin isn’t made solely from foods, then it just isn’t of value in your health. The pill won’t make you well. It may make you feel better for a time, but it won’t make you well. There is no multiple, no way to shove all the nutrients you are missing into a single pill. If you are taking a once-a-day type vitamin, you have a chemical counterfeit. This is not a quick and easy fix. You have to work at getting well. You have to eat right (that means cook real, live food), exercise (that means schedule it into your busy routine), sleep (that means get to bed early), and take a whole food supplement to make up for what you’re not able to get in your foods anymore, despite eating better. When you want to really get well, not only will you do those things, but you will seek the services of a natural health care provider that can guide you along this healthy path. Good health isn’t a quick, easy fix. It is a life-long endeavor that makes health a time, financial and energy priority. Although you will have to sacrifice some things to obtain good heath, in the long run good health doesn’t cost, it pays.
© 2008 Holly A. Carling, O.M.D., L.Ac., Ph.D.
