It's
summer-time! A period of the year that involves a lot of lawn mowing
and blockbuster movies among other seasonal characteristics.
Our
guest blogger this month, author Julia Monnin, recently wrote in her
own newsletter that most of us are ardent about tending to our grass
after a rainy week or two messes up the lawn care schedule, but that we
oddly do not apply a similar ethic toward the things that matter more to
our own personal well-being. Lawn care over health care? Really...?
Yes, really. That is the way it goes right now. If the grass gets too
high, then we plan an attack like the evil Thanos of Marvel Cinema lore
is descending on our homes from planet Titan, but taking the steps to
ensure long-term well-being is not nearly as high on the priority list
for most.
Consequently,
every newsletter that I write is thematically linked to fundamentally
altering the way that you look at health, so that you can more readily
recognize the basic things that you need in order to achieve it.
Combating most of what I teach is the mindset that permeates almost
every facet of our healthcare system in America: that your role in being
healthy is minimal and that you should just wait around until you have
symptoms, then treat them ad nauseum and indefinitely (with a basic
mandate that you should not question any of this). No one taught us
that it is a lot harder to get a sick person well than to keep a well
person healthy like we were once taught how much easier it is to do lawn
maintenance regularly than to let the grass grow a foot tall before
mowing. Until we reach a point in history when the population takes
back its personal responsibility to be healthy, which would lend itself
to a proactive rather than reactive paradigm shift and re-position
health education toward prevention and maintenance, we are going to have
to come to grips with the following, which I creatively commented on in
my December 2018 newsletter:
In the fight to be healthy, like Avengers: Infinity War,
I can be your Spider-Man, but you’ll also need Thor,
And Hulk and Captain America, even Dr. Strange,
Iron Man and Black Widow too for overall change;
So, think integratively when getting or staying well,
To serve every organ, muscle, tissue, and cell.
Optimal
health cannot be achieved through getting your head on straight OR
nutritional change OR affirming your faith OR regaining structural
integrity OR consistent exercise OR routine massage OR by meditating
daily. It is not an either-or proposition. However, if you change all
of the above uses of "OR" to "AND" then you have the ability to be the
very best version of you possible. It takes a consistency of
health-oriented (which is different than disease-oriented) habits, a
commitment to achieving complete physical, mental, and social well-being
and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity (of symptoms).
So,
assemble your team, and no matter the level of health villainy working
against your ability to thrive - be it the equivalent of Thanos wielding
the Infinity Stones and pushing you to your absolute limits, or an old
rich businessman using a giant iron suit for the first time who is
rather easily dispatched (and anywhere in between) - if you take the
time and put the effort into unlocking your inborn, borderline
superheroic recuperative “powers,” you get well.
Thinking good things for you, as always,
-Dr. Chad
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