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With the Unaffordable Care Act fiasco using medical care and medical insurance
as a means of taxing people and reducing access to medical care (plus making it
vastly more expensive), there's one big element to this fraud that involves
language abuse. That is the frequent misuse of "health care" to mean "medical
care." These are two very different concepts:
- Health care is what you do to prevent illness.
- Medical care is what you do to address illness.
Medical care providers have a conflict of interest, here. If you're healthy, you
don't need medical care. That is not to say medical care providers want you to
be unhealthy. It is a fact, however, that medical care often conflicts with
health care and many medical care providers give absolutely wrong health care
advice. They give bad advice because they don't know the subject, not because
they are bad people (they aren't bad people).
Some key points about health:
- Health care and medical care are two entirely different things.
- Health is what you protect or damage via the decisions you make.
Medicine is an attempt to fix disease or injury. Current medical practice
generally works against health; good health practices support good medical
outcomes.
- Health care requires attention to what you eat, how you exercise (and
when), how much rest you get, how you handle stress, and how you manage your
environment for toxicity.
- There is no real mystery to what behaviors and decisions improve or
degrade health. Poor decisions are typically made due to carelessness and
willful ignorance rather than not having access to "the secret."
- Exemplars of health are all around us, but the most famous was probably
Jack LaLanne. We do have role models.
- We also have common sense. Obviously, eating a diet rich in nutrient-dense, low-calorie foods such as fruits and vegetables is a better
choice than eating a diet low in nutrients but rich in toxins (such as corn
sweetener and hydrogenated oil).
- The phrase "health nut" is widely used. This is instructive; it tells
you about the adverse attitude toward health in our culture. If you look at
behaviors and the commonly made bad choices, you see clearly that we have a
disease culture. If this seems wrong to you, just look in other people's
shopping carts at the grocery store or just survey what's on the
shelves--poisons, toxins, empty calories, and nutrient-poor garbage passed
off as "food."
- People also talk about "losing weight." Here's a sure-fire way to lose
weight: have your arms and legs amputated. You will lose significant weight
in only a few days! Now, that sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it? It's not
about losing weight. It's about making food choices that induce a lean body
composition. For example, eat six small meals per day and keep them
nutrient-dense.
- Use it or lose it. The average American cannot lift a 10-lb vacuum
cleaner by the age of 65. There's no reason for this problem to exist, other
than a lack of physical exercise.
- Eat plenty of vegetables. Actually, make fruits and vegetables at least
75% of your food intake. The average American male has 6lbs of undigested,
fermenting red meat in his colon by the age of 53. There's no reason for
this problem to exist, other than a long history of poor food choices.
If you incorporate the ten points above into your mental view of health,
you will be very far along the path to living a healthy lifestyle. Of
course, there are many more things to address but the average American is
remiss on all ten points. If you get those right, you'll naturally progress
toward getting the rest of it right. |
