The cards are stacked against you, my friend

The cards are stacked against you, my friend. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the sooner you can accept this reality, the sooner you can move forward and get off the hamster wheel.

I could be talking about so many topics, right? 

Politics, our educational system, our food system, our healthcare system….I could go on and on.

They’re all stacked against us.

Perhaps each of those deserves a little closer examination. But for today, I’m going to [try to] focus on your health. 

If you want to be healthy, the cards are stacked against you. 

They have been for a long time. This is nothing new, it’s just been put under a magnifying glass in recent years.

And that’s a VERY good thing! We cannot fix what we don’t know is broken. 

Bringing to light these issues is the first step to healing. 

I want to start by saying, if this idea is new to you, please don’t feel overwhelmed or fearful. This is not meant to be scary. 

Instead, it’s meant to start the conversation. It’s meant to be empowering because again, if we don’t know there’s a problem, we can’t do anything about it. It’s also meant to help bring about some common sense in your everyday life. 

It may even help to explain why you feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle when it comes to your health.

Let’s look at an interesting stat…

Only 2.7% of the population is considered “normal” in terms of health.

Even worse, they keep moving the bar! Have you noticed that what was once considered “elevated” blood pressure is now considered “normal”? (The ideal blood pressure to prevent heart disease, by the way, is less than 110/70, not 120/80 as is considered normal by the medical industry.)

What this means is that every time you hear medical advice or health advice, it’s usually in terms of “this is what normal is”. Well, if only 2.7% of us fit into that, what the kale are we doing?!

Why are we spending so much money to “be healthy” if it’s clearly not working? 

Over the last several decades, we have moved into an era of convenience. 

Fast food, gyms, pre-packaged processed foods, protein bars and shakes, meal replacements, online shopping, online learning, online everything. Again, I could go on and on.

We literally hold the world at our fingertips via this amazing device called a smartphone!

We’re walking around with Go-Go-Gadget watches and making phone calls on the Jetson’s screens. 

So many parts of our lives have been “outsourced”. 

To make matters worse, then we pay money to add those things back in! WTK!?!?

We pay for a gym membership because we’re no longer working out on a farm doing chores, feeding animals, carrying buckets of water everywhere, gardening, or being active in general. Or we’re driving a car to get to the store instead of walking or biking.

We pay for entertainment (tv, cable, movies, sporting events, video games) because we’re no longer going out and having your own adventures.

We pay for someone else to make our meals using the latest chemicals so that meal can sit for years on our pantry shelf and when we’re ready, pop it in this magical box and it cooks in 45 seconds. 

We pay for fast food that we don’t even have to leave our car to order or receive. Then we can eat it while we’re driving and talking on our phone using Bluetooth and be a multi-tasking machine!

We pay for supplements, protein powders, and all kinds of fancy “superfoods” because we are no longer growing our own food and nourishing the soil.

We pay for fancy probiotics because we are no longer playing in the dirt, caring for animals, or interacting with different people in different places.

And then, we pay for medications to suppress all the damage these conveniences are doing to your body. Medications, my friend, are just the beginning of the real price of all these conveniences.

These “conveniences” have an impact on our lives and our health.

Don’t get me wrong, I love many of these conveniences! I use them all the time as I’m sure you do too. 

When you sit back and look at it, our world has become so focused on convenience, that we’ve sacrificed our health.

Here’s another stat…

There are over 80,000 chemicals currently in our food system. Only about 1,500 of them have been tested for safety. Of those, only a fraction have been tested in humans. And an even smaller portion has been tested for long-term safety.

This is a deep rabbit hole to go down. So we’ll keep it brief today.

In the United States, products go on the market with the assumption they are safe. Companies prove they’re not safe after they are being sold when they’re alerted to an issue. 

In contrast, the European Union requires companies to prove a product is safe before it hits the market. 

Read that again.

If it seems backward to you, you would be correct. It’s a loophole in the system. These products are referred to as “Generally Recognized As Safe” or GRAS and it’s probably not good.

So of those 80,000 chemicals, how do we know how they react with one another? Not to mention, how do they react to the chemicals our bodies make naturally? 

We don’t.

The cards are stacked against you.

But what if the world was set up for you to be healthy?

The good news is that you can do just that, starting in your own home. One thing at a time.

This is the point in the conversation where many people get overwhelmed. But you don’t need to. 

Being healthy doesn’t need to take a ton of time, money, and effort. You can make changes at any financial level and put your money where it matters the most to you.

The most empowering thing is that there is a lot we have control over.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you to turn off the faucet while you brush your teeth and claim that it will make the slightest bit of difference compared to the private jets and yachts that our climate “experts” frequent. 

I digress…

This isn’t even about the environment.

But it is interesting to know that the things that harm the environment also harm your inner environment.

On the flip side, the things that heal your inner environment also heal the environment.

Here is my proposal, because I don’t want to just dump all this negativity on you without something you can do right now.

I’m not going to list off products or brands because those always change and those are probably not going to be accessible to everyone.

Instead, I propose you start to take your health into your own hands:

Learn how your body works.

I went heavy into the anatomy and physiology of the human body during grad school and what I can tell you is that it’s very predictable. 

Your body has, for the most part, very specific reactions in a given situation. You have organ-specific cells that do one thing for that organ. Each cell has a job. A heart cell doesn’t try to be a liver cell.

I’m not suggesting you need to become an expert or even go down to the cellular level. I’m suggesting you learn the top-level stuff. The basics.

When you know the basics, your perspective changes astronomically. 

Where do you even start?

Pick a topic that interests you. Some examples may be learning how food moves through your digestive system or why glucose is not an enemy to health. You could learn about your muscles and how they work. You could learn about hormones and why they are called the “snail mail” of the body.

The simple act of learning is going to open your eyes and your mind to new ideas. It’s also going to help keep your brain healthy!

One of the things I take great pride in as a health coach is teaching my clients not just what to do but why they should do it. When we know why, things make more sense. 

In a world where we are overly obsessed with simplifying everything, we are making our health much more complicated. 

Let me give you an example…

Many people come to me with issues of gas and bloating. One of the first things I recommend they do is to thoroughly chew their food. 

Wait, what? We don’t even think about chewing our food! How can that be an “expert recommendation”?

That is exactly why it’s an expert recommendation, because we don’t think about it!

When you don’t chew your food thoroughly, enzymes are not being released in your mouth, you swallow air, and your digestive system gets stressed as food is not broken down to where it should be. Everyone must work harder and when they don’t, gas and bloating can happen as the result.

I can not tell you how many people report back that by making this small change, they feel so much better! For many people, the simplest explanation is usually the best. 

Why would we seek out medication or other testing if all you need to do is chew your food?

Start with the low-hanging fruit. Then if that doesn’t work, move on to more advanced ideas. 

This same concept can be applied in so many aspects of health. Start with the basics.

But to do that, you will need to learn the basics! 

The world today has tried hard to erase the basics and replace them with expensive and potentially damaging solutions. Why? Money. There’s no money in telling someone to chew their food. There certainly isn’t a medical billing code.

You can’t patent “chewing” and you can’t charge patients for it. 

As I said at the beginning, no matter your financial or time situation, you can make changes to start taking back control of your health. Everyone can chew their food better!

(And if you can’t chew your food or have difficulties doing that, there are other techniques to employ!)

My challenge to you is this: pick a topic or area of your health and learn more about it. Then begin setting up your life so healthy is the easy choice. Start small because no change is too small when it comes to your health.

Eventually, that choice will just become part of your daily life. No thought required! 

The first step to making healthy the easy choice is to realize that the cards are, indeed, stacked against you. The rest is up to you!

We can do this. We can help turn this world around. We can become our own self-advocate of our health! 

Want to start with tackling some of your digestive issues? I have an awesome FREE ebook with your name on it!

Click the button below to download it now!