Who is Responsible for Your Health?
Your answer to this question can increase or decrease the
quality and length of your life, so consider carefully:
Who is responsible for your health?
Your instinctive response may be that you are, with the help of a
few experts. But put even a little thought behind it and you realize it’s a
loaded question. Because it depends on what is meant by “responsible.” Does
that mean who is to blame or praise for your current state of health? Does that
mean who should be watching out for your health? And for that matter, what is
meant by “health” itself? By answering
that last inquiry first, you understand why the question of who is responsible
for your health is so important.
Being healthy, in its ultimate sense, means having the ability
to focus on all the other things that matter in life without being dragged down
by, worrying about, or having life stopped too soon due to an ill state. In
more direct terms, if you are battling the flu or cancer, if you are struggling
to lose or gain weight, that requires energy that therefore cannot be devoted
to all the other worthwhile pursuits this life affords.
Perpetual and perfect health is, of course, unattainable. We are
human. Genetics happen, accidents happen, grief for loss happens, and
eventually for every one of us, death happens.
But just because we don’t have complete control doesn’t mean we have no
say in the matter. Health involves a whole person, and a whole person is the
body, mind and maybe most importantly, the spirit; and we have an immense say
in what we do to nurture our bodies, minds and spirits. We can and do have a
tremendous effect our health. Yes, “We’re all going to die anyway,” as the
excuse for doing something that is probably really stupid goes, but barring
acts of God and madmen, we can have a profound influence on whether we die
anyway at the age of 32, 52, 72 or 102.
Our goal should be to die young as old as possible!
Which brings us right back to the beginning. Because who exactly
is “we”?
Who—besides God or whatever you term the power beyond our
power—is responsible for your health?
A Matter of Trust
Everyone is responsible for your health. But, in reality, only
you are. Let me explain.
Whatever your current state of health is, and whatever it will
be, absolutely depends on others: people you know, people you will never know,
people living on the other side of the world, people long dead. That is, of
course, because everything you do and everything you need affects your health,
and everything you do and need involves other people. You breathe. The air sucked into your lungs has been affected by
generations of strangers. You sleep. Your rest requires the civility of your
neighbors. You drive. Your stress points are tested by the volume and courtesy
of those driving when you are. You eat. You rely on others who have picked,
handled, examined, considered, and even first created or discovered the food to
assure that, at the least, it won’t poison you on the spot.
It’s easy to become somber about humanity with the media’s (and
therefore our own?) obsession with only bad news. But when you step back and
realize how much we rely on one another for our own health and well-being, and
how well this actually works—our quality and length of life have increased dramatically
throughout our history, and the chances that anyone reading this article today
will be gone tomorrow or even next month are incredibly small—it affords a
brighter view of humanity.
That is, the most important news is not that malicious people
exist, but that despite the heavy coverage they receive, they are a very small
minority. Your health will improve if
you strive to remain aware of the good news like that above—the positives in
the world, and your life. You can read uplifting books, take long walks, play
with children, dance with your spouse, pray, meditate, chat with an elder, go
jogging, quilt, build a model railroad, shoot some hoops, unicycle, or play the
cello, but you should do whatever it is that refreshes your spirit, that
revitalizes your perception, and do it often. Others may contribute to your
efforts on this front, but only you can decide to do it.
Which brings us halfway to an answer. While it is crucial to focus on the positives, and that is your
job, the positives should never be an excuse to ignore what needs fixing. Not
growing complacent is your job, too.
And so it’s also necessary to remember this: while everyone does in one
way or another contribute to your health, some are considerably more
responsible for doing so than others. The more responsible they are, the more
you need to be aware of what they’re doing and why, because the more it affects
your duration and happiness on this planet.
If you had to make a list right now of those others most affecting your
health, then, who would be in, say, the top ten? And how much could you say you
really know about these top ten?
That is, who are you really most trusting with your life, and
have you done your homework on them? It’s a tough question, because we all like
to believe we’re in control, but who are you trusting blindly?
Do Your Homework
It’s comforting to know that most people in this world mean no
harm to others, and in general they may even wish us well. On the other hand,
it’s also true that as the circle expands outward from your family, friends,
co-workers and neighbors, the less people have your particular health and
well-being—versus other goals—in mind. And the cool reality is that the
majority of those to whom you most trust your health are well outside the center
of your circle. Often, therefore, they’re well outside the center of your
awareness.
How often, for example, do you think about the agriculture
industry? How much do you know about it? Unless you’re in agribusiness, chances
are it rarely warrants a passing consideration much less a heated discussion
over the water cooler. And yet agribusiness’ impact on quality and length of
life should put it at or near number one on everyone’s top-ten list of those
others responsible for our health.
You eat multiple times a day, every day. Despite the
conventional notion that healthcare means doctors, pills, and hospitals, your
health—your energy levels, ability to fight and prevent disease, and how long
you live—depends far more on that which goes into your body so frequently:
food. Food is the primary method of healthcare, and agriculture is still, as it
has been for 10,000 years, the source of our food. So what do you know about those administering your healthcare in
the form of food?
Put another way, why do you eat what you do? Perhaps you’ll
answer it’s because you make the choice to do so. Okay then, what has
influenced your choosing, and for that matter, who has decided what your
choices will be? Consider corn. It is
by a wide margin the
The corn industry, like the agribusiness industry as a whole, is
centered on revenue and profit, not your health. And the ten billion bushels of
corn produced per year that bring in $20 billion are very cost-efficient and
profit-producing, thank you.
The bottom line is that the corn kings—the executives and their
politicians at the head of operations—do not plan their efforts around your
health or the nation’s. They produce mass quantities of corn because it is
highly efficient and they push it up to the food manufacturers. The food
manufacturers purchase these mass quantities of corn and utilize it in nearly
every food because it is very cheap compared to other raw resources, and they
in turn push these foods to the supermarkets and, through suppliers, to
restaurants. The supermarkets and restaurants, through the aid of a little
thing called marketing, then push it out to you, the consumer. And so you,
lucky consumer, have thousands of corn-laced products to “choose” from. And
most of us, standing before that magnificently colorful wall of sixty-nine
different breakfast cereals, are duped into believing we’re actually making a
choice.
But there are ten thousand acres, and likely years of your life,
between an uninformed and an intelligent choice. The relative health value of
corn in its raw state is, depending on the expert asked, mediocre to low. In
its processed state -- by far the predominant state the public consumes it
in—there is an even more uniform consensus among experts: it’s crap. But except
for sweet corn (a miniscule percentage of all corn consumed), most people
grabbing a burger and fries, an all-American breakfast of bacon, eggs, and
pancakes, or virtually any common meal, are not thinking, “I shall now choose
to eat lots of corn.” They certainly don’t ponder why they are eating it.
Most consumers are, to be blunt, very good cattle, consuming
whatever is dumped before them, both literally and figuratively. But this blind
trust, which embeds itself so deeply that it becomes convention—part of our
habits, our assumptions, our perception of what is “normal”—can be deadly.
Because, while it would be ideal if those others who are among the most
responsible for our health and well-being therefore had our health and
well-being as their central goal, they almost never do.
Whether it’s agribusiness, food manufacturers, chain
restaurants, drug makers, the health insurance industry, or any of the others
most responsible for your health, they do not plan their business around
increasing your health, happiness and longevity. They plan their business
around making money, and then more money, because that’s why businesses are in
business. This even (and especially) goes for the federal government that,
despite being founded on a principle of “life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness” for its people, does not begin and end all discussions with what’s
best for the health of its citizens, as perhaps it should. Sometimes the end result, the products or
services provided by these others, are indeed good for you in addition to being
good for them. But often—judging from our overweight and chronic disease
epidemics and other factors, far too often—their goals are antithetical to our
own, or what should be our own.
It’s not that these institutions are all evil. Some may border
on that label, as may be the case with the pharmaceutical industry whose goals
have mutated into downright greed, but most are neither good nor bad. They are
simply … in business. We live in a free
market society, and they have a right to exist within that framework.
But because we live in a free market society, and a democracy to
boot, you have every right to question them. To find out all you can about how
they are contributing to your health, or lack of it, and to choose other
options if you don’t like what you find. You have every right not to trust them,
and because you are placing part of your life in their hands but they are
motivated by goals other than your life, you shouldn’t trust them. Instead, do your homework.
Others may be responsible for your health in the sense that they
contribute to its success or demise, but your instincts are right: you are the
one human responsible for your health in the sense of personally caring about
it and controlling its fate. If you really care to optimize your weight, fight
and prevent disease, have more energy, and live longer, this means far more
than getting physician check-ups or reading nutrition labels. It means
examining all the habits and perceptions that may be negatively affecting your
health but that you take for granted, and then tracing these habits and
perceptions back to their sources. It means delving into the motivations of
those sources, and as necessary, abandoning their plan for you in favor of your
own.
Moving in the Right Direction
Whether you are trying to optimize your weight, fight illness,
increase your mental and physical energy or simply live longer and healthier,
it is essential to understand and consider all sides of the healthcare
story—not just what the mega-institutions like the pharmaceutical companies or
food manufacturers tell you is right and good.
We need to educate ourselves on what possible factors are
affecting our health. Whether you agree
with every one of our conclusions or not, it does expose the important issues on
a wide variety of health topics that you’ll never find in the mainstream media.
It prompts you to carefully consider what is really good for
you, and to take charge of your own health.
We all must take charge by educating ourselves with the most
current and cutting edge information available. Only then can we be armed
sufficiently to make the important health care decisions necessary to attain
and maintain the highest levels of health, vitality and years of disease free
living our bodies were designed to have.