Health

Have you ever seen a teenager in the mall or on the street with a Mohawk hairstyle died purple and green? Do you have a teenager with a Mohawk hairstyle died purple and green? When confronted with this sight, many people, of the middle-class-American demographic, go immediately into judgment mode. What’s he trying to prove? Who does he think he’s impressing? Fact is, if you embrace the values codified in the Constitution of the United States, as we do—regardless of how ridiculous the hairstyle really is—you have to accept that each person in this country, and many others around the world, are guaranteed their freedom to select their preference of fashion in hairstyle and clothing. The kind of car you drive, the home in which you live, including its furnishings, the music, books and TV shows you enjoy, are all a matter of choice. (We’re looking at the generality, not physically harmful exceptions.)
If you’re reading this book, then, unless you’re reading for the benefit of someone else (yeah, right, you’ve got a “friend” that needs to lose weight), we’re going to assume that you have made one additional choice in your life: the choice not to be healthy.Killing yourself instantaneously with a bullet in the head is illegal. If you try and fail you can be arrested when you get out of the hospital. However, there is no law against killing yourself slowly over the course of years—by digging your own grave with a fork! As a matter of demonstrable fact, big business in concert with government has encouraged poor eating habits for more than half a century. Government agencies have played around with the food “pyramid” more than a bipolar pharaoh.
Health, hygiene, and peaceable social interaction with others are not optional lifestyle choices. These are the fundamentals of participating productively in civilized society.
Which brings us to the question: What is Health? Health is not just the absence of disease. It’s very hard to prove a negative. How do you demonstrate that something isn’t there? Perhaps it’s there, but we can’t see it, or feel it, or perceive it.
Have you ever heard someone say, “Hey, did you hear about Charlie? He was in perfect health. He’d never been to a doctor in his life. He suddenly got cancer and died.”
Suddenly? Suddenly got cancer? Did someone send him an infected email or did he pick it up from a toilet seat? No! Charlie’s cancer was the product of years of self-inflicted personal abuse or neglect, lifestyle choices, and failure to monitor his own bodily functions (also to be treated in a later chapter). Don’t let the tone of this paragraph infer that we feel Charlie deserved to get sick and die. Certainly, that’s not our intent.
But there’s an important lesson that few people learn from the news of Charlie’s demise. How many people will ask, “What was it about Charlie’s body that made it turn on itself and devour his organs from the inside out?” That’s what cancer is. Cells in the body begin to grow out of control, consume all available nutrients, and invade and crowd out organs, ultimately destroying the body’s ability to maintain vital functions. Further, Charlie’s immune system—

which protects the body from the spread of these rogue cells when they occur and as they do naturally in all of us—failed.
Did Charlie have any warning signs? Why didn’t his immune system protect him?
Well there were times Charlie felt a little down. He had some bad days when he just didn’t have the get-up-and-go…but that happens to everyone from time to time. He was as healthy as a horse!
Horses get sick and die, too. And, Yes, it seems that “that” happens to everyone from time to time, but it’s not suppose to. That’s called dis-ease, the frequency and intensity of which probably increased over time until Charlie had to make his very first trip to the doctor and suddenly had cancer.
A depressed or inefficient immune system is also a disease state that has no symptoms until it lets a cancer cell grow, or a virus or bacterium multiple and attach to—or attack—the healthy cells of the body.
We can never say we are healthy for sure, because the apparent absence of disease is not proof of health. However, there are things we can do to increase our chances of being as healthy inside as we feel on the outside, assuming we feel healthy on the outside. This book provides guidance; the advice given here is a safety belt for your wellbeing. The step-by-step guidelines in the following chapters describe a technology for keeping us truly healthy until we’re struck by a cosmic ray or our “number is up” or we’re called by an Almighty Being. Take your choice depending on your personal belief.
There is ample medical and scientific evidence that the human body has no built in time-to-die. If Galapagos tortoises can live to be two-hundred, why can’t we? Cells can renew themselves almost indefinitely, if maintained in a biological environment associated with perfect
health. Unfortunately, “perfect” health is elusive. Impurities, toxic substances and disease-inducing factors assault us each and every day. Our water, air and food supply are tainted, and our lifestyles are stressful. This makes extreme extension of our lives, for all practical purposes, impossible. But a healthy, productive and youthful life to One Hundred or More Years is well within our grasp.