The Illusion of Health

Dion Herrera, PharmD

For a long time most, if not all, literature on health and the healthy lifestyle touts following a pre-determined set of physical rules. These rules dictate the proper way to eat, exercise, sleep and live to stay healthy. But what happens when people do everything that they should and the unthinkable happens? Then we turn to a plausible explanation that it was a genetic or environmental issue that caused their affliction. Upon autopsy, when it was determined that there was no such predisposition, now what? What caused the healthy young woman to die of breast cancer at 30 years old, or the fit marathon runner to drop dead from a heart attack at 35, or a 13 year old boy to die from bone cancer?

These are just some of the many cases of unexplainable tragedies that affect otherwise “healthy” people, and it is fodder for the unhealthy to maintain their lifestyles. Their thoughts are something like this: “If these healthy people are dropping dead and they did everything right, then why should I change my habits? If and when my number is up, then at least I know I enjoyed my life.” The reality of the situation is that we can do everything right all the time; however, there are more energies at work to determine our health than we can measure or understand based on our learned limited medical knowledge.

Time and again the “key” to health and healthy living is written in multitude of texts and papers, but it does not guarantee that the human body will remain disease free for the duration of its life. The “key” to stacking the odds in your favor comes down to one word – balance. Balance in everything seen and unseen that affects our life, and how we choose to live our life. Balance in the thoughts we think, the acts we perform,  the words we speak, the emotions we feel or express, the decisions we make and, most of all – the contentment within each and every one of us. Working towards this subjective balance should be everyone’s goal as the FIRST step in stacking the odds in favor of a healthy, disease-free life. And even though this “balanced state of existence” does not guarantee anything; it does harmonize the energies within our bo dy and allows it to heal itself as it should during restful times.

Please contemplate these words and look inside yourself to determine what can be done to accelerate or maintain your health. I challenge you to strike that balance in your life and watch how your body will adapt to its “new” healthy state.

Until next week, be well.
Dion