The Biggest Mistake People Make With Their Health

This article was provided by Dr. Jarrad Martin of Ridgeview Wellness & Chiropractic in Plano, TX. If you would like to learn more, please visit https://www.ridgeviewwellness.com/.

Health and Longevity in the US

I have spoken to thousands of people in speaking engagements in the Plano
and surrounding areas. At the beginning of each talk I always ask the same
question, “In terms of HEALTH and LONGEVITY, who feels like we are doing a
GOOD job in the United States?”. As you might imagine, what happens next
is not one person raises their hand. We all know in terms of living happy
and healthy to 100 years of age, the U.S. is not making the cut. Yet there
are other cultures in this world where people do indeed live happy and
healthy to 100. They are fully functional have great diets, exercise,
community and are dancing into their golden years with grace.

We are in the midst of a healthcare crisis in the United States. We spend
more money, and take more medication than any other country in the world.
According to Dr. Michael Carrbery, author of The Death of American
HealthCare, the US now spends 3.3 Trillion dollars on healthcare each
year. That comes to 9 million per day. The U.S. is now spends more than
twice as much as the next country in line. Just to be clear, it is the
American citizens that are paying that bill every year. The U.S. is 5% of
the population and takes more than 60% of the medication of the world. If
that number was 30% it would still be astronomical. If more drugs and
surgery what what makes a person healthy, the US would be the most healthy
country in the world!

The state of our healthcare has become out of control. However, there is a
way out. There is a way to turn this giant boat around and head back into
true wellness and prevention. But it will not come from the top down. I
do not believe the Pharmaceutical companies, the Government, the FDA or any
other Giant Organization is going to come save us. In fact, they may
bankrupt us if we do not do something about our 3.3 Trillion dollar bill
each year. Change is going to come from the ground up. It is going to
change with you and me. Margaret Mead said, “A small group of thoughtful
people could change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever
has.” Once we take personal responsibility for our health as an individual in our
community, we will become contagious and others will begin to take
responsibility as well. No longer can we rely on the powers that be to
keep us healthy.

The way out is through making decisions using the correct data. I am sure
anyone would agree there is an abundance of incorrect data out there. We
need simple principles that help us make the right decisions and avoid the
blind spots when it comes to our health. Here is one of the biggest pieces
of misinformation that we operate on:

Basing your health on how you feel.

More than half the time, the first sign of heart disease is a fatal heart
attack. We cannot feel plaque growing in our arteries yet heart disease is
the number one killer in the US. However, the person who had that fatal
heart attack could have felt totally fine the day before. But silent
trouble was brewing. The second leading killer in the United States is
cancer. Have you ever heard of someone going for a routine checkup and
finding out they have cancer, yet they felt fine? Have you ever had a
paper cut and it hurt like crazy but it wasn’t life threatening? So if
the top 2 killers in the US not present symptoms until late in their
progression, how much sense does it make to base our health on how we
feel? It does not and we need to take more action to be proactive and make
sure we are making healthy choices. If we wait until we have symptoms
before making healthy choices, our first symptom could be our last.

It’s not our fault though. I mean, how were we educated in the first
place? When are we taught to go to the doctor? When we are sick. How do
we know we are sick? We have symptoms. What is the typical treatment?
Drugs and surgeries. Drugs and surgeries definitely have their
place. However, drugs and surgeries are not what makes a person healthy. The
pharmaceutical companies are not even advertising that they will make us
healthy. What they do include in their advertisements is the side effects.
They say we will treat your symptom, but here is the cost. And then there
is the jaw dropping list of side effects that are worse than the actual
problem in the first place! Medication does NOT make us healthy, it just
keep us alive while our quality of life continues to decline.

We need to start putting our focus on what makes a person healthy vs. how
to treat a disease once we have it. If you want to be rich, would you
study the poor? Of course not. But most of our focus in Western medicine
has been to manage disease. We have a saying in Chiropractic that you
can’t fight the darkness, you can only turn on the light. Now, I know that
does not sound scientific, but sometimes common sense can get lost in the
wash. We need to shift our focus on what makes a healthy person healthy
and do those things, daily.

Good News

Here is the exciting part! We have more control over our health than we
ever thought. Here are a couple of examples:

Bruce Lipton, world renown cell biologist, estimates that less than 5% of
long term debilitating diseases are due to genetics. The most cutting edge
research is supporting the way we live our lives and the way we think has
much more to do with our well being and ability to heal than we ever thought.
In fact, it may be the most important factor for survival. I have a population of Oncology nurses that come to me for adjustments. The nurses say first hand that the attitude of the person with cancer plays an extremely important role to whether their patient beats cancer.

Bugs! Most of the bugs we are afraid of are already inside of us. E.
Coli, Staph, etc. Top life and business strategist, Tony Robbins, makes a
great example of this. When New York City has a garbage strike, trash
piles stack up on the sidewalks. As a result they have a surge in the
rodent population. How silly would it be to say, “Darn all these rats,
they brought all this trash!”? They had to provide an environment for the
rats to flourish. Our body is the same way, we have to provide an
environment, through poor choices, for the bugs in our body to flourish and
make us sick. When we create a healthy environment through healthy choices
we provide an environment in our body to keep these bugs in check.

Diabetes is a terrible disease that wreaks havoc on a persons health. Diabetes
in the 80’s was a death sentence. Today, just 3 decades later, people are
reversing diabetes through lifestyle and diet changes in a matter of weeks.
How about that! So what other diseases right now, that seem like a life
sentence, could be slowed or stopped by lifestyle changes alone?

In conclusion, we are in a tough place in terms of health and longevity in
the US and our biggest mistake is basing our health solely on how we feel. We
need to do more. We cannot wait for symptoms to show up before we take
action. Symptoms are often the last thing to show up.

We all know we should eat better, exercise, think positive, get adjusted,
etc. We just need the motivation to actually do these things. Let's be an
example to our community that these efforts are worth the time. Let us be
the proactive ones running down the beach with our great grandkids trying
to keep up.

Dr. Jarrad Martin