There is no doubt health care in this country has to change. The very first thing to change is the definition of health care. Health care is not insurance, pharmaceuticals, or surgery. These are disease care. Health care is eating good organic whole foods, getting good sleep and getting regular exercise. So, the question is: What do you want to pay for? Health care to prevent disease? Or disease care?
The Cost of Buying Non-Organic
Organic produce is not exponentially more expensive than regular produce. Producers of non-organic produce would like the public to think that. But much like every aspect of health care, we need to change the way we think about our food expenses. First, consider what you are buying…food for your families’ health. Does a little bit of toxic material matter? Are you eating it every day? Every meal? Then add all those exposures together and determine what exactly is a “little bit.”
Calculating what is spent on food also requires a shift in thought. If organic produce is a dollar more per pound than non-organic that sounds like a lot. Are you buying a whole pound of that produce? Are you buying smaller quantities so it’s really only a few cents more than “conventionally” grown to avoid buying the toxins that come with it. Further, why should food be cheap? It is directly related to your health. Thinking about it that way, you are investing in your health care with dollars spent on good food.
If you are buying inexpensive, processed or fast food, what is your body getting in nutrients in return on those investments? If you are eating fake food, the lack of nutrients will leave you craving more food as your body is well aware that it has not consumed nutrients needed to function properly. More fake food consumed…more cost to buy it. If Americans consumed the 40% of produce that is thrown out every day instead of eating fake food, how would that affect our health care and therefore disease care industry?
Most grocery stores are now carrying organic. Some are even advertising that organic is cheaper than the stores that brought organic food into the public’s view. You still have to consider what you are buying. There are many grades or quality of produce that stores buy and sell. All produce is not the same and your choices are many.
The Cost of Inadequate Sleep
Not getting good sleep will ruin your health eventually. The human body requires rest and recovery every night. Patients often suffer from a number of problematic symptoms not realizing that they are not getting enough rest to allow their body to function normally the next day. Eventually a number of symptoms plague a patient that gets little or poor sleep. Statistically shift workers have much higher disease risk than regular day workers. It is due to the irregular sleep patterns these workers live with.
The triggers to poor rest and recovery are many and finding the right balance, or the right mattress, is crucial to preventing disease. Whatever the cost of correcting this, patients who suffer from sleep deprivation will tell you how good and healthy they feel once they determine how to correct a sleep disorder. They have no problem spending the money to buy this kind of health care.
The Cost of Being Sedentary
Regular exercise seems to be the most difficult investment in health care for most patients. Yet this is the most important piece. It requires an investment of at the very least, TIME. Try as we do to get everything important in our lives done each day, there is still more to do at the end of every day. This will never change. If it is work that uses up your every minute, remember that no one ever put on their gravestone, “I wish I worked more.”
Being sedentary does not bode well for the human body. The messages sent to every cell functioning in the body is: no need to burn calories, no need to make muscle tissue or bone mass, no need to produce more hormones, no need to use cholesterol, and on and on. The functions in the human body will take the path of least resistance. If it isn’t directed to do more to keep us healthy, it won’t. That leads to dis-ease when functions begin to fail us. Once this process begins it becomes more and more difficult to bring us back to health. Then the investment in disease care really begins to be costly for medicines and surgery and medical visits and hospital care. All this to try and recover what would still be yours if you had scheduled a little time every day to exercise and tell your body, “I’m going to need more energy, burn more calories, make more of everything I need to stay healthy, so I can be active and feel good every minute of the rest of this day.”
Changing how you think of “health care” will help you change your health. Are you investing in your health care, or waiting to pay for disease care?
Dr. Ann Aresco is a licensed physician at ProNatural Physicians Group in Berlin and is accepting new patients. Call for an appointment at 860-829-0707. To learn more about naturopathic medicine visit: ProNaturalPhysicians.com or look for ProNatural Physicians on Facebook. ProNatural Physicians Group NDs and APRNs are providers for most major insurance carriers. www.ProNaturalPhysicians.com.