Welcome To America: Land of the Malnourished and the Weak

There Is So Much Work To Do

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

We should no longer describe the industries pertaining to health as “modern.” MODERN health industries would not be engaging in rent-seeking behavior. We are in the Valley of the Shadow of Health. Our hospitals are beholden to pharmaceutical reps and insurance companies while our doctors have been reduced to technicians for fear of malpractice suits (as well as losing relationships with pharmacological companies). These technicians can also be chasing swollen paydays by peddling pharmacological garbage to their constituents while ignoring the fact that these pills are not solving the problems that are weighing down their lives.

For example, sustained serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

Anecdote: about a decade ago I had my own experience in this industry by way of being in a depressive state. I was down bad, and I was working on finding solutions. I tried an SSRI that was recommended to me by my physician at the time. I took it for 2 weeks and immediately dumped the rest of the bottle down the toilet, returning to my doctor and forcing a discussion around WHY I was feeling depressed. Rather than taking a pill that didn’t SOLVE the problem, the SSRI’s only numbed me to ALL of life and it’s experiences. Rather than provide a solution, the proposed response was to simply numb me to all sensation.

SSRI’s do not cure depression, they simply dull the signals that your body and brain are sending; that they are telling you that you are not happy and that your life needs to be changed, or that work needs to be done towards finding solutions.

This is one of the many failures of the health specialties: they are not talking about the functions that conditions such as depression (not the chronic type), stress and anxiety play in a properly operating, healthy body. We are treating the vast majority of these conditions as the individual’s body is the one operating improperly, when in fact there’s a high likelihood that the individual is the one who is operating improperly. Not their body.

Why is no-one talking about this?

Why are we not having the discussions around how the greatest weights on the healthcare industries are due to lifestyle choices. Why are we not discussing that VAST SWATHS of these problems get — cured — with lifestyle shifts towards consistent physical activity, healthy eating, stretching, meditation, consistent & routine sleep schedules, and having creative outlets.

When we have hundreds of millions of individuals that are treating their bodies like raging dumpster fires, disrespecting the ever-living hell out of the shells they occupy… but we’re treating their bodies as the problem? Give me a break. For the slew of problems that are weighing down America’s healthcare system, working out and eating well provide solutions. For example: depression, anxiety, ADD/ADHD, heart disease, type 2 diabetes (T2D), obesity, hypertension, atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease (CVD), hypothyroidism, cancers… the list literally goes on and on, these have all been shown to alleviated, even cured, by even moderate increases in physical activity.

And then, instead of admitting that we are doing wrong, we try and take some magic pill to fix the issues that we are causing ourselves. Rather than consider, “maybe the fact that I’m experiencing chronic and debilitating anxiety (as an example) is because I’m binging alcohol on a routine basis, not eating healthily, not moving in a healthy volume or manner, popping pills like Pez, and not getting quality, routine sleep — because I’m doing all of the aforementioned to myself during the day, leaving my body to have no idea what is going on and struggling to fix things because it is being poorly used and improperly managed.”

This would be like treating your car like complete and utter shit, not taking it in for its routine maintenance, not giving it the proper fuel for the engine, not avoiding potholes and obstacles, and then turning around and wondering why its performing like a complete bag of dicks — GEE, I wonder why.

Must be because you purchased the wrong car freshener.

If we want to fix the world, we have to fix our selves—the world will follow.

For we are the world, and the world is us.

Get out there. Get under those barbells and onto those deadlift platforms. Choose the healthy option, choose the difficult option. Not because you know you need to, but because you trust that with consistency & discipline you will feel better and operate better with it. And with time and successive moments of “make just one more right decision,” you can become something you thought impossible.

You need you to be better. I need you to be better. Your loved ones need you to be better.

So do better. And in doing so become better.

Maybe you could be “Great.” Wouldn’t that be quite the thing?

I’ve been working on a little project. It’s far from perfect. Check it out, if you have thoughts leave me a comment, fire an email, or shoot me a DM over on Twitter.