Good Health is Easy. Disease is complicated

Good health is easy – we are born with it.  It is in fact so easy that for most of our lives we simply do not even think about it.   It maintains itself for a long time with little or no intervention on our part despite the many challenges of microbes, injuries, toxins, and dietary indiscretions.

Good health is easy because it is natural.  We are meant to have good health. These days we have it backwards when good health comes with the idea of supplements, detoxifications, cleanses, excessive workouts, regimented and prescribed exercises, vaccines, yearly surveillance and forced or scheduled relaxation.  The body has its own intelligence and when our actions and choices are aligned with natural law our bodies remain healthy.

What is complicated is disease, long in the making and long in the correction.  Most diseases take a long time to manifest after repeated insults and injuries.  Long before the hemoglobin A1c goes up or heart disease occurs, the disease has slowly progressed.  Liver cirrhosis typically occurs 10 years after repeated alcohol misuse. Before the rotator cuff tears there is repetitive overuse and stress.  The examples are many.

Most modern diseases are related to lifestyle choices – diet, misuse of substances, over exertion and stress.  They are preventable and correctable at early stages and modifiable at later stages.   But instead of laying emphasis on the root cause we continue to focus at the end of the process at which point medications, invasive procedures and interventions, and surgery are often necessary.

So what is the easy path to good health?  It's the natural path of good food, sleep, and mental and physical energy management.  Each of these is the leg of a stool on which health rests.  If one or more of the legs are broken or weak, then the stool is unstable and eventually will collapse.

Maintaining good health is easy when it is built into a society and culture. Farming and dairy practices determine the quality of our soil and food.  Individual and business practices as well as government regulations determine levels of toxins and waste in the environment.  So without societal and cultural changes it is more difficult for the individual to achieve good health.  The answer to both personal and societal good health is the combined effort of the individual and the community. 

Ayurveda teaches us that we are made up of the 5 elements - earth, water, fire, air and space.  If these are not healthy we will not be healthy.   Ayurveda provides this prescription for the individual in the form of the daily routine and dietary guidelines and meditation provides the prescription for society for the global changes that support health and happiness.

 

Good health is simple and available for all but first we need to change our perspective about it.  If we change our perspective, we change our outcomes and our future.