Insanity: "Pharmaceutical Health" Day 10 of 60

As I did my treadmill last night (after Insanity Plyometric Circuit), I finished watching the movie I had started last week.  When I do the treadmill to stretch my legs, I do it in about 25 minute per day increments.  I can usually finish the average movie in about four to five days.  Last week, as an ode to our Utah trip last month, I took down an old favorite of mine, The Electric Horseman.  It stars Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.  Redford plays an aging rodeo star named Sonny Steele who steals (pun intended?) a prize racehorse named Rising Star from a corporate entity that had been using it for marketing, abusing the horse in the process.  All summaries aside, there is a scene at the end where Jane Fonda, a news reporter, responds to Sonny Steele calling her ‘clever.’  She says, “You say that word like it’s a bad thing.”  To which Sonny responds, “No, I don’t mind you bein’ smart.  It’s just sometimes you are too busy being clever.”

Sonny Steele is a simple man who cuts straight to the heart of all matters.  This stunning racehorse, with all the magnificent attributes that God gave it, was being pumped full of drugs and steroids to make it ‘look better,’ all in the name of selling the corporation’s breakfast cereal.  His statement is as much a commentary on the state of the nation at that point in time as it is of Jane Fonda’s character, Hallie Martin. 

As I ate my oatmeal and watched the news this morning, it became obvious to me that his criticism stands the test of time.  Sadly though, it’s not a racehorse that is being abused.  We have gotten to the point where we are now willing to abuse ourselves in the same way.  Rather than acknowledge the beauty of the machine God gave us and work with it the way it was intended, we would rather pump ourselves full of drugs and pharmaceuticals, all in the name of ‘health’ or ‘beauty.’  We have forgotten what it is like to be smart because we are too busy being clever.

In spite of the reams of knowledge we have acquired about the human body and how it functions, we still are busy trying to find ways to cheat.  We live our lives stuffing ourselves with additive laced ‘food’ and, in spite of everything we are being told about obesity and health, we will not stop.  We have allowed corporate giants to manufacture, package, distribute and market to us some of the most physically damaging substances known to man, and we are willingly putting it directly into our bodies.  Obesity studies, mortality statistics, health care costs…you would think these things would have some kind of impact on us right?  We’re one of the most advanced cultures on the planet.  Surely we are ‘smart’ enough to see the writing on the wall.  Right?

Nope.  We are ‘too busy being clever.’  We can have our cake and eat it too.  This morning there was news of another drug.  A short cut to health.  It can help you lose weight.  It can solve your depression.  It can lower you cholesterol.  I didn’t even pay close enough attention to what the drug was.  I just know this, it was fixing something that, as usual, we voluntarily broke in our bodies.  It’s not fixing a broken leg, it’s fixing some form of damage we caused to ourselves because we just can’t see beyond our own willingness to sacrifice long-term health to the immediate desires of the palate.  The real attention getter, the thing that made me look up, was the list of side effects.  It always stuns me the side effects we are willing to risk.  Not to mention the physical and metabolically altering damage that the drugs cause.

How stupid do we have to be?  Really.  We damage our bodies because we refuse to acknowledge the limitation of putting garbage fuel into a finely tuned machine and then further risk physical damage in the name of fixing the ‘problem.’  Why take the drugs?  Because we refuse to simply use our bodies and fuel it in the way it was intended.

The morbidly funny part is that there are corporations lining up to sell us things disguised as food that will kill us…and then they sell us a ‘cure’ to something they are dedicated to causing.  And we are buying it.  We are buying their philosophy, we are buying their message, and we are buying their crap.  And we are killing ourselves in the process.

We accept this whole dynamic so willingly.  We accept it from strangers.  We accept it from people who will not look you in the face when you taste it or be there when you are being damaged by it.  Have you ever tried to talk to people who desperately need to know that there are alternatives?  Have you ever tried to show them ways to eat better and to exercise better?  Some of my new friends at Beachbody have.  I have been trying for years.  You can stand there and be a one hundred percent testament to the success of changing old habits but they will fight you tooth and nail.  You have credibility.  You have facts.  You have evidence and statistics.  You embody what you are saying!!  You may have known them for years.  But they will still buy the philosophy of the ones who put them in harms way, because they want to believe so badly that they can continue to live the way they 'want', not the way it was intended.

As I read the latest book I grabbed about nutrition, “Eat to Live”, it becomes obvious that the book is a working manual of how the body reacts to all of this pharmaceutical manipulation.  It also is a very simple primer for how to turn that around.  As I read it, many of the things it recommends are things I have changed in my diet over the past four years.

Natural foods.  Exercise.  Fruit and vegetables.  Food that is exceptionally high in nutrient density.  Exercise.  Very little meat and dairy.  Did I say exercise?

As I recalled this weekend how my diet has changed, it occurred to me that I haven’t had a cold or flu in four years.  My cholesterol (composite, HDL and LDL markers) has improved massively, with my composite cholesterol going from around 270 four years ago (when the doctor was going to put me on Lipitor) to the 163 it was measured at a few weeks ago.  I am 80 pounds lighter and my diet has allowed me to stay thin and not be in that ‘yo-yo’ diet mode.  My physical condition is optimal for my age.

Basically, I got smart and stopped being clever.

I am hoping, optimistically, that we as a culture get smarter too.  There are alternatives.  Slowly, over time, the lesson will have to be learned or the chickens will come home to roost. 

Hey, listen close, does anyone else hear that clucking sound?  Or is it just me?