What is normal health?

SOME ABNORMAL BUT COMMON HEALTH ISSUES

• Digestive issues like heartburn, GERD, constipation, bloating, diarrhoea and IBS
• Repeated headaches, migraines, tension headaches
• Ongoing tiredness, low energy, energy that peaks then crashes
• Overweight, obesity, adipose fat
• PMS, PMDD, infertility and menopause problems
• Chronic skin issues like acne, adult acne, hives, rashes, folliculitis
• Sleep issues such as waking frequently, not being able to get to sleep or stay asleep, and insomnia
• Persistent infections and viruses
• Ageing symptoms such as dizziness, loss of bladder control, stiffness,  poor memory, years of disease, a long decline towards death, osteoporosis
• Autoimmune disease, chronic illness, dementia, Alzheimer’s, cancer, allergies, food sensitivities, most heart disease
• Being on drugs long-term such as high blood pressure medication, statins, blood-sugar-lowering medication like Metformin, beta blockers, steroids, pain medication, anti-inflammatories
• A reliance on coffee, alcohol, sugar and refined carbohydrates to wake up and/or get through the day
• Mental health challenges like obsessiveness, deep or ongoing sadness, euphoria, persistent anger, frequent anxiety, rigid or suicidal thoughts
• Early death due to disease
• In children, poor behaviour, ADD, hyperactivity, tantrums, anger, learning problems, asthma

WHAT’S GOING WRONG?

The list of illnesses that plague the modern world are basically signs and symptoms that something is going wrong in our bodies, and collectively so because many people are suffering from them.

The problem is we have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to eat and live a certain way, but we have abandoned that way of living and our health is declining because of it.

WHAT DOES TRUE HEALTH LOOK LIKE?

• Ample energy to work and live
• A positive outlook
• Occasional short-term illness, which your immune system fights off
• Calm inside and out
• Clear thinking with good memory
• Calm and happy children
• Sleeping easily, deeply and through the night
• Clear thinking with the ability to focus
• Manageable life transitions
• Easy movement
• Pain free
• A quick and easy death in old age

SOME KEY CAUSES OF MODERN HEALTH PROBLEMS

Our processed food diets. They are high in carbohydrates, which not only stress our body but are low in the nutrients our bodies need to function optimally

1. Chemicals, over 80,000 of which have been created since World War Two. They are poison to our bodies and yet they have been allowed to permeate our food and water systems along with the air that we breathe
2. Over-farming of our soil, meaning the food grown in it provides significantly less nutrition, especially minerals
3. Chronic stress, which puts our bodies in a constant state of fight and flight or life and death mode, depleting them of the resources they need for basic everyday functioning
4. Drugs and modern medicine, which focus on quick symptomatic relief rather than finding the root cause of disease and healing it
5. Other environmental factors such as plastics, radiation and EMFs, which are also toxic

Once we didn’t have to think twice before picking an apple off a tree, foraging for wild vegetables or hunting an animal and ponder whether that was healthy or if it contained too many carb or the right fats. We also used to be able to go the shops and get healthy, chemical-free whole foods.

MOST INDUSTRIAL FOOD IS NOT ABOUT NUTRITION OR HEALTH

Why can’t we simply drink the water, breathe the air, eat the food around us and be healthy now? These basic functions shouldn’t be so complicated.

The answer is because most food, and the way it’s grown, isn’t aimed at creating health. It’s about increasing the profits of the big food companies and their investors. Rather than providing nutritious, health-giving food, their job as getting you to buy more of their food-like product, including by adding ingredients such as sugar and other refined carbohydrates that they know are addictive and using toxic chemicals in the process.

Modern food is also about convenience. We expect everything to be fast and easy. We’ve lost our connection with the land and our food sources. This has also distorted our views of what food actually is.

WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT

You have a choice. You can eat industrialised foods and let your taste buds be manipulated, eventually watching your and your family’s health decline.

Or you can take back control, learn what real food is and make conscious choices over what you consume. Why? To create better health so you can live a better life, and hopefully avoid common diseases like cancer, heart disease and dementia.

Here are some ways you can take back control

• Educate yourself on what real food is and eat accordingly.
• Vote with your wallet by buying chemical-free or organic real food
• Take back responsibility for your and your family’s health
• Consciously choose what you eat and drink
• Reduce stress, which doesn’t have to cost money
• Rethink the frequent use of over-the-counter drugs
• Understand that true health involves change and vigilance
• Know that your health is the best investment you can make for your future
• Learn how to cook – including batch cook – tasty, easy, quick and convenient real meals
• Let politicians and others know how you feel

WHAT IS REAL FOOD ANYWAY?

1. Real food is food that hasn’t been processed, or in other words it doesn’t come from a packet containing multiple ingredients including lists of unreadable names and strange numbers. It can be harvested, hunted or caught. It spoils or rots fairly quickly because it’s fresh and full of normal, healthy microbes
2. Real food hasn’t been altered by humankind i.e. it’s hasn’t been genetically modified, pasteurised or homogenised, refined or fed unnaturally like grain fed meat, or had chemicals added to it

YOU RULE YOUR MOUTH, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND

Finally, remember that you rule your mouth and not the other way around. Don’t allow alcohol, coffee, recreational drugs, sugar or other dependencies to manipulate your behaviour. Once you change your diet, the healthy bacteria in your gut will adjust and you won’t even crave these things anymore.

“When diet is wrong, medicine if of no use. When diet is correct, medicine is of no need.”

— AYURVEDIC PROVERB