Lost and Found – a Novel by Ron Rink

Today I was reading a forum that is devoted to the subject of global warming. The folks were talking in great detail about the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” — the movie is about Al Gore’s slide show about this major global warming crisis. I have to admit that I haven’t seen the movie — almost did a couple of months ago — but the DVD of the movie didn’t arrive on time, so it wasn’t shown.

As I was reading I began to see some surprising parallels between our environmental crisis and our healthcare crisis. The health of our environment and the health of our bodies have a lot to do with each other.

In the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”, it is made apparent that the things we feel make us more comfortable — things like, luxury cars, climate-controlled work and home spaces, and other goods fueled by the endless consumption of oil — are actually destroying the very world around us.

The way we deal with healthcare in this country isn’t much different. You would think that it’s designed to keep us healthy, right? Look at how our health economy functions — it’s based on sickness — not health.

Look at the pharmaceutical industry — or the producers of our food — or the restaurant industry — how do they get their profits? They make the most money when we eat unhealthy food, exercise less, and are more stressed.

I saw a commercial on TV last night that was encouraging the actor to eat some very unhealthy food because all he had to do is take a couple of antacid pills to relieve the distress this food would bring to his body. The commercial was for a product put out by the drug companies.

What encouragement does the healthcare system offer us to prevent illness? Not a lot. Most everything is focused on treatment, not prevention. In fact, a better name for this industry would be disease-care, not healthcare. Our economy thrives on sickness. That’s really sad.

In 2002, the leading chronic diseases, including heart disease (17 million), cancer (7 million), chronic lung diseases (4 million), and diabetes (1 million), caused 29 million deaths worldwide. Yet, these diseases are so prevalent because of lifestyle — lousy sugar and fat-laden diets, sitting on our butts way too much, addictions to tobacco, caffeine, and alcohol.

But the fact is, one billion people in the world are now overweight. 300 million are obese. One in three children born today will have diabetes in their lifetime. One in five children in China will be overweight by the year 2010, as will one in two children in North and South America.

Talk about an “Inconvenient Truth”! It seems that everything comes down to profits, doesn’t it? What is the reasoning behind not focusing on prevention in our health organizations and governmental leadership? It can’t be because they just don’t know. If we know, why don’t they? Nope! It’s not ignorance of the problem — it’s about money. There’s a mountain of evidence showing that eating better, exercising, and looking at the causes of disease are way more effective — and far less costly — than any drug.

How do we change this? Only you and me have the power to do that. We need to vote with what we put in our stomachs — and we also need to vote with our feet by spending more time on them rather than our behinds.

As Margaret Mead said, “Don’t think that a small group of passionate, dedicated people can’t change the world. In fact it is the only thing that has.”

Tune back in here on Monday and I’ll give you some ways to make this happen.

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Got questions?

Contact me at: http://www.ronrink.com

My email and phone number are at that site. Feel free to contact me. I’m here to help you with your health, nutrition and fitness goals.

Have a healthy and nutritious day!

Shanti,

Ron

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