Is it sick to choose to be sick?
Why don鈥檛 people take better care of themselves? Why doesn鈥檛 every person rich and poor, young and old, male or female, choose to take the best possible care of the precious and fleeting gift of bodily health?
To a large extent, I feel if I could definitively answer this question, I would somehow unlock the greatest secret of the universe, and suddenly the world would become the great Utopian vision of itself.
What if being healthy was the norm until at least 80 or 90 years old? What if drug companies could not profit off perpetual illness? What if generations of teenagers no longer started smoking in spite of the overwhelming evidence of it being essentially suicide? What if people refused to buy 鈥渇ood鈥� sprayed with carcinogens, or meat of abused, malnourished and artificially grown animals? I cannot help but to hear the music of John Lennon蘑菇视频 鈥淚magine鈥� rising in the background.
The thing is, all of my grandiose fantasies are pointless and unreachable unless we can understand why so many people choose to be anything but their best selves in terms of health. Jack Lalanne was quoted as saying, 鈥溾�ost people work at dying; living is hard.鈥� So my observations are nothing new.
However, what is new now compared to the mid-20th century when Jack said that, is the enormous collection of bonafide research to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that we are what we eat, what we think and what we do. So while at one time, as insane as it sounds, doctors 鈥渞ecommended鈥� smoking, it is now pure willful ignorance for anyone to argue we don鈥檛 know for sure that smoking kills. Yet countless teens still start, and a mind-boggling number of adults continue.
A few years back, I read a book called 鈥淭he Art Of Happiness鈥� by The Dali Lama. In his book, he explained how many people miss the distinction between pleasure and happiness. This is also a way of saying they focus on what they can get right this second, with little or no regard to the effect on their future; sometimes that future can be only 30 minutes away, such as when a person eats a large plate of deep fried chicken wings from less-than-healthy chickens, covered in a sugary barbecue sauce, only to find they feel tired or bloated a half hour later. It is understandable to try that once not knowing, but then to repeat the behavior into later adulthood is beyond comprehension for people who value happiness as the Dali Lama explains it.
If you don鈥檛 care for the Dali Lama蘑菇视频 explanation, you might look at an article published in October 2012 by Art Markman, PhD from the University of Texas. He references two studies of people蘑菇视频 motivation in regard to healthy eating and exercise:
鈥淚n two studies, groups of people filled out a scale designed to assess their concern for the future consequences of their actions. They also measured the strength of people蘑菇视频 promotion and prevention focus. Finally, they examined their attitude toward and intention to perform a healthy behavior. In one study, that behavior was eating healthy foods, while in the other study it was exercising.鈥�
In a nutshell, the conclusion was that 鈥渢here are people who tend to take care of themselves. Those people are concerned about the future consequences of their actions. That concern influences their motivational state.鈥� The researchers found that 鈥渜uestions about people蘑菇视频 concern for the future predict people蘑菇视频 motivational outlook.鈥�
This so-called motivational outlook is what I have been perplexed about. There seems to be a suggestion that if people can be helped to see value in being concerned for the future consequences of the present actions, they may logically choose better health habits, not to mention other preferable things such as less violence.
Of course, it would be naive to pretend there are not mitigating circumstances for people which make pursuit of better health more or less challenging than for others. Income can be a factor; in conventional grocery stores, organic produce costs more per pound than its pesticide-sprayed cousin. However, for those motivated enough, there are alternatives such as home gardening. Some plants grow quite well in pots 鈥� these include many leafy greens. If you grew and ate leafy greens, you would save money, and increase the nutritional value of your food many times over. Many towns have farmer蘑菇视频 markets where food is fresher, and often cheaper since it cuts out the cost of advertising and country-wide transport.
No doubt, marketing has a huge effect on many. There are very few if any commercials for spring mix, but there is no shortage of commercials for burgers, pizza and sugary breakfast cereals. Many of these marketing campaigns are aimed at children. Once formed, these habits are hard to break. The McDonald蘑菇视频 characters 鈥淗amburglar鈥� and 鈥淢ayor McCheese鈥� had profound affects on my formative values and habits in regard to food. Advertising corporations make billions because it works, not because it doesn鈥檛. How does one person overcome or escape these 鈥渁dorable demons,鈥� and another doesn鈥檛? Perhaps the answer is role models 鈥� parents with good health habits? Even that is an imperfect conclusion because many families with multiple siblings have one or two who are overweight, and others who are thin and athletic.
So is it genes? Are we bound by DNA programming? It is a whole article in itself, but in short Dr. Bruce Lipton, author of 鈥淭he Biology Of Belief,鈥� says absolutely not. He found that while we indeed all have genetic code, the expression of those genes is based on behavioral choice, and our beliefs which cause the genes to express or not.
So for now, the very bitter pill for me to swallow is that it is individual choice, and there are so many factors that one cannot apply a single fix. Therefore, I will continue my crusade to try to motivate people to look at their eating and exercise choices with more foresight than they do now 鈥� hoping to help raise consciousness and self-control for as many people as I can, if not for themselves, then for their next of kin who look to and depend on them to model behavior which will literally choose life over death.