Prevention is better than cure

I often hear people say things like, "I did oil pulling for years but I still got sick and I never lost any weight," or "I took apple cider vinegar every day and I still gained weight," or "I eat a smoothie every morning and I don't feel any different." The problem with all of these people is that they are living their lives on an 80/20% basis. ie. 80% of their lives include normal food, normal beauty products and normal household cleaning products and about 20% of their lives is organic, healthy and chemical free.

I always say, do things in baby steps. I'm all for that. If you try to do something cold turkey, there is a bigger chance of failure. However, if you are going to take a year or two to make changes, then all the apple cider vinegar in the world won't be enough to make any difference. Apple cider vinegar alone, is not a cure. It makes things better, there is no doubt, but if you are still smoking 20 cigarettes a day and eating mostly "normal" food, you might as well be drinking a mug of water instead.

There are no miracles cures and there are very few second chances. If you are one of those people who believe that taking a diet pill and drinking a protein shake, will burn all the fat off you and save you from future dread disease, then I'm not sure my blog will be enough to get the message across. There is no quick fix. There is a decision to make a lifestyle change. And that is FOR LIFE. It's not something you do for a few months to lose some weight, or do a quick detox, and then go back to the way things were.

Pretending something doesn't exist doesn't make it go away. It just puts off the inevitable. I'm a procrastinator myself, I get why you would do that;) It's easier to pretend the horrible truth doesn't actually exist. That way you don't have to accept it. Each day you compromise your health and your future by convincing yourself that you're just not cut out for the healthy life, or the active life, and you're ok with that. You're doing just fine. You really believe it too...

Until the day your doctor tells you that you have diabetes, or high blood pressure, or you're infertile, or worse, you have cancer. Suddenly you think, "Why me?! I was fine!" But were you really? Part of you knows that some of the things you do, are bad for you. I know it. We all know it. We just somehow think that we are invincible. We take for granted that the body we have will never let us down. And then we are always so shocked when something bad happens to us, or someone close to us. I'm not sure what it is in human beings that allows them to be so destructively fearless regarding themselves. It's almost like we are looking for ways to bring the end on faster. But when the end threatens, we gasp in shock and horror that it could actually happen to us.

I'm a rally driver. Seriously, I've competed and won a few of them! I love to drive and I don't dawdle about it;) I used to ignore speed limits and take all the gaps. How I wasn't killed I'll never know! I was young and stupid. I'm older and wiser now, but I still love to take the gaps. I just do it more carefully these days. My eyes are always on every part of the road that I can see. I don't ignore blind spots. But I see it as a challenge, getting from A to B, legally, as fast as I can! I KNOW it's a stupid thing to do. At any point I could hit a pothole, blow a tyre or just not see something, and yet I do it. I just love driving and the challenge it poses for me. I tend to save my rally driving for the actual rallies now though;)

I think a lot of people play games with their lives in much the same way. We just keep thinking, "It'll never happen to us." In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the thought of something bad happening doesn't actually even enter our heads. We don't even consider it because we feel untouchable. I'm not sure why that is. There is enough death and destruction around us to convince us that life is short and every day that we are here is a privilege. But we continue to play with our lives as if we have many of them left. Unlike our cats, we don't get nine lives though. We only get one (depending on your beliefs you may come back to ANOTHER life!)

Some might argue that it makes sense, then, to live your life to the fullest. What does that mean though? I have a wonderful, happy life, but I do everything I can to preserve our health and wellness. I even slowed down my driving;) We go out and have a few drinks now and then with friends, but it's not often and the rest of our lives are lived cleanly. We never stop doing all we can to be healthy, even if we are out having fun with friends. That's not the case with most people I've noticed. Somewhere along the line, people bought into the propaganda that happiness was found in copious amounts of alcohol, foods, beauty products and cleaning products, and cigarettes and other drugs. (Cigarettes are considered a drug in case you were wondering) The propaganda told us that, if anything went wrong with our bodies, we could just take a few pills, or cut out the offending organ, and carry on having fun! 

My question is, why on earth would you want to play russian roulette with your life that way? Already we increase our odds of things ending, every time we get in a car, or cross a road, or fly in a plane. If I'm perfectly honest, I'd take a quick death over a dread disease any day. I have seen too many people suffer through awful diseases, in such terrible pain, only to die, to EVER want to be in that position. There is nothing I can do about planes, trains and automobiles but I CAN take charge of my health. We all could, if we realised just how easy it actually was, and how essential it was.

It IS a lifestyle change though. And it may take a couple of months to get used to it but, if you can convince yourself that this is actually normal, and everyone else is crazy, it makes it a lot easier;) Honestly, I DO think most people are crazy to eat and drink half of what they do. It doesn't make sense to me, that people could allow themselves to be so ignorant about their own bodies. If we didn't have these bodies, we wouldn't exist. Doesn't that mean we should treat it with respect? 

As I said in the beginning, you can do one or two things to be healthier, and "experts" might say that's fine, as long as you do something. But "experts" are not entirely right, there. If you are a healthy individual, if you go for all your tests regularly and you know everything is perfectly in order, THEN living your life 95% healthy and 5% not, is acceptable. Incidentally, if you are healthy, you are exceptionally lucky. These days it's getting harder and harder to find 100% healthy people! And that is the whole point of maintaining a clean lifestyle. The aim is continuous maintenance so that you DON'T end up getting sick. It's all about prevention. Most people who don't live a clean, healthy life, only decide to become clean and healthy AFTER they find out they are sick. It's a lot harder to fix things ONCE you are sick. The sad thing is, most people don't even realise they are sick, and they do more and more damage without realising. Prevention is BETTER than cure.

If you are NOT healthy, if you already know that you have high blood pressure, or you're grossly overweight, or you have diabetes or cancer, or some other dread disease, there can't be ANY half measures in your life. You need to be in it 100% until you are healed. If it's not the type of disease that CAN be healed, you STILL need to be in it 100% if you want to get as close to better as possible. This is your life you are playing with and NO amount of smoothies or apple cider vinegar will help if you are drinking and smoking every day and filling your body with chemicals. All the nutrients you are taking in are literally being destroyed before they can do any good. It's like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. If you don't want to do it for you, then do it for those who love you and need you in their lives. There is always a reason to look after yourself. Read back through any of my blogs and start doing your research!

The amount of people in the world, who will actually consider any of this, is minuscule, which is scary to me. If I could, I would make it my mission to change the world, one person at a time. I love the thought of helping people become healthier, of lessening the amount of suffering through disease. That's one of the main reasons I started this blog. I hope that, over time, I can reach more and more people and I can do that with YOUR help. Share it on your pages, become a subscriber and favourite the posts if you like them. I would really appreciate the help, and in return, I will do my best to post things that, I believe, will add value to your life, and to those of your nearest and dearest.

Until tomorrow!