Take Charge of Your Health

A number of recent encounters have inspired in me opportunities to reflect and consider how best to help the masses when it comes to different facets of health. Specifically, I want to be vocal in changing people’s mindsets that our bodies are supposed to break down as we age and inspire folks to take charge of their health and lives, believing that they are indeed worth investing in!

Take charge of your health!

I recently spent an afternoon with my grandmother, who turned 90 in February. This is a milestone birthday, to be sure, but Grandmom, despite having a razor-sharp mind, is saddled with about the most severe kind of chronic pain you could imagine. For her, every step is utter torture, thanks to knees that collide with each other, and sitting brings little relief. When I went food shopping with Grandmom last summer, her cart was full of animal products—especially milk, cheeses and ice creams—and cooked, processed foods such as doughnuts and pastries.

These foods haven’t done her body any favors, with the dairy products contributing to osteoporosis, and neither has a lifestyle that curtails movement. Yes, my grandmother has brought on all that she is suffering from, and giving a green light to a doctor to put concrete into her spine was not the soundest health decision she’s ever made. I’ve given her the education to make changes, but she hasn’t acted on this information. There are millions of people in America alone who are just like my grandmother.

While getting a haircut last week, I overheard a woman in her early 40s telling a friend she had run into about how her husband “needs” hip-replacement surgery. I pleaded with this woman to have her husband explore my Posture Exercises Method offerings, underscoring how this surgery will not correct the cause of the pain symptoms he’s experiencing: misalignment of his hips and, very likely, other load-bearing joints. “Within a week or two, he’ll be a total believer,” I told this woman. She said that her husband is a former football player and that his bone-on-bone joint function is causing tremendous pain. I asked whether doctors had ever told her husband that cartilage can regenerate—and it can if the body is put into a position to enable this to happen. She said no. The average cost of a hip replacement is about $40,000, and many wind up getting additional hip replacements, about every decade.

An acquaintance from the Lansdale, Pennsylvania, raw food café Arnold’s Way told me about six weeks ago that he “needs” back surgery after suffering a herniated disk in his back while doing burpees. I asked him whether doctors told him about what exactly happened in his back. “Did they tell you that muscles forced the disk out?” I asked. “Did they tell you that muscles can force the disk back into place?” He didn’t get this information from any of the doctors with whom he had consulted. I looked at his feet, and there was a good 16 inches between them, and his toes were sticking out at 10 and 2 o’clock. Optimal posture calls for our feet to be at hip width apart (4 to 6 inches for most) and toes pointed right at 12 o’clock. “Did they tell you about how your misaligned body contributed to your capacity for injury?” “No,” he responded.

It is up to all of us to take charge of our health. It is up to all of us to learn as well as trust and believe in our bodies’ remarkable healing powers before going under a surgical knife. And it is up to all of us to invest in ourselves and not run our bodies into the ground, just for the sake of saving some money. Where do you want to put your wealth? Into a bank account or into your one body, in this lifetime, anyway?

I’m here to help guide you in diet and in eliminating chronic pain and promoting peak performance via my Fruit-Powered Lifestyle Coaching Program and Posture Exercises Method, both in the Fruit-Powered Life Force Center.