A major problem of our conventional health care system is that it strips the power from you. Aggressive treatments are done to you, not with you. You are given little guidance on lifestyle changes to improve your health. It’s easy to rely on medications and surgery. But when they fail, it’s just as easy to give up all hope of leading a healthy lifestyle. When you adopt healthy habits, you can help your body heal itself.
Are You Masking Your Symptoms?
Conventional medicine tries to attack individual problems as if they are unrelated to each other.
You might take a medicine for diabetes
A different one for high blood pressure
Another for your heart
Another for joint pain
Another for acid reflux
Another for migraines
You might even end up taking multiple drugs for the same condition. Often, such medicines do not treat the root cause of the problem. They basically mask symptoms while your health progressively worsens. If you want to be truly healthy, it’s high time you started focusing on lifestyle changes to improve your health.
Lifestyle problems
I worked for many years as an anesthesiologist and often cared for patients undergoing open heart surgery. To give you a better perspective about why you need to adopt healthy habits, I’ll tell you a bit of what happens when arteries clog.
The clog creates a thick, yellow, fatty plaque that only allows a trickle of blood through. This trickle is not enough to meet the demands of the heart. The person soon comes down with a heart attack and the doctors recommend stents and bypass grafts. However, when the arteries are diseased anywhere, they are diseased everywhere. Even if the person has 3 to 4 bypass grafts, there is a high chance the problem won’t go away. Over the course of their lives, heart surgery patients often come back for more procedures. Some come back for stents while others come back for a repeat heart surgery.
Sadly, many of my own patients were only in their 30’s and 40’s. It’s disheartening to see young and vibrant people come down with heart attacks and other crippling health issues. Doctors would easily attribute the problem to family history. Too many people neglect the role of lifestyle in these conditions.
Address the root cause
Chronic diseases are forms of inflammation[1] Diabetes, coronary artery disease, arthritis, and many cancers are triggered by inflammatory foods. Poor nutrition, overeating, poor sleep, inactivity, stress, and other lifestyle choices cause cardiovascular[2] and other illnesses. If you can adopt healthy habits, you’ll address the root cause, thereby preventing these diseases. Needless to say, prevention is better and cheaper than cure.
What if you want to change but don’t know how?
It’s much easier to achieve your goals with expert guidance and support. This is why I became a health coach. In my practice, I help people adopt lifestyle changes to improve their health.
I can assure you my clients see results that weren’t achievable with pills and procedures. It’s possible to create habits with tangible benefits beyond looking and feeling healthier.
Research shows that whole food plant-based nutrition is anti-inflammatory and nutrient rich. Together with other lifestyle choices, you can help your body heal and repair itself. As your health improves, you’ll likely reduce your dependency on medication and get back in control of living.
Remember you can take back the power simply because your body was designed to heal itself. If you’re ready to lead a healthy lifestyle, get in touch with me to learn more about health coaching and your potential to transform your life.
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Watzl B. Anti-inflammatory effects of plant-based foods and of their constituents. Int J Vitam Nutr Res. 2008 Dec;78(6):293-8.
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Thomas A. Gaziano. Lifestyle and Cardiovascular Disease. Journal of the American College of Cardiology Mar 2017, 69 (9) 1126-1128.
Carla Hightower, MD, MBA is a physician, health coach, workplace wellness consultant, and speaker. She helps people heal themselves with food. Through wellness workshops and courses, she helps companies create healthy, energetic teams.
Hi Carla,
This is great and I would like to link up so my patients can benefit from your services. Let’s talk over how this can best work. My area of dental care, periodontics is directly related to inflammation as you know. I would love to help your efforts in any way possible. -Yetta Mcullom DDS
Thank you, Yetta for highlighting periodontitis. Serious gum inflammation and infection will damage the gum and the bone if not professionally treated and I’m glad you’re doing this work. It’s life saving because untreated inflammation will spread and exacerbate heart disease, diabetes and other conditions. I imagine you’re seeing up close, the difference nutrition makes for your patients teeth and gums and health overall. I would love to link up with you and support your patients so they get great results. I would also like to connect my clients to you for expert help treating and preventing gum disease.