Pretend you own a house in a fire zone, like just about anywhere in Southern California, right? Now imagine you don’t carry fire insurance. Perhaps you keep a stack of flammable materials like a wood pile right next to your house. I’ll bet there are thousands of homes just like this. Now pretend you store old leaky kerosene containers in the back yard next to your extensive road flare collection, which you store at the base of your lightning rod. Yeah, I know I’m getting silly. Play with me for a minute. This person would be suffering from a super extreme severe case of IWHTM, It Won’t Happen To Me. We all suffer from this in some form or another, especially when it comes to our health.
Look at your older relatives. The ones who take a bag full of medications every day. The ones who use an electronic wheel chair to shop at the grocery store. The ones who are in and out of the medical doctor’s office, or worse yet, the hospital. Not the ones who are sick occasionally, but the ones who now define who they are by their ailments. You know who these sad people are. What do you think when you look at them? Personally, I think “I wonder what I can do to not be like that when I’m that age.” Honestly, I think that all the time as I walk around and people-watch. Or I might think, “What did they do to get like that?” Because I know that if I sit back and live my life just like they did I will be in the exact same boat that they are in. I will not accept that fate, at least not without a fight. Because I suffer from the opposite of It Won’t Happen To Me. I suffer from It Will Happen To Me. (Well actually I suffer from It Probably Will Happen To Me, but those initials are IPWHTM, which doesn’t fit the title of this article, so let’s just you and I pretend that I suffer from It Will Happen To Me, OK?) (I mean, if I really suffered from It Will Happen To Me then I would have to be some sort of paranoid hypochondriac, right? Which I’m not…am I?)
If I know it will (or probably will) happen to me then I’m going to do something about it now and not wait until it happens to me, right? I’m going to change my lifestyle in some way, or multiple ways. And I’m going to have to develop a plan to make that change, because the change is not going to happen by accident. If I wait for the accidental change then I’m going to be in the same bag of meds riding the same electronic cart checking into the same hospital.
So what’s the plan you ask? Here are the steps I took since 2000 and continue to this day. 1) Drink 64 oz. water per day. 2) Fast-walk/hike 45 minutes 3/week. 3) Weight loss and/or strict weight management. 4) Get adjusted weekly. 5) Daily stretching using the Disc Pump Exercises. 5) Supplementation of Vitamins D3, E, and Multiple, Omega 3, Glucosamine/Chondroitin, Standardized Turmeric. There are other steps that are more geared toward mental/emotional health but those are beyond this article.
For most of us avoiding a personal future defined by medical intervention and immobility does not require much, but it does require a decision and a commitment to that decision. The 5 things listed above are easy to do. Making the decision to do them and committing to that decision for the rest of your life is the hard part. How are you doing with that?
Look at your older relatives. The ones who take a bag full of medications every day. The ones who use an electronic wheel chair to shop at the grocery store. The ones who are in and out of the medical doctor’s office, or worse yet, the hospital. Not the ones who are sick occasionally, but the ones who now define who they are by their ailments. You know who these sad people are. What do you think when you look at them? Personally, I think “I wonder what I can do to not be like that when I’m that age.” Honestly, I think that all the time as I walk around and people-watch. Or I might think, “What did they do to get like that?” Because I know that if I sit back and live my life just like they did I will be in the exact same boat that they are in. I will not accept that fate, at least not without a fight. Because I suffer from the opposite of It Won’t Happen To Me. I suffer from It Will Happen To Me. (Well actually I suffer from It Probably Will Happen To Me, but those initials are IPWHTM, which doesn’t fit the title of this article, so let’s just you and I pretend that I suffer from It Will Happen To Me, OK?) (I mean, if I really suffered from It Will Happen To Me then I would have to be some sort of paranoid hypochondriac, right? Which I’m not…am I?)
If I know it will (or probably will) happen to me then I’m going to do something about it now and not wait until it happens to me, right? I’m going to change my lifestyle in some way, or multiple ways. And I’m going to have to develop a plan to make that change, because the change is not going to happen by accident. If I wait for the accidental change then I’m going to be in the same bag of meds riding the same electronic cart checking into the same hospital.
So what’s the plan you ask? Here are the steps I took since 2000 and continue to this day. 1) Drink 64 oz. water per day. 2) Fast-walk/hike 45 minutes 3/week. 3) Weight loss and/or strict weight management. 4) Get adjusted weekly. 5) Daily stretching using the Disc Pump Exercises. 5) Supplementation of Vitamins D3, E, and Multiple, Omega 3, Glucosamine/Chondroitin, Standardized Turmeric. There are other steps that are more geared toward mental/emotional health but those are beyond this article.
For most of us avoiding a personal future defined by medical intervention and immobility does not require much, but it does require a decision and a commitment to that decision. The 5 things listed above are easy to do. Making the decision to do them and committing to that decision for the rest of your life is the hard part. How are you doing with that?