COMMON HEALTH MYTHS

MYTH #1: How You Feel Is A Good Indication of Your Health

“Did you hear, Aunt June went to the hospital for some simple tests only to find she was ‘riddled’ with cancer? She felt great and seemed so healthy. “

Many people define their state of health by how they feel. If they have no pain, feel energetic, have no symptoms or current diagnosis, they consider themselves healthy. How you feel is a poor way to determine your health. What if you have food poisoning causing you to vomit and have diarrhea – are you sick? Or is your body doing what it supposed to do, what it should do, – getting ride of the pathogens as quickly as possible (from both ends if necessary!). That’s a correct response, an appropriate response – a healthy response. Yes, we feel horrible, but our body is responding in a healthy manner.Is a fever an appropriate (i.e. healthy) response? Absolutely – the body has recognized that it has been invaded by bacteria or viruses and has the inborn or innate intelligence to know that increasing the body’s temperature halts the germ’s reproductive cycle and initiates a cascade of immune responses to mobilize the body’s defenses. Yet, we think we’re ‘sick’ when we have a fever – when actually our body’s responding perfectly – it’s healthy to have a fever! No, it’s not fun or comfortable to have a fever, but it is a healthy response – it means we’re healthy.

MYTH #2: Medications Make You Healthy

Many people take over the counter drugs or prescription medication to feel good and then believe that they’re healthy. Not only do drugs simply cover up pain or some other valuable warning sign (symptom) that your body has wisely produced, but all drugs have side effects which create ill health.

MYTH #3: If There Is No Diagnosis, You’re Healthy

Nearly all diseases are silent until the late stages of the disease process – heart disease, cancer, diabetes, senile dementia, inflammatory arthritis, autoimmune diseases, etc. When does a cancer patient become unhealthy – the day that it is diagnosed? It takes years and years to for cancer to grow or develop to the point where it can be diagnostically detected; but during the years cancer is developing, your body is not well.

It takes decades for your arteries to clog up with atherosclerotic plaques before you will have a heart attack. During those years, while you’re eating processed foods, living a sedentary life and chronically stressed, you’re unhealthy even though you haven’t developed chest pain, shortness of breath or had a heart attack.

               • The first, last and only symptom for 40% of heart attack victims is sudden death.

MYTH #4: Negative Tests Equal Health

Within the medical or allopathic community, health is often determined by meeting a set group of diagnostic parameters. For example, if a person’s blood pressure is 120/80 or their cholesterol level is below 200, they’re given a ‘clean bill of health’. As mentioned in #3 above, a person can be given drugs which force their physiology to meet those diagnostic numerical criteria (such as blood pressure medication or, God forbid, statins to lower cholesterol) but that doesn’t produce health – it just produces better test results. Another example is mammograms which miss up to 20% of breast cancer tumors.

MYTH #5: Genes Determine Whether You’ll Get Cancer or Have a Heart Attack

It’s not random chance, luck or bad genes that determine your health – it’s your lifestyle choices. It’s plain and simple, yet it’s the truth. Our culture is having difficulty owning up to that truth, or they think that medical science will bail them out of the consequences of their disease-producing lifestyle behaviors, they’re in denial, or they simply don’t care.

“… confirm that genetic effects are subordinate to lifestyle and environmental influences.” Mozaffarian D, Wilson PWF, Kannel WB. Beyond Established and Novel Risk Factors – Lifestyle Risk Factors for Cardiovascular Disease. Circulation 2008; 117:3031-3038. [view abstract]

“The onset and progression of chronic diseases are mediated in the vast majority of cases by an interaction between genetic factors and environmental factors. These environmental factors are largely lifestyle factors, namely physical activity and dietary patterns.” Roberts CK, Barnard RJ Effects of exercise and diet on chronic disease. J Appl Physiol 2005; 98:3-30. [view article]

As my friend and colleague Dr. Stephen Franson often tells his patients, ‘You don’t get sick, you do sick’. The intersection of lifestyle, environment and genetics is what determines your health, but lifestyle trumps everything.