We are seeing the last generation to live to their 90s and beyond. Despite the news telling us that due to the advances of “modern medicine” we are now living longer than any time in the history of man, we really aren’t. Well, we really aren’t living. We are becoming sicker earlier in life, and are merely squeezing every bit of life we can for as long as our infirmities will allow.
This week, we saw veterans of WWII visiting the beaches of Normandy. Most of these men were around 100 years old. While most were confined to a wheelchair, they were able to attend. This, despite having lived through the most harrowing experience of their very young lives. That kind of stress should have shortened their lives by decades. But that entire generation has endured. Remember, this is the generation that was raised on meat stored in a cellar, raw milk delivered on their porch (or milked themselves, from which they made butter), cooked their food on cast iron in lard and tallow, had no real “medicine” to speak of (save penicillin), they worked in factories with no OSHA or safety devices, and had no air conditioning.
Since then, we have added so many modern “luxuries” without which we couldn’t exist. We have air conditioning, HEPA filters in our cars and homes, convenient instant foods, the best medicines and medical devices known to man, food storage devices like fridges and freezers and vacuum packing devices, and cars (with heated seats and steering wheels) that drive and park themselves.
Our current lifestyles are shortening our lifespans. I’ve read that the generation born today will have a lifespan shorter than their parents. Imagine, your grandchildren will die at a younger age than your children. This shouldn’t be.
Today I’ll go over a few of the primary factors that are detrimental to our longevity and what we might do to counter them. I do a lot of reading on this subject, and this is what I’ve gleaned. Feel free to disagree with me.
FAKE FOODS
It started with the fast-food boom that started in the 60s. Ready made food, made once in a factory and then reheated at the store ready for you to drive past a window to take the bag home. Fast, convenient, and cheap. We no longer had to fix all our meals from scratch in the hot kitchen. Along came the next wave of food-type substances, pre-packaged foods. Hyperpalatable, loaded with salt (and other preservatives) so they could last forever on a shelf. Hell, when I was a kid the running joke was that a Twinkie could still be a Twinkie 25 years after it was wrapped in its plastic sleeve.
These two industries have gotten bloated with cash while we just got bloated. They make hyperpalatable foods from chemical substances that don’t qualify as food. But they sure are convenient, aren’t they. Hungry? Just open a package of some brightly colored, sugary, tasty treat. Mmm.
I’ve seen videos where people will sit a fast-food burger on the counter and it hasn’t even started growing mold in two months. We eat these things by the ton. Even the ads on TV show that these foods are so addictive that you simply can’t put them down. This should tell you something.
America has more “food” available per person (and in more locations) than most other countries, and we sell more diet books than any other country.
We are overfed and undernourished. If it wasn’t a food 150 years ago, it shouldn’t be treated as food today.
In the 1960s we were told that fat causes heart attacks. This is because President Eisenhower had a heart attack in 1958. Ansel Keys then wrote a report that indicated that eating fat raises cholesterol, which causes heart attacks. The war on fat began. No more cooking with butter or lard. You are told to cook with Crisco and industrial oils. Both of these have recently been shown to be very detrimental to your health. It just so happens, Keys threw out a lot of data in his report that didn’t support his anti-fat claims. He also suggested that sugar was the safest food we could consume, as our bodies could burn sugar for energy. It also just so happens he was being “encouraged” to write this report to support the budding vegetable oil industry. “Food” manufacturers then tried every method available to remove fat from their processed foods and replace that fat with sugar. Hmm.
The latest research shows that this information has been incorrect the whole time. We should go back to eating real meat and real veggies.
MEDICINES
John D. Rockefeller discovered he could make drugs from petroleum. He then bought the AMA and sent his representatives to all the medical schools with an offer to buy them all the buildings and equipment they could ever need if only they taught his form of medicine. Pharmaceutical medicine based on petroleum.
I do a neat thing with my clients. I ask Google (on voice) what percentage of pharmaceuticals are made with petroleum. Google then speaks back me. “While pharmaceuticals make up only 3% of petroleum use, nearly 97% of all pharmaceuticals are made with petroleum. Then I ask if my client has ever been sick because they were low on oil.
Many of our drugs are designed only to “treat” illness. They never cure or erase or reverse. Most are designed to move a number on a chart, bringing the number back to a normal range. Then you are declared healthy. Whether you feel better or not, the number says you’re healthy. But you are more than a number on a chart.
Many of our drugs come with so many side effects that one often winds up taking handfuls of drugs to cope with the side effects of all the drugs, and it’s an endless cycle.
OTC medicines are useful not in curing your temporary symptoms, like a headache or head cold, but in suppressing the symptoms so you can get back to work. Companies are more interested in you coming in to work when you feel like a dumpster fire than they are in you staying home so you can heal. I suppose it never occurred to them that when you come to work sick (but symptom suppressed) you stand a great chance of passing your cold or flu to everyone else in the office.
We now have more “vaccines” available than ever before. Many of these vaccines need numerous boosters or need reapplication every year – like the flu vaccine. When I was kid, the vaccine schedule was about 8 shots by age 18. Now it is more like 72, 12 of which are administered before a newborn leaves the hospital. When I was young, if a kid in the neighborhood got the chicken pox or the measles, every mom on the block decided it was time to have a measles party. We would all go to that kid’s house to play for the day. This way we could all get the measles and get it over with. I didn’t get the measles until my first year of college. I took my first semester finals with scabs because I was no longer feverish or contagious.
SEDENTARY LIFESTYLE
We sit around doing nothing more than any time humans have been on earth. A new slogan going around suggests that sitting is the new smoking, due to the deleterious effects sitting on your ass has on your health and wellness. We seek convenience. Home shopping channels are rife with gadgets created to make life easier for you, to minimize any work on your part. They say with every gadget, “You don’t have to worry about …..” Yes, please. Make that dinner in 4 minutes flat so you can get back to the Kardashians.
When my grandpa was 80, he built a lean-to on his workshop so he could store his yard equipment. He built it out of concrete block. In August. Sweat was rolling off him, but he built the thing in a day or two.
Sure, more people go to the gym now than ever before. But 1 hour of exercise will never replace an entire afternoon of real work outside, or a long shift at a factory or trades job.
I started lifting weights in high school. My grandpa thought this was stupid. He told me there was a guy at the factory where he worked that lifted weights. He was a big guy and very muscular. He picked up an iron bar off the factory floor and lifted it overhead. Then he bragged about how strong he was. Grandpa said this skinny little older guy walked to the iron bar. This guy was a farmer during the mornings and worked at the factory on second shift. He hoisted the bar overhead and pressed it about 15 times. Hard work will beat an hour of exercise every time.
And this is just within the population of people that actually exercise. Most people don’t even get that hour in. They go to work, where they sit in an air conditioned office all day. When they get home, they’ve either brought something home from a restaurant or they take a box from the freezer and put it in the microwave. Then they sit on the couch until bed time.
TOXIC ENVIRONMENTS
There are so many ads on TV for laundry soap that leave your clothes smelling for weeks. There’s nothing like your sweatshirt reeking of fresh mountain breeze for a month. Then there’s deodorant, made with aluminum flakes that are designed to clog your pores, so you don’t sweat at all. The average woman applies up to 150 chemicals to her face, hair, and body each day. Many guys work in harsh environments and deal with a multitude of chemicals all day. Our homes are filled with plugin air fresheners, scented candles, and other smelly things that are made with chemicals.
On the other end of the scale, we are obsessed with sterilization. HEPA filters are everywhere, in our cars and homes. We douse ourselves in triclosan based hand sanitizers, use anti-bacterial soaps, and put fluoride in our mouths each day. When we go outside for any length of time, we suffer a histamine response because our bodies aren’t accustomed to being outside where living things like pollen and grass clipping are in the air.
I used to get clogged and stuffy every time I mowed the grass. This didn’t happen when I was younger. I decided to fix it. I purposefully exposed myself to grass, pollen, and outside air as often as possible. I refused to use air-conditioning while in the car. I no longer have problems being outside. In fact, I found that I can’t deal with auto air conditioning. If the vent is right on me, I start sneezing because of the coolant.
We are inundated with fake foods, fake medicine, fake environments, and fake comfort.
Age well.
Eat real meat and real veggies. Go for a walk outside and enjoy that vitamin D. Avoid NSAIDS and antibiotics.
Age well.
Live like it is 150 years ago. Ignore the news and TV ads for anything. They are selling you things you don’t need to take money you don’t have, often to impress people you don’t like.
Age well.
Fix real food from scratch, work outside regardless of the weather, snack on fruit, move around a bit, endure your head cold. You’ll be tougher, healthier, and quite possibly happier. Be an invincible version of yourself.
Age well.
You only get one try,
Weeg
Joe “Weeg” Weigant is a Board Certified Massage Therapist, Holistic Health Authority, Reiki Master Teacher, Herbalist, Metaphysician, and Empowerment Coach. He combines bodywork, energy work, and coaching to improve quality of life by healing from the outside in and from the inside out.
Weeg sells Nature’s Sunshine Products, Pure Herbs Ltd., doTERRA, and Juice Plus+. Weeg suggests lifestyle changes and provides herbal remedies to his clients so they may build new habits for long life and vibrant health. He teaches Karate and Tai Chi, Reiki Certification, as well as seminars and workshops in metaphysical and spiritual matters. Weeg is available for sessions at Tri State Holistic Wellness by appointment only.
Contact by text 812.568.5356, or Facebook Messenger to set an appointment.
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