Prevention is better than Cure

In a previous episode we talked about The movie "Dr. Strange" and how a successful Surgeon got into a horrific car accident and ended up losing the dexterity of both of his hands. And that has an avalanche effect on his life: He lost his career as a surgeon, lost his money, lost his friends and even his girlfriend. So he began his search for a cure for his hands. He went from Doctor to Doctor, looking for a specialist who can repair his hands. And even though there may be some experimental procedures that could help him, no doctor was willing to put their reputation on the line to try to repair his hands. The story then goes on about his spiritual studies and eventual healing of his hands and his true calling in life.

This movie reminded me how Doctors are in real life. Nowadays many doctors are promoting preventative health, how they care about your wellbeing and encourage you to have routine physicals in order to maintain your health.

They routinely do physical exams, blood work, mammograms and pap smears. Think about this. All these tests are not to help prevent diseases but they are just a mechanism to detect any diseases that you already have. The earlier they detect the disease on you, the higher chance of treating it through some type of medication or surgery.

Does this sound like preventative care to you?

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Did you know that, according to a 2015 report in the Journal of Biomedical Education, only 29% of US medical schools offer their Medical students 25 hours of Nutritional education.

Yeah. You heard right. Over the 4 or more years of medical school, that’s 8000 hours or more of medical training, these medical doctors only receive a total of 25 hours or less in nutrition.

100 years ago, the average life expectancy is about 40 years. Today, with modern medicine, life expectancy is extended to 80 years and beyond.

However, what is the quality of life for most people during their last 20 to 30 years? Most people suffer some form of chronic degenerative disease like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, arthritis, cataracts, Diabetes. The “luckier” ones suffer from back pain and neck pain and insomnia and so on.

They are told by their doctors that they must take medication for the rest of their lives in order to live? Is that really living or just slowly dying?

Are we simply living too short and dying too long, as the renowned microbiologist, immunologist and friend Dr. Wentz said.

Is there something that you could do to truly have a healthy life? One that is free from diseases and pain and suffering? Free from medication?

Let me tell you a secret about your body.

Our bodies are designed to be this amazing self-healing machine but it only works when everything is running optimally.

To put it in simple terms, your body is made up of millions and millions of cells. Imagine that the cells are similar to a fireplace burning in your living room. The fire continues to burn as you fuel it with wood giving you light and warmth. However once in a while a stray spark will fly out of the fireplace and land on your carpet burning a little hole in it. We call these stray sparks ‘Free Radicals’.

As more free radicals fly out over time, the carpet gets more damaged with more holes. This free radical damage causes oxidative stress in your body, just like the burns on the carpet.

The part of your body that receives the most oxidative stress is usually the first to break down and potentially develop a chronic degenerative disease. If it is in your eyes, you can develop cataracts. If it's in your blood vessels, it can cause a heart attack or stroke. If it is in your joints you develop arthritis, in your lungs you get asthma and in your brain Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. You get the idea, Chronic Degenerative diseases is not something that just happen overnight. It takes many years, sometimes 20 to 30 years to manifest.

Now do you wonder, are we doomed for life?

No. Of course not. Remember that our bodies are a self-healing machine? What if you put a protective screen in front of your fireplace? This stops the stray sparks flying out and damaging the carpet, right? Our bodies have the ability to put up this wall and stop free radical damage and stop oxidative stress. This wall, has a name, and it is called “antioxidants”.

When your body is working properly, it can produce some of the antioxidants that you need. The rest of the antioxidants that you needed to build this wall must come from the foods that we eat and from good quality supplementation.

Now I know what you are all thinking.

“My doctor says multivitamins is a waste of money”

“My doctor says we can get all the nutrients we need from the foods we eat”

Blah blah blah

There is nothing further from the truth.

You cannot get all the nutrients from your foods you eat and here is why.

First of all, we are constantly fighting with pollution in our air, our foods, even our drinking water that increases oxidative stress in our bodies. Plus we have the added stress we get from work and poor exercise habits. Therefore we need a tremendous amount of antioxidants to build a wall strong enough to keep the sparks from damaging our body.

Ever heard of the SAD diet? Sad, isn’t it?

Sad stands for standard American diet and includes mainly highly processed foods which have little or no nutrients, let alone antioxidants.

You may say that you eat healthy, you don’t eat fast foods, and that you cook your own meals at home. That’s good. We do too. But even if you are health conscious, fruits and vegetables are not as nutrient-dense as they were 50 years ago. Thanks to Over farming and pollution in the air and water, our soil no longer have all the minerals and vitamins it once had, and therefore, the crops, like our fruits and vegetables that grow from that depleted soil, also has little to no nutrients. To make things worse, farmers nowadays put all sorts of chemicals, pesticides, toxins, steroids and antibiotics into their fruits, vegetables and meats, which cause even more oxidative stress in our bodies.

This means that you would need to eat a boat load more vegetables to get all the nutrition your body needs to build that screen for your fireplace.

But let’s just forget about all the dangers in our foods for a while. Over the last 4 years I have studied friends, family and clients. No one even come close to eating the amount of fruits and vegetables that they need to make the antioxidants.

For example, we all know that we can get Vitamin C from oranges, right? Do you know how many oranges you need to eat per day? In order for you to get 1300mg of Vitamin C, that is approx. 17 oranges. And I have never met anyone that eats 17 oranges a day.

So what can you do?

The top three things you need to do to keep your body young, vibrant and repairing itself, is

1. You need to Exercise. We all know that right, 30 minutes a day, with a mix of cardio and strength training, such as Yoga, Qi-gong, Taichi, pilates, TRX.
2. You need to eat healthy. At least 7 servings of fruits and vegetables, clean proteins and good fats that come from natural sources like coconut oil, olive oil and nut butters. Depending on your body type the proportions of fats and proteins will be different.
3. You must take only high quality nutritional supplements. Even if you think you have excellent health. If you want to build a defense system against oxidative stress this will give you your best chance to a disease-free life.

Before we end this I’d like to share a story about myself. This is a life changing event for me that adversely affected my whole life. During my senior year of high school, with just a couple of weeks before my graduation, on a bright sunny morning, I was driving alone on Broadway and all of a sudden, a 1 ton truck smashed into my car and T-boned me at the intersection. The truck hit me squarely on the driver’s side, crushed my door, the roof caved in and my seat was literally shoved over to the passenger side. I don’t remember what happened after, but when I woke up I was in the hospital.

This accident left me with lacerations to my face, severed part of my ear, fractured my 3rd Vertebrae of my neck, broke my collar bone, dislocated my knees, bent my spine sideways and caused internal injuries.

After I got out of the hospital and recovered from the internal injuries and cuts and bruises, I went back to see my orthopedic surgeon, and I still remember, to this day, what he told me. He said that, due to the extensive damage to my vertebrae, back and knees, I will absolutely, undoubtedly, have degenerative arthritis by the time I hit 30, and I will have the body of a 70 year old even though I am only in my 30’s.

Imagine how you would feel when you hear that. I was 18 at the time, in the prime of my life!

I didn’t believe him, I couldn’t believe him, so I went through many different types of rehab, Physiotherapists, chiropractors, Chinese doctors. You name it I did it. Kind of like what Dr. Strange did in the movie.

But sure enough, no matter what I tried, I can feel my body deteriorating. The pain in my neck, shoulders, back and knees got worse every year. I started taking the occasional Tylenol through my twenties, and sure enough, by my 30’s I needed to take prescription strength Vicodin, just to roll out of bed. Of course I put up a brave face in front of all my friends and family. Only Minna knew that I needed Prescription Pain killers to get through each and every day.

So what the doctor said came true, right? Well that’s not the end of my story. I didn’t find the supernatural master that Dr. Strange found, but I did found something that changed my life.

In 2013, I was in so much pain, I couldn’t even get in or out of our little Sports car. Minna’s dream car was a Lotus, so back in 2006 we bought a Lotus Elise. And it was an awesome car. But we had to sell it because I simply couldnt get in and out of this little thing anymore. That was one of my most painful decisions in Life.

As a twist of fate, the gentleman that I sold the car to, introduced me to some high grade nutritional supplementation and suggested I give those a try. At that point in life, I felt hopeless. I have been living in pain for over 20 years. What have I got to lose? It can’t get any worse right? So why not.

I started taking high grade antioxidants, Minerals, grape seed extract, fish oil and Joint supplements. Stuff that our body needs but I’m not getting from our foods. It’s not medication, even though it looks like a pill, and it is a pill. The concept of supplementation is that supplementation is stuff that your body naturally should have, unlike medication, which causes all types of side effects.

Within 2 weeks I started to feel better. I had more energy, I can actually get up in the morning rather than rolling out of bed. Within a month, I stopped taking my pain meds. No more prescriptions. No more Vicodin. Even more weird is that my sport-induced asthma is gone. Vanished. Poof! After taking 2 years of allergy shots without any success. My allergy doctor couldn’t believe it either. But it works.

So am I saying that the Nutritional Supplements cured my Degenerative Arthritis and Asthma? No, that’s not what I am saying. I know that I will have degenerative arthritis and asthma for the rest of my life. However with Nutritional Supplementation, along with Exercise and eating healthy, my body has what it needs to quell the oxidative stress that causes the symptoms of my Arthritis and asthma.

I have more energy now than when I was in my twenties. I wish I could go back to that doctor that I saw when I was 18 and say, hey, guess what, you were wrong and why didn’t you tell me that there was another way to get my health back rather than my pain in suffering for over 20 years!

For the last four years, it has been my passion to learn anything and everything to do with nutritional education and preventative care learning from scientists, nutritionists, microbiologists and getting certified as a Precision Nutrition Coach. It is with this knowledge that I finish this episode by asking you this one last question.

How do you want to live the rest of your life with your love one?

Do you want to take life by the reins and see what it has to offer by growing old and healthy together or do you want worry how you may have to take care of each other as you grow old knowing that one or both of you would likely be a victim of Chronic Degenerative disease such as Parkinson’s, dementia or some chronic heart disease?

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Until next time, Love what you live, and live what you love