This morning I was watching (as my daughter likes to call it) YTF. It's actually WITF. There is a show about young super heroes. In this episode the "Rubber Band Robby" has a problem. When he stretches out too far, he gets pulled back into a rubber ball and bounces around all over the place. The team uses their "superpowers of science" to solve the problem. So they went to work figuring out a way to keep Robby from bouncing around should in fact he get pulled back into a rubber ball.
Quite frankly I'm a little pissed that this is what our kids are being taught what science is. That's not science. That's business. Solve a problem and sell it. Science would be figuring out why he turns into a bouncing ball when he stretches too far.
Common sense says, geez Robby, maybe not just stretch yourself out so far. Instead, they make it so Robby can do something he probably shouldn't do as long as you wear this foam suit.
And all I could think about was todays pharmaceutical industry. Go ahead Robby, eat whatever you want, get as stressed as you want, don't sleep, don't move, and we'll make this drug that covers up the symptoms. We won't actually cure you, though. That would be up to you to practice lifestyle changes.
When Franklin made that quote, he wasn't actually talking about health. He was talking about fire safety. People would transfer coals throughout their house, likely to take from one hearth to another, and would often do it without caution. Coals or embers may fall out and end up in your floorboards or staircase and won't make an appearance until midnight when your house is on fire. Had they just transported them in closed warming pan, this wouldn't be a problem. Prevention (doing it the right way) is worth a pound of cure.
But not anymore. Their isn't really a lot of money when it comes to preventing disease. There is BIG money in producing medication and drugs.
Let's take a look at "Lifestyle disease". Here's an exert from wikipedia...
"Lifestyle diseases are defined as diseases linked with, and often caused by the way people live their life. These are non-communicable diseases. Lifestyle diseases are commonly caused by lack of physical activity, unhealthy eating, alcohol, drugs and smoking, which lead to heart disease, stroke, obesity, type II diabetes and Lung cancer. The diseases that appear to increase in frequency as countries become more industrialized and people live longer can include Alzheimer's disease, arthritis, atherosclerosis, asthma, cancer, chronic liver disease or cirrhosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, chronic kidney failure, osteoporosis, PCOD, stroke, depression, obesity and vascular dementia."
The fact is, our bad lifestyle decisions not only negatively effect ourselves, but create a huge burden on the health care system.
It's possible to change. It's not too late. And it's not as hard as you think. Don't be like Rubber Band Robby. Don't just stretch yourself to the max and then rely on medicine to manage your symptoms but never cure your disease. Use medicine, if needed, to help begin to turn the ship around and make better lifestyle decisions so you don't put yourself into those precarious situations in the first place.
That's all for now.
