From Health Nut to Just Plain Healthy

Uncool

The Standard American Diet is killing us in increasing numbers and ways. From purely profit driven, processed, faux food to GMO tinkering, Americans are waking up and smelling the toxicity and not-so-special interests in much of what we’ve been told–I mean sold–is good for us. 

Follow the money and then more tragically, follow the adaptive lifestyle disorders and diseases as a direct result including heart disease, type II diabetes, many, many cancers as well as addictive and compulsive disorders–to start.

No lie, I’ve got some ‘tude about this.

I love the retort I read and hear about “organic” foods–that they are no more nutritious than conventionally produced food. Point well taken in some cases, but the overarching point and reason for organically produced food products completely missed: Food nor human beings should be poisoned by unhealthy chemical additives, pesticides, hormones and antibiotics found in most conventionally produced foods. 

No duh.

Cool

A grass roots (and grass fed...) movement is emerging all across the country. A renaissance of true health care enthusiasts and proponents in what remain many esoteric communities is growing to critical mass. Have you been in a Whole Foods Market recently? 

One community I particularly align and resonate with calls itself Paleo or Primal, with credit given to the works of Boyd Eaton, M.D., Loren Cordain, Ph.D., (Paleo Diet), Mark Sisson, (Primal Blueprint), and Nora Gedgaudas, (Primal Body, Primal Mind) to name a few.

The underlying thrust of the movement is paying close attention to ancestral health principles, in other words, honoring the way our hunter-gatherer ancestors moved, ate and thought as a template for right living. 

The plethora of research and logic behind it stems from the simple truth that over the course of the 2 million years of hominid and later, human development, a genetic blueprint was shaped and perfected giving rise to the miraculously intelligent, life affirming and programmed for health genome we’ve inherited today.

The evidence based, randomized control studies are in hand and in the paleolithic record by virtue of the hundreds of thousands of generations past who lived and thrived on what worked for survival, reproduction and optimizing life.

Downright ‘Bitchin 

So here’s the interesting thing to me: the Paleo/Primal community is full of intelligent and motivated people from all walks of life who are becoming experts in the health and wellness arena. Not necessarily or exclusive to doctors or credentialed members of the healing arts, Paleo change agents have huge followings and forms of healthy information–from blogs to podcasts–to offer to the throngs of people who are sick and tired of being sick and tired!

Instead of people asking, “What have I got and what medicine should I take for it?”, the question has been reframed to, “What is toxic and/or deficient in my life and what do I need to get back to sufficiency and purity in the way of how I’m moving, eating and thinking?” 

This reframing is a huge shift in where responsibility lies for our individual health care practices: Shifting from looking "out there" to looking "in here"–it all starts with me and my willingness to be informed and make better choices.

So what’s going to happen to health care delivery in the United States? People are going to demand healthy food choices, holistic health care and actual health care providers, that’s what. How can I look, feel and function at my best and what practices optimize it all, doctor?–that’s what.

What form it takes, God only knows and She hasn't told us yet.

Healthy is the new health nut and I’m crazy about it. 

Dr. Herby Bell is a chiropractor, Recovery Coach, owner and director of Recovery Health Care, an integrated approach to addiction treatment in Redwood City, California. For more information please call 650 474 2121 or email:herbybell@me.com