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You don’t have to be rich to live a rich life.

You don’t have to be rich to live a rich life.

Once again it is the time in the seasons is to start getting ready for bathing-suits and the beach, by shedding those hibernation pounds in a hurry. After all the call of the wild is announcing to everyone it’s time to strut across the sands of those local beaches in your new swim-suits. Of course the number one problem with our human biological clocks are that our body’s pounds have increased slowly over the long fall and winter months, and with the arrival of spring our patience seems to be wearing thin. Partly due to frustration that we’ve allowed ourselves to gain weight, the other part is that we now see time as our new enemy.

We know in the back of our minds that we shouldn’t have gained all that weight…but a few extra pounds doesn’t make enough of a significant impact on our mind in calling us to act. Why should we act or take action when we don’t feel our health waning, when we don’t see any health symptom that screams, “Take some action, your unhealthy and may be damaging your health, or shorting your longevity.” Every time I look in the mirror I don’t hear my doctor saying, “You should lose weight”, as some good advice given to preserve my health. I don’t feel food greed nipping at my heals. I see a person who wants to live how they want too, and a person who wants to look like some advertisement. In fact the last time I went to my doctor’s office he never mentioned my weight issues. He just quietly raised his eyebrow as I stepped onto the scale then went on doing what doctors do, silently recording what I already know. I have gained weight.

What is it that doctors do? I thought, aren’t they supposed prevent disease; heal diseases, besides being upstanding citizens, and community pillars? Aren’t they just people willing to my dirty work so I can keep on doing / living the same way I choose too? It is my life, I tell myself while shove onto my doctor the responsibilities of preserving it.

Truth is doctors treat people all too often for health symptoms caused by diseases that people have, created for themselves. Not all illnesses are avoidable, but it is undeniable for the most part that some modern illnesses are avoidable, and some of those are caused by our own doing? Let’s face it we live our lives in a vacuum of self-imposed ignorance because we enjoy the things we do, healthy or not? Often times we feel that doctors will find cures to whatever our lifestyles have or will create, hoping on future cures to those feelings of illness and manifestations of illness themselves or those symptoms of potential diseases. So we don’t worry about our habits getting in the way of being healthy. The younger we are the less attention to health we have, and sooner than later we are stuck with lifestyle additions that we also claim are the ways we enjoy living our lives. But never has modern medicine ever prevented disease. Just like a Pap smear or any mammogram ever prevented breast and cervical cancer, they help doctors diagnose diseases early. Prostate exams, chest x-rays and annual physical don’t prevent disease, they help find it early. Is this the practice of medicine, or a production line peace of mind through testing, building our false impressions that we have little to change; because nothing was found; therefore no real need to change any effects to our lives, or how we chose to live them. Because there is always still time, mortality mocks us in thinking there is time to still change our choices?

Now days we all have access to stats, just as doctors have medical stats and research on the latest studies within the medical industry that points to unhealthy lifestyles as being more costly to treat a variety of preventable health issues? The internet is full of these studies. Like the stats–the costs to Medicare is 50% more every year to treat an obese American compared to one of normal weight. Or the stat that only 20% of medical patients are normal weight. Doctors know that fat produces a variety of hormones, peptides, and enzymes that can have a wide-ranging impact on anyone’s health. Overweight people have increased risks of diabetes, dementia, cancer, sexual dysfunction, heart disease and strokes. If just losing weight reduces all of these mentioned diseases from happening to a lot of people, don’t doctors then have a responsibility to help society prevent disease, or are they just there to pick-up the pieces to our train wreck lifestyles until humpty dumpty can’t be put back together again?

Doctors must have a deep sadness, seeing people waste away their lives while reducing quality of life in fighting some illness / disease of their own making / of their own past choices? Doctors can’t choose for us on how we should live. But should doctors also be health consultants? Therefore shouldn’t they be educators, offering advice to people, being more in their faces to the effects of health and their patents lifestyle choices? I’m thinking there is some thin-skinned people out there just waiting for the opportunity to then sue the crap out of a doctor. It’s kind of like winning life’s lottery you know, the hell with the truth behind science being presented to us. How dare you! Because what I would imagine a supper doctor or a supper human hero would look like and act like, is a doctor helping people prevent health issues because of the studies and statistics within the science that prove what they are fully statically aware of.

Doctors aren’t super heroes though; sadly they are just managers of decay.

So ask yourself this question; why are those healthcare costs so high? Or is it the greedy of doctors, drug manufactures, or treatment centers and insurance companies who just jack up the prices on the poor old sick people for the sake of profiteering? Or is it you and I who just don’t care about health until its withdrawal in our lives, in which case we all then become the greedy consumers struggling to cling onto life even after a life time’s worth’s of self-abuse, living according to our impression and definitions of what living the good life really is? Ask a 100 people and get 100 different answers. None of which considers quality of life as living a healthy life.

When it comes to healthcare Americans have an addiction to the religion of the healing power of doctors, hoping they would play the part of being the universal saviors of the sick, curing everything and every symptoms of our own self-inflicted lifestyles. Despite of our lofty expectations of doctors, who asks their doctor how can we best avoid illnesses?

Would we listen to our doctor if they insisted that we should lose a few pounds to become healthier, exercise more, stop smoking, and limit our alcohol consumption, stop using or abusing sugar….. Or would we just hear—Blah, Blah, and Blah? Only willing to act if it means we are actually seeing the light at the end of our potential lives, and then only willing to act to avoid or prolong what is 100% unavoidable. Is that quality of life? More than not people would blame those courageous doctors who would tell us to lose weight or anything like that as being educated killjoy’s to our enjoyment.

Somehow I’m hearing the song in the back of my mind by the rock band Kansas, All we are is dust in the wind and all of our money doesn’t another minute buy.

If Americans would only self-educate to live a healthier lifestyle, and lose those extra pounds by practicing some self-denial, what great heights could we all personally yet achieve, and how much money could we all have, or have to give away to charity’s, or leave to our loved ones when we actually do leave our mortal coil behind?

How much more waste could we remove from the treatment of the sick, being able to then treat those who don’t have the financial means to seek treatments to illnesses on their own? How much more would medical treatment be available to all, if what is a now being a wasted resource, isn’t wasted?

Life is full of choices, both big and small, choices that we make not always knowing the outcome beforehand but evaluating the odds. Shouldn’t we then choose more carefully?

It’s true that 100% of all of us will die at some point. It is the choices that we make, and at times the smallest of choices that will determine the quality of life we will yet live in all of life’s stages going forward.

If we Americans lost some extra weight, most of the healthcare crisis would disappear.

Choosing to eat 30 calories less per meal would total up to about 100 calories per day, some 36,000 calories per year (based on a 2,000 calorie diet those 36,000 fewer calories not eaten would be a total of 18 full days’ worth of less food eaten in that year.) think of the impact on the world that a small personal choice could have in providing healthy food to the hungry, or how much money would be left in your pocket? More money in your pockets because of less doctor’s visits, less illnesses, and less wasted on excessive food eaten. Think of the everyday impact, not just on those days that you go to the beach sporting a new swim suit.

Whose responsibility is it, to our life, our health, and the expense having to spend providing healthcare for ourselves? We need to stop thinking that the axis that the world spins on runs right through the top of our own heads. Life is all about those smallest of choices that can lead to the biggest of personal impacts—and some of those choices could even shake-up the world?

You don’t have to be rich to live a rich life or be able to richly impact another’s life beyond their own abilities. You just have to be willing to make that choice.