Health is so important, but what is it?
Health doesn't have a clear definition. It doesn't have an icon (OK, there's this one). It is not anything that we can see or hear or taste. It is not actually a tool, either.
It is like a "container" that bears the scars and badges of our past behaviors and in that respect, it is like an old iron skillet. Think of those pans that some of us have ignored, revisited, and mistreated. I now cook with my iron skillets almost daily and appreciate and love them.
But that isn't the way I've always treated them.
As I was admiring the way they have forgiven my past ignorance (see my pans hanging on the granite chimney, above), I saw a similarity between those lovely cooking containers and my health. I didn't appreciate my health years ago. I didn't even see how my actions and habits were slowly damaging my future and limiting my options..
Well Cared For and Loved
When the skillet is well treated, cooking in them is a joy, much like health when we use "good practices".
An iron skillet needs to be seasoned and treated with "affection" but that doesn't mean you have to reserve it for rare or special occasions. On the contrary, the more you use it, the better it gets.
The results are enjoyable.
Crusty - Scratched - Carbonized
Your health has a correlation with the crusty, scratched, and carbonized surface of a badly treated skillet.
Just as an iron skillet surface can become marred by charred bits of organic matter, the insides of your cells are damaged by the oxidative stress caused by free radicals which come from these sugars. Fructose produces the vast majority of free radicals. Accumulated damage of free radicals leads to disfunctions including fatigue, depression, sleep disorders, and many other common symptoms.
These are the sugars that plants make and they are fuels we usually burn in our bodies. Glucose a simple sugar and the least sweet of the three, while fructose is the very sweet sugar found in fruit. Sucrose, aka sugar , is a marriage of these two once they are bound together by a natural chemical reaction in plants like cane, beets, and corn. It is not as sweet as fructose alone, but it is causes additional damage since it is typically added to the foods we eat.
We can learn a lot about how these sweets are affecting our bodies. It is relatively easy to monitor blood sugar at home with hand-held devices and even constant glucose monitors now available. This information is useful but so is tracking our food intake when you know what to look for.
With a pan, cooking becomes unnecessarily difficult with sticking surfaces and charred bits creating uneven cooking. But in our body, it is the interior of our cells which becomes scarred. Jessie Inchauspe explains in her book, Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar, that reducing glucose and fructose spikes will reduce inflammation and the risk of inflammation-based diseases.
Restoration
If you have ever rehabilitated a pan like this, you know they can come back into service with glorious results. And that, my friend is exactly what we have learned about health. When we take an interest in applying some simple techniques, our health will reward us with renewed service. We can find relief from so many unnecessary problems including pain and poor energy.
Customized Diet
In all my research and experience as a health professional tasked with restoring good health, I have to give the biggest shout out to food. Customized diet is the place where we can begin to reclaim a large portion of good health. After this, a close second is movement and fitness that can be personally designed for both relief and enjoyment. Diet and fitness become even more powerful with attitudes of meditation and gratitude.
Coaching picks up where your information and efforts have stalled. Give this some thought.
We are all curious about your experiences with healing. Share a little comment below to help us all along this journey. And if you have a pan experience, we want to hear that, too!
