I’m am a strong advocate for taking a natural approach to health care. In fact, I believe many of the practices considered “alternative” should be your primary approach.
However, I’d like to give you an insider’s view of the “alternative” or “holistic” healthcare field.
Probably the most harmful idea put forth in alternative healthcare is that you should never be sick or have any health challenges.
Many practitioners would lead you to believe that if you follow their advice all your problems will go away and you’ll experience perfection in your body.
Let me explain further and give you a behind-the-scenes look at alternative health.
THE LACK OF TRAINING
Many in the industry are undereducated. I started my career in health as a personal trainer and nutrition coach. At that time I thought I knew everything. My eyes were opened wide once I started working on my doctorate. I quickly realized that as a trainer with a significant college degree and fitness certification that I wasn’t even aware of how much I didn’t know.
Here’s the reality, many people claiming to be health coaches, nutritionist, or any expert have little study under their belt. And, almost all of them have ZERO clinical experience. The reality is they memorized some ideas to get a certification but have no training in actually treating patients.
SOURCE OF TRAINING
Here’s another dirty secret that’s true of many doctors and most health gurus; they received their training at a weekend seminar. Let me explain how this works. A practitioner will attend a weekend training on a new treatment protocol.
Some of these protocols and treatments are great. Most, however, are just hearsay. Come Monday morning patients are receiving these new treatments that were learned 24 hours earlier. Is the patient an unknowing guinea pig?
Again, we need to put this in context.
Does the practitioner have the real advanced training to understand the treatments? Do they have real-life clinical experience treating patients? It’s one thing to learn something on the weekend, and it’s a whole other experience to treat an actual human being.
FALSE HYPE
Let’s now go back to my initial premise. This false sense of reality. The expectation that if you follow these natural treatments, you’ll be without any health problems.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen thousands of people in person get amazing results through natural health care.
However, I’ve also seen a lot of people ask “Why am I so sick and in pain when I’m doing all these good things for my health?”
Let me address this with a couple of points.
First, no matter what you do your body will age and die. Period. It’s essential, however, that I encourage you not to take the approach of living it up and destroying your body since you’re just going to die anyway. Your lifestyle choices matter. The better you take care of yourself the better your health will be.
Second, each of us has a different potential for health. Someone that’s had more injuries, surgeries or a stressful life has a different potential them someone that’s had minimal health challenges. If someone smokes for 20 years and quits, you can’t necessarily expect their health to be like that of a nonsmoker. Again, quitting smoking is still the better choice.
I’ve seen other people with extremely stressful and dysfunctional personal lives. It will be hard for them to expect the same outcomes as someone with low stress and healthy home life.
Some people are living with damage caused by medical treatments at a younger age. For example, we are now learning how rounds of antibiotics as a kid can impact your health as an adult.
My point here is to keep a realistic perspective. Never compare yourself to someone else. The reality is you rarely if ever, know the full history of another person’s body.
I’d also like to mention that unfortunately many, if not most, alternative health care approaches are wrapped up in the New Age movement that has seen tremendous growth in last 30-40 years. The underlying theme is that you can reach perfection spiritually and physically with various alternative treatments and approaches. On a personal level, I would advise staying far away from these approaches.
SOME GOOD INSIGHT
Let me go back to my initial thought that alternative and natural approaches are not always in themselves bad or harmful. I advocate living as ‘natural’ as possible.
In my life this means I do things such as: walk an hour day, lift weights weekly, eat the diet that’s right for me, eliminate processed foods, keep sleep a priority, maintain healthy relationships at home, limited exposure to TVs and personal media devices, get regular chiropractic care, etc.
A lot of these actions are your basic, common sense advice. It doesn’t have to be complicated.
I would advise you to take a personal look at where you can live healthier; physically and emotionally.
The majority of real “health” care is done on your own. What are you doing to support your body and be as healthy as you can be?
THE 80/20 RULE
I’m a big fan the 80/20 approach. In my experience, I’ve found that 20% of the good actions I take make 80% of the difference. I see that what I often thought made a big difference didn’t.
What are the few simple actions that make the most significant impact on our health?
Ask yourself: Do you need all those supplements you take? Probably not. Do you need to workout every day at a high intensity to stay in shape? Not likely (but if you love to exercise I don’t want to discourage you either).
My simple steps that have had the most significant impact on my health care are: getting adjusted, low carb diet, walking daily, lifting weights once a week, and eating lots of protein. My body responds well to these simple actions steps.
NEED SOME GUIDANCE
Hopefully, this has helped you ask the right questions. Maybe you could greatly simplify things in your life to get the results you’re looking to achieve.
I also hope you got some new perspective on your health and your expectations for your health.
If you need any help or guidance, please call or text me.
Always here for you,
-Dr. Jeff.