Turn Lies for Profit into Passion

I was driving to work this morning sweaty but with a nice endorphin high from the exercise of my early Muay Thai training session when I suddenly felt a rush of inspiration to write this blog.  There are several other things on my to-do list today, but when you are grabbed by passion in such a way the smaller things in life can wait.

I think my thoughts started when I saw an old, overweight woman run across the street against traffic.  She started crossing on the blinking “don’t walk” red hand symbol. Her best sprint was not good enough to avoid impatient looks from a BMW and Range Rover trying to get through LA traffic on their way to work. The whole scene was quite frankly, very sad. When faced with a situation that requires the human body to be used in a physical way she had failed and was met with irritation from luxury car owners.

I didn’t know this woman, but I started to think about how she had gotten there. When did the weight start to creep on?   How many medications was she on? How many family members had tried to help her with her health but had gotten no where?  Was she ever concerned that her weight and health would prevent her from running for her life if necessary? Did she care? 

In nature older, weaker and sick life is killed off by predators. Today we “protect” our sick and elderly with shelter, medication and care. I’m not saying this is a horrible thing. I love my grandmother very, very much and am extremely happy she is alive today. Although at 98 years old and scarcely weighing 98 pounds, having osteoporosis and round the clock care I don’t think she would have made it this far if we still lived in caves in the wilderness.

Today, the majority of the elderly population have multiple health conditions and are on several medications.  This doesn’t happen overnight, we creep toward this state in our 20 and 30’s forming unhealthy habits, as we approach 40 we may start to think about repairing the damage inflicted in our youths, or maybe we just live in denial. Some people think they are “fine” but then one day they are diagnosed with cancer and wonder, “How did that just happen?”  The thing is health issues don’t just happen over night.  The body can be in dysbiosis for years.  We tend to ignore the signs: migraines, fatigue, depression, itchy skin, athletes foot, heart burn, indigestion, gas, bloating, sleep problems, sugar cravings… the list goes on and on.  Theses are signs.  Your body is telling you to listen and what do we do? We pop an aspirin, we drink coffee, we chew some Tums, we have a beer and we tell ourselves, “I’m fine… I’m fine because I exercise sometimes, and eat salads sometimes and try to be moderate about my bad habits.”  I think our definition of fine needs a little adjustment.

Take a look around… we’ve gotten to a point where just doing some maintenance work isn’t enough. Screw the oil change; we need to rebuild the engine. Something is seriously not working. Depression,  Diabetes, Autism, Low Thyroid, Chronic Fatigue, Adrenal Burnout, Leaky Gut, Cancer, High Blood Pressure… we are far from “fine”. Hold on don’t stop reading.  I’m not a pessimist who is trying to ruin your day. This gets better I promise.

Having a curious mind I have to come back to the Why and How.  How did this happen?  Why are we so sick?

The root of the problem is simple: When people tell lies for profit at the expense of other people’s health we all get screwed.

To make matters worse to tell a lie and live with yourself you have to eventually believe the lie or at least believe your justification to tell it. So now we have lies about our health running rampant and people who are willing to die arguing for these lies. Do you see the problem?

Let’s take smoking as an example. We know it’s bad for us today. Sure you have a right to kill yourself slowly, but the real issue is that at one point someone saw an opportunity to make an enormous amount of money from telling us it was good for us. Doctors smoked, nurses smoked, mothers smoked and then even though we found out it was bad for us it took years to expose this lie, fight the lie, reeducate the public and financially punish (kind of) the people that marketed it to us.

Now as you read this list think of smoking….

Here is a list of LIES that we have been told:

1. Dietary cholesterol causes heart disease
2. Saturated Fat is bad for you
3. Vegetable oil is healthy
4. 6-11 servings of grains is part of a healthy diet
5. Whole grains are healthy
6. Counting calories helps you lose weight
7. Soy is a healthy food
8. Milk builds strong bones
9. We must eat (pasteurized) dairy to get calcium
10. “Zero calorie” anything = a freebie

All these lies have been pushed and solidified into our consciousness through advertising and for profit. Now people will say, “Don’t blame the advertisers they are just doing a job. Or “Don’t blame the food companies, everyone has to make money.” Well who do we blame?  Personally I try not to point fingers.  I was taught that if you point a finger you have 3 pointing back at you (thanks, mom). So instead I set my goals at education: Don’t worry how the lies started (although I do find the origins fascinating) just get the truth out so you can do the most good. But still I get riled up sometimes, like today.

Here’s an interesting fact: I went to school for advertising. I started out a psychology major and switched over to communications because I though it was interesting and I would be good at it.  I had a knack for writing, a creative mind and was business savvy. But at some point I became disheartened by the career.  It was in Communication Ethics class that I started to realize I could not live and work to tell lies. The class made us think about hard topics like, “If a plane killed 200 people due to a negligent mechanical failure that only a few people knew about and you were asked to lie about the failure and design a campaign promoting the Airline’s safety would you? I would not and I decided I never wanted to be put in a position where my family’s welfare depended on my lies. I wish some coca-cola executives had taken that ethics class.

I started taking courses like, “Philosophy of Communism”, Advanced Rhetoric: Issues and Arguments and Creative Writing electives.  I started giving my class presentations against animal testing and conglomerate mergers. Those speeches got quite a few blank stares from my media and product loving peers. I decided from that point on that I would not be part of the problem.  So I did what any good college graduate with a liberal arts degree who doesn’t want to work for the man does - I worked in the restaurant and bar industry, pushing a legal government approved drug that kills: alcohol. Yes, I reeked of hypocrisy.

Thank God I found Muay Thai which led me to be a health & fitness professional and my life today is an honest one, one I can feel proud of. My one hope is that I can help my clients to life healthy lives that they can feel good about. If every one of us woke up today and decided to dig deeper, seek truth, live with honesty and integrity and promote health the world would be a better place. I’m not saying that you can’t be a stock broker, politician, marketing executive or even bartender and live honestly - you can. It’s all about being true to yourself and promoting well-being within your circle of co-workers, customers, clients, friends and family.

It all starts with you. Don’t blame anyone for the lies you’ve been told, don’t blame anyone for the life you lead. Instead work fearlessly to find truth and live the life you’ve always wanted and if you don’t know what that is, keep looking. At least you’ll have fun trying. If you want the world to change for the better, if you want to live long healthy lives you have to live true and shine greatly, so that it will inspire others to do the same or as Gandhi says, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.”

Thanks for reading,

Roxy

27 July 2011 ·