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Featured Health Articles

How to Achieve Real Health Part 1
There is a way to get real health, health from the food you eat, what you buy or don't buy at the store, habits you establish. I've broken it down into several small steps. Those are usually easier to get used to. However, if you want to jump in full ...

Measuring and Monitoring Your Bodyfat: Improves Overall Health
With so many diets and fads being offered on the market today, it is no wonder why people are not just confused about weight loss and health, but in many cases, actually doing their body more harm than good. Unfortunately, one of the aspects of dieting ...

Sauna For Your Health
Ah, the many claims about the health benefits of saunas. Lose weight, cleanse the body of toxins, relieve arthritis symptoms, improve respiratory problems, etc. Snake oil or scientific fact? You be the judge. Lose Weight When you are in a sauna your ...

Playing the Health Odds
 

Therein lies our problem. We like to cheat, are lazy, pleasure-for-the-moment driven, too clever with alibis and excuses and particularly good at self-justification. We continue whatever suits our fancy until eventually we are sufficiently harmed, or the contrary evidence becomes so overwhelming that we change due to the brute force of public opinion.

Although cigarette smoking, industrial smog, water pollution, radiation, toxic gases emitted from modern construction materials, and sedentary living are all proven to cause harm, even grievous life-threatening harm, they continue because immediate ill effects do not occur, or change would mean inconvenience or sacrifice. Then there is Uncle Josh, who is now a robust ninety-four, and yet has smoked a cigar, chewed tobacco and swigged whiskey since he was sixteen. There is the brother-in-law who works in the nuclear plant and has never developed cancer. There is the classmate you saw at the recent reunion who doesn't exercise, watches virtually every soap opera and eats pounds of chocolates every week but yet looks more trim and fit than you in spite of your tofu and jazzercise. Or how about the NBA All-Star who eats greasy fast foods, additive-laden soft drinks, and candy bars? Using such logic to justify poor life choices is like pointing to people who drive drunk habitually and have done so for decades without ever getting in a wreck. Just because people can escape immediate harm does not mean such a course is wise and that the odds are not against you.

Here is an even better rebuttal to this myopic view of life choices. The medical image here is a computed tomographic scan of the head of an inebriated man admitted to the hospital. In the side view, note an approximately 2" nail embedded in the back part of the skull. In the front view, see that this nail is in the center of the brain. The patient disclosed that some twelve years earlier he had attempted suicide during a depressive episode, and had used a nail gun directed between the eyes to end his life. Since that time, he has done just fine. (See http://www.wysong.net/articlesite/nail_head.htm)

Everything is a matter of odds. If you can shoot nails into your brain and survive essentially unscathed, then certainly you might be able to smoke, lead a sedentary life, breathe toxic fumes, be unfit, and eat almost anything and possibly escape damage too.

For most of us, however, it would be much smarter to weigh the odds in our favor and use our brain (minus nails) to exercise judgment and foresight and make decisions now that increase the odds for a better, longer, happier life.
Dr. Wysong is a former veterinary clinician and surgeon, college instructor in human anatomy, physiology and the origin of life, inventor of numerous medical, surgical, nutritional, athletic and fitness products and devices, research director for the present company by his name and founder of the philanthropic Wysong Institute. He is author of The Creation-Evolution Controversy now in its eleventh printing, a new two volume set on philosophy for living entitled Thinking Matters: 1-Living Life... As If Thinking Matters; 2-The Big Questions...As If Thinking Matters, several books on nutrition, prevention and health for people and animals and over 15 years of monthly health newsletters. He may be contacted at Wysong@Wysong.net and a free subscription to his e-Health Letter is available at http://www.wysong.net.




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Health News

This Time Around, Health-Care Revamp Has Wings - Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON -- The effort to overhaul the nation's health system will begin next year with one clear advantage over previous attempts: A wide variety of interest groups are rooting for it to succeed rather than plotting to kill it. That is a stark ...

Health Organizations - Baltimore Sun
The United States opened a branch of the Food and Drug Administration in the Chinese capital on Wednesday, the first of several overseas offices aimed at regulating the safety of imported food and medicine. The opening follows a string of scandals ...

HEALTH-AFRICA: Research and Policies Lack Civil Society Input - Inter Press Service
BAMAKO, Nov 19 (IPS) - Health experts and activists have heavily criticised African governments for failing to collaborate with civil society organisations (CSOs) on health research and health policy development. Governments tend to perceive CSOs as ...

Get ready to pay even more for health care - Raleigh News & Observer
Employers raise deductibles, co-payments, premiums Employers' cost for medical coverage will rise 6.4 percent next year. The increase would be higher but companies continue to shift more of the total expense to employees. This year, employers saw ...

FDA Should Adopt EPA Tap Water Health Goals for Bottled Water - Common Dreams
WASHINGTON - November 19 - Bottled water costs hundreds of times more than tap water, but when it comes to consumer protections, it's no better. FDA has proposed to improve testing bottled water for bacteria. But even these new rules would leave the ...