5 Health “Facts” that Keep You Sick

Number 1:  Fat Is Bad for You and Makes You Fat

We’ve all heard this.  I still have Susan Powter running through my head from when I was younger telling us fat makes us fat and to stop the insanity.  This vilification of fat affected our view of the egg (some people still only eat egg whites while others now consider an egg a super food), butter, lard, whole dairy, and more.  This has led to so many health concerns!

This campaign against fat led to margarine and low fat foods.  However, look at those low fat foods–they have more sugar.  They are adulterated–processed to take them further from a whole food.  If you leave margarine in your garage for a few years, it will still be there because even the rats and insects know not to eat that crap!

Are you still trying to eat low fat?  STOP IT!  Please, for the sake of your health.  Eat real fat and lots of it!  Most people, in my experience, need 5+ servings of fat daily.  A serving of fat is a tablespoon of oils and fats like butter and lard and 1/4 cup of nuts and seeds.  Are you getting enough?

Here are some notes about HEALTHY fats:

• Choose organic, pasture-raised, grass-fed (or appropriately fed) fats.
• Use whole foods that are as close to as they come to us from nature.
• If you eat meat, eat fatty meat.  Eat skin, make bone broth.  Honor that animal by using every part of it you can.
• Soak your nuts and seeds from a raw state to remove phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors that can bind minerals in your body and make nuts and seeds harder to digest.
• Eat organic, grass-fed butter freely.  If you are an A blood type, you might do better with ghee or clarified butter.  You can make your own by simply melting quality butter over low heat and straining it through a cheese cloth to remove the milk solids.

Number 3: There is One Right Diet

There is one diet that will help everyone feel their best, right?  Wrong.  There are so many good diets out there!  The goal is to find the one that works best for your body.  Also, some diets are wonderful for specific uses like candida or anti-inflammatory or keto or GAPS that are meant to be done for shorter periods of time (relatively) and not forever, generally.

Typically, I work within the framework of the metabolic-type diet and the blood-type diet.  I find blending these helpful for most people.  Within these, we may want to go nutrient dense or we may want to consider live foods.  There are so very many choices!

There are some great resources for the blood type diet at Dr. D’Adamo’s site.

Don’t know your blood type?  You can get a home testing kit that works well here.

Number 4: It Is Just Psychosomatic–All In Your Head

There are a few things physicians do that really annoy me.  Putting an expiration date on someone’s life and telling someone it is all in their head are probably at the top.  I am not sure there is anything more damaging to hear, and more hubris-filled, than making someone feel their physical symptoms are all in their head.

Now, I understand where they are coming from.  Their training is limited.  They don’t view the body as a holistic, synergistic balance between body, mind, and energy.  They aren’t trained to address anything but body.  Even psychiatrists focus more on the body because it is often about prescribing drugs that will affect the physical body to try to change the mental and emotional condition.  Long story short, they do not have the means to help which leads to their patients feeling dismissed, unheard, and defeated.

Naturopaths are trained differently because we are trained that the mind, body, and spirit/energy all work together and affect each other.  Not only that, but we have tools to help our clients make changes to help balance their health wholly and holistically!

Amazingly, some things are based in the emotions.  I had a wonderful client recently help heal her eczema dermatitis she’d had most of her life with a flower blend!  We addressed the root cause (which is frequently emotions), and the physical symptoms evaporated.  We are such amazing beings!  If I am honest, a root cause of most disease is actually emotional.  We cannot have disease without an emotional component.  

So, perhaps the physician is right that it is all in our head, but we need to do better to help heal that emotion to heal the physical body and clear the energies holding us down.  We need to realize the interconnectivity of our health to our thoughts, emotions, and energies.

Number 5: Preventative Care Means Taking Drugs or Shots

Franklin’s phrase, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” has gone places I am not sure he meant it to.  Any drug, including vaccinations, are not preventative care.  They are in the realm of cure if you want to go there, though I would consider them poisons.  Even in the best light, they force the body to have a reaction the body cannot stop.  The reaction the body has may not be what helps the patient, but the body does have a reaction it cannot overcome.  This puts them into the category of poison from an herbalist’s viewpoint.  

Actual preventative care means taking care of the body.  It means supporting it holistically so every level of your being is nourished.  It means making choices that are for health.  Our idea of health care is actually sick care.  Health care is something vastly different!

7 Truly Preventative Health Care Actions

1. Eat a healthy diet
2. Get adequate rest
3. Engage in exercise that is right for you
4. Work in a career that makes you happy and feel useful
5. Keep yourself healthily bathed and groomed
6. Live and work in clean, orderly, positive quarters with loving people
7. Engage in a spiritual practice that feeds your soul