Your Mom did the best job she could when you were little, but she quit doing it when you left home.

Your doctor isn’t actively caring for you. With ten minutes at a visit, they don’t have time to adequately assess and educate you about the factors that influence your health.

The “health” insurance companies certainly aren’t doing it. They’re too busy maximizing their profits by “managing” chronic diseases with drugs and surgery and a team of burned-out “providers”.

And the drug companies definitely aren’t taking care of you. They’re way too busy creating new drugs to address the chronic diseases to which we’re succumbing, than to do something like promote health and prevent disease!

In fact, there’s little investment in health promotion, so do NOT count on any of them to provide you the care and support you need.

So, if they aren’t caring for you, who is? For many, the answer is “I don’t know, but I sure wish someone would”!

The fact is we’ve (unintentionally) handed over the primary responsibility for our health to our doctor and the health care system. The doctor holds the decision-making power (information) and access to treatment (primarily medication).

This top-down approach has disempowered us and left us in the passive position of a “consumer’” of medicine.

We’ve been led to believe that there isn’t much we can do to prevent disease: that it’s too hard, too inconvenient, too much of a “buzz kill” to actually take good care of ourselves.

So when it comes to answering the question “Exactly who is taking care of you?” we often come up short.

That’s when you come in: as “owner” of your body, you’re in charge of the most miraculous and complex organism on the planet. That’s quite an opportunity and responsibility!

Take the number one killer in the country: heart disease. According to the American Heart Association’s website, “One of the biggest contributors to these statistics is a lack of commitment to a heart healthy lifestyle. Your lifestyle is not only your best defense against heart disease and stroke, it’s also your responsibility”.

And that’s where the breakdown occurs.

With the advent of direct-to-consumer drug ads in the 1990s, we’ve been trained to think that when we experience symptoms, it’s time to see the doctor who will have a pill to correct that abnormality and resolve it. We’re even directed by the ads to ask for the drug by name!

While prescription drugs may save lives, they do not address the root cause of the condition. And because they tend to focus on blocking one metabolic pathway, they create secondary effects or “side effects” that are often worse than the original symptom they were prescribed to address.

Since 80% of heart disease and stroke is preventable, it’s time we step up to the plate and make some serious changes in the way we eat and live.

As your body’s “owner”, YOU have the power to shift your diet and lifestyle to actively support healing and reverse the slow slide towards chronic degenerative disease.

This puts YOU in the driver’s seat of your health as you navigate your daily life.

Our bodies have an amazing ability to heal, when properly supported.

That’s why I’m spending my summer creating a digital course for you - one that will educate, inspire and support you in making the changes that can transform your lifestyle and your future health.

We’ll start with a look at our body’s powerful healing processes, do thorough self-assessment and then explore the drivers of the chronic disease. You’ll create a checklist to take to your doctor to begin a workup to identify the areas that need to be addressed, and we’ll implement a plan to strengthen the Four Pillars of Healthy Aging.

Through this process, you’ll take charge of your health and feel your brain clear, your energy soar and pain melt away!

Until the class starts in September, I hope you’ll get a jumpstart by implementing the 5 Self-Care Tips I reviewed in my last post.

And keep your eyes open for my 10 Healthy Aging Hacks e-booklet, coming next month along with my 4th of July recipe!

If you’ve found this post valuable, please share it with your friends and family and like me on Facebook and Instagram! A santé! (To your health)