I recently had the opportunity to spend 4 hours in the emergency room, assisting a friend of mine who had sustained an injury. While there, I decided to try to determine the reasons why other people were there, because there were a lot of people in the emergency room.
Clearly, some people were being treated for obvious injuries from various sources. Car accidents, falling down stairs, and sports had landed several people in the ER that day. However, the majority of people in the ER had no discernible physical injury, but their reasons for being treated seemed perfectly clear.
These unfortunates broke down into two clear categories: overweight and under-the-influence. Of course, these categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they are two categories that are clearly sending people to the hospital in desperate and frightening conditions.
What you put in your mouth today will directly determine the amount of time you spend in the hospital in the future.
Now, in addition to this experience in the ER, I also have the daily experience of watching hospital employees go to and from work every day. That's because I live one block away from a large public hospital, and I see the health care workers in their scrubs walking up and down my street on a constant basis. Even after 6 years, I am still shocked at the physical condition of those responsible for providing health care to the public. They are, overwhelmingly, in terrible shape: overweight and poorly nourished (which isn't to say "undernourished", they are clearly getting enough food).
I recently entered that very same hospital and from the main entrance I could see the neon signs of a Taco Bell and a Cinnabon INSIDE THE HOSPITAL. I saw a doctor walking away from the counter with a super-sized, caramelized, sugar-ized, coffee concoction that looked like it contained enough sugar and fat to kill a rhino.
It all became clear to me right then. It was a perfect economic cycle, one stop shopping for illness and health services in the same building. What a beautiful efficiency of operations! Then again, maybe not. Because the cure is to simply stop eating garbage, and the hospitals are clearly not supporting that goal.
Now, hopefully you've been reading Better Human Magazine and as an athlete you've made conscientious decisions about your health and nutrition. You've reduced or eliminated fast food and sodas (regular and diet). You're trying to include fruits and vegetables in your daily routine. You're avoiding fad diets and "health drinks" that are anything but healthy. You're working out and exercising. You're thinking about your health and diet, because you can't rely on our health care system to do it for you. Not when you can get a prescription filled and Big Mac served in the same place.
Blake Baxter is a Holistic Health Counselor and Kung-Fu instructor. He works with other martial artists to help them incorporate better eating practices and create awareness about the ways in which food impacts performance and recovery.
