Do you ever wonder why, regardless of all your good intentions, you just can’t seem to take control over your health and wellness the way you really need to? The answer to this question is seen in the words of Albert Einstein, who reminded us”you can’t fix a problem with the exact same thinking that created it”. To put it differently, you can’t change old behaviors without new information.
Research
The Institute of Medicine recently released a study that indicates ninety million Americans are “health illiterate”, which means we don’t know how to interpret or use health information to control or improve our health, or prevent chronic disease. Data compiled previously identified, “lack of information as the number one root cause of death”. Understanding that there is a cause and effect relationship between what we know and how we behave, we need a model of integrating this important information to change the behaviors that lead to chronic illness.
According to a 7-year, 1996, Harvard Medical School study, approximately 70 percent of all cancers are preventable through lifestyle changes. Furthermore, our diseases and conditions are primarily due to stress, food, environment, attitude, emotions or beliefs that keep us in behaviors that lead to illness. Which invites the question, are we consciously choosing to be unhealthy, or do we just not understand sufficiently the relationship between what we believe, how we behave, what we put in our bodies and how we keep ourselves well or make ourselves sick? In a world exploding with health information, especially online, we’re caught in the dilemma of having abundant amounts of information, without a context through which we can understand and use this information in a manner that is suitable for our own unique personal health needs.
Good news
There is, however, good news – making its way into the mainstream of health care is an integrated model of health information and education that offers a”whole picture of health” perspective, allowing each of us to discern and create our own unique approach to taking control of our health and well-being. Whole Health Education, developed over the past 28 years, in cooperation with Boston physicians, nurses and educators, is an approach to understanding the cause and effect our behaviors and choices have on our state of health.
Demystifying the five major factors that influence how sick or well we become, Whole Health Education provides a perspective on human anatomy and physiology, bio-chemistry, psycho-social, environmental and spiritual aspects which allows for an authentic understanding of what we need know to resolve chronic health problems or to stay healthy. Integrating evidence-based information with the wisdom of various spiritual teachings and a whole-person summary of behavioral options, Whole Health Education offers each of us a tool for personal health management by providing personalized health information that explains the physical, emotional, nutritional, environmental and spiritual aspects of a health issue.
The numbers
For instance, Mature Onset Diabetes affects approximately 18.2 million Americans and is the leading health concern in our culture today. As all chronic conditions are, Mature Onset Diabetes is a multi-dimensional disease state and the unique Whole Health perspective, can facilitate the restoration of health for people who have chronic diseases like diabetes. What happens on a physical and structural level with Mature Onset Diabetes? The specialized beta cells of the pancreas, which produce insulin, become incapable of producing adequate amounts of the critically necessary secretion.
This occurs over a period of years and can begin in our bodies, over time, by eating large quantities of insulin-provoking foods. These insulin provocateurs, which are sugars and starches in the form of complex carbohydrates, require the pancreas to produce more insulin so that the sugars can be carried over the cell membranes to all areas of the body. Serious disturbances occur when we don’t have enough insulin to carry the sugar over the cell membranes.
Insulin
It hooks onto the sugar molecule and acts like a lock and key mechanism to bring that sugar into the cell that is then utilised in the energy cycle of cell metabolism. The nervous system, brain and the lungs can’t function without the proper metabolism of sugars. Just as diabetes is a lack of nourishment on a chemical/nutritional degree, so is it a lack of emotional nourishment on an emotional/mental level. It relates to the “feel good” nourishment component of your body. What do we know about carbohydrates and serotonin? Carbohydrates provoke the production of serotonin. Serotonin is a neuro-transmitter that creates a sense of well-being.
There’s a direct relationship between what our body is doing chemically and how we feel emotionally. When we crave or build our diet around carbohydrates, this can be a method of”self-medicating” our emotional needs by eating carbohydrates to provoke insulin production. Sugar problems can affect us emotionally. Let’s say you have a pancreas that isn’t working properly. What can happen somatic/psychically in the pancreas to the brain? If we’re feeling the ups and downs of hypoglycemia, and its biochemical/neurological symptoms, it may undermine our sense of safety, self esteem, and produce anxiety and fear.
Keep in mind
What is the emotional component of diabetes and the pancreas? Often, it can be a poor sense of self-esteem and a fear of not being”good enough” or not belonging. These feelings, medicated by the serotonin foods, can lead us to not look deeply enough into what is causing our health concerns and permit the feeling/feeding cycle to continue. On the other hand, the treatment for people with Mature Onset Diabetes is to decrease the strain on the pancreas by making changes in their diet — decrease starches and sugars and decrease calories.
Eat less, eat right. What type of a diet would be best for preventing Mature Onset Diabetes? Vegetables, vegetables, and vegetables combined with lean proteins like fish, chicken, water, a little fruit and a little fat. In a hypoglycemic situation, it is best not to eat grain or sugar, but sprouted grain bread, and other substitutes can be healthy and satisfying. Because hormones are chemicals, diabetes and hypoglycemia are both hormonal-based issues.
What we know about the hormone system is that it works as a balanced interdependent system. Diabetes is an endocrine-related, systemic issue. With a systemic problem like diabetes, you have a body system problem–you don’t just have a condition by itself. It’s known that the pancreas is related, through hormone interaction, to the adrenals, and the adrenals are in turn related to the reproductive system. It’s known that these glands are related through hormone interactions to the pituitary and the pituitary is related to the thyroid gland, the thyroid is related to the thymus, and the thymus is related to the immune system.
Envionment
The environment we work in, live in, walk through, live near — how does that environment have an effect on how we feel and how we feel about ourselves? How can we learn to trust in the arrangement of the world? By behaviors that come from trusting the order inside ourselves. We do this by setting boundaries — codes of conduct of how we will behave, eat, work exercise and live. If we do not violate our own boundaries, we are less likely to let anybody else violate our boundaries. We must begin with ourselves
. Our experience of victimization can begin with our own self-victimizing behaviour. A Hindu Vendata truth is that”the entire world is one family”. It is said that there’s just one disease, the disease of separateness, separating oneself from the awareness that we are one living organism. Competition creates isolation. The spiritual challenge presented by hypoglycemia and diabetes appears to be involved with more than under-valuing the self: judgment of self and others.
Where are we in the process of getting to the fact that we are all equally important? The drama created by a one-up or one-down dynamic that we may allow to become part of our experience can lead to psychophysiology and the behavioral issues which can contribute to and create Mature Onset Diabetes.
Conclusion
Whole Health Education can transform our experience of caring for ourselves. It can provide an understanding of our health concerns and conditions from this multi-dimensional perspective which makes sense in a way we can use the information directly and in a meaningful manner. Additionally, having the information provided in a mindful, respectful way that invites each of us to identify what we know about our health and condition, how to choose to resolve the issue and what sort of care we choose to have, allows each of us to experience whole-person health care through whole health information. Then, WE become the center of our health and healing process, instead of the doctors or practitioners we go to for advice.