The things we do to ourselves...

Friday, June 10, 2011

My sister is the Medical Examiner for the eastern part of the state of Kentucky and I was visiting her work place for the first time. She had no intention of showing me her work…she didn’t have anything going currently, but when we entered her operating room, one of her colleagues was performing an autopsy and invited us to have a look. He knew I was a health professional and thought that I might be interested to see how people kill themselves with the way they care for themselves. The person had died when a clot originating in the leg had broken free, traveled through the heart and lodged itself in a lung. He knew the history of the person…grossly obese, high blood pressure, high serum cholesterol, diabetes and no physical activity. She was only 45 years old and someone’s mother, sister and wife. “We see this kind of thing all the time. Folks just don’t take seriously what they’re doing to their bodies. All too often we get them here too early and it just didn’t have to happen.” Though it was not something I was looking forward to seeing, it reinforced what I have dedicated the rest of my life to doing…trying to get the message out and help those who can do something about the things they do to impact their health.

I’d met a man at Holly’s conference and we’d had lunch together. During our meal, he shared a story about having pains in his legs and feeling dizzy. “I went to my doctor and he said it was high cholesterol. He gave me medication to lower it…I take it every day…and it brought it way down,” he said. He was eating a meal that consisted of more saturated fat and cholesterol than I eat in a month. He also mentioned he was taking medication for high blood pressure and was easily 30 pounds overweight.

I’m not sure what bothered me more…the meal he was eating or that his doctor put him on medication without even giving a change in lifestyle a chance. He seemed good with doing and eating whatever he wanted and only having to take a pill to keep things under control. I told Holly I thought he’d be visiting my sister earlier than he’d prefer if he kept up his lifestyle…pills or not.

Maybe…somewhere along the line of writing this blog…I’ll get someone’s attention to the point they will take the steps necessary to reverse similar trends in their own lives. And when I get to help them myself…all the better. For now, I’ll keep writing, working out, eating the Paleo diet and, hopefully, continue to get more quality out of living.