Five Adages for Healthy Living - Chapter from The Rule Book And User Guide by Nana Kwaku Opare-gctid199125

[Nana]

From the Book The Book The Rule Book and User Guide For Healthy Living — Nana Kwaku Opare, MD, MPH, CA, Opare Publishing, Atlanta, GA, 2011

Copyright © 2011 Nana Kwaku Opare, MD, MPH, CA

 All rights reserved

Five Adages For Healthy Living

The doctor cannot drink the medicine for the patient. — Tshi

False belief: we must in the course of life become ill. When we do, we must submit to our physicians and do what they say to get better. My doctor always knows what's best for me.

Remember #1 - Forget The Rest.

#1 Don't Get Sick
#2 If You Do Get Sick, Don't Go See Anyone
#3 If You Go See Someone, Don't Go See An M.D.
#4 If You Go See An M.D., Don't Go See A Surgeon
#5 If You Go See A Surgeon, Don't Go See One At A Teaching Hospital

#1 Don't Get Sick

This is the most important part of good health. The truth is that it is the hardest part as well. How can anyone control whether they get sick or not?
Most illnesses don't come from chance or bad luck or bad genes. Most illnesses and diseases (and some metaphysicians would even include injuries) come about because of failure to properly care for ourselves. A very small percentage are the result of karmic debt. Karma cannot be escaped and the consequences of bad and good karma will inescapably affect our lives. Bad karma can result in illness. The vast majority of illnesses result from failing to follow the Rule Book and User Guide agreed to by us and installed in our subconscious at birth. The natural response to disease or dis-ease is to first identify and remove the cause, because our body has built-in natural mechanisms for restoring balance. We deep inside know what we did or failed to do to get sick. We also have the power to change those things and heal.
Paradoxically, sometimes what appears as illness is in fact a sign of proper functioning of the human organism. We are living in a toxic society both mentally and physically. We will tend to accumulate those toxins in our bodies and minds. In their wisdom, the body and mind will tend to purge themselves of these toxins. The detoxification process can appear as colds and flu, upper respiratory symptoms, skin or intestinal or other severe symptoms.
Sometimes bad dreams or bouts of the "blues" are signs of the mind detoxifying.  Sometimes we need to slow down and let ourselves purge. When the symptoms persist, it is a sign we have high amounts of toxicity in our system. For example, ongoing depression, catarrh or dermatitis are our body's/mind's messages that we need to correct the errors of living that filled us with toxins.
If we are wise, pay attention to the minor issues that come up and change our behavior accordingly, we need never become seriously ill.

#2 If You Do Get Sick, Don't Go See Anyone

We go to see another person to heal us because of our tendency to look outside of ourselves to find an answer for a problem within. When we go to someone else, that interaction often gets in the way of doing what our body is desperately trying to do — get us to pay attention.
We believe that if we find the right doctor, all we need to do is turn over responsibility for our health, follow orders, and we will be basically healthy. This process is giving our power over to someone else. It is saying that we do not posses the wisdom to do for ourselves what it takes to be healthy. It is saying that we are not responsible for ourselves.
We proclaim we have to go to some expert who knows than we about the bodies we live in 24/7. It is saying that we do not trust ourselves to make decisions about what to do to stay well. It engages a false belief that we must inevitably become sick and broken down, but if we have the right experts around, they can fix us like our mechanic can fix our car. It ignores a fundamental truth that only we can perform routine maintenance on our bodies. Only we can care for ourselves and maintain our health. Our doctor/healer/acupuncturist/chiropractor/homeopath/whatever cannot sleep, drink water, exercise for us. Only we can keep ourselves healthy.
Health practitioners, myself included, are in the business of selling products and services. Revenue is generated best, like in all businesses, through repeat customers. It is in the best business interest of practitioners to never actually heal patients, just to make them feel better while we are seeing them, and to feel noticeably less well when we stop. Patients then triumphantly tell all of their friends how good they feel now that they are going to see Dr. X and that their friends should go too. Chiropractors are (sometimes unjustifiably) notorious for this.
The truth is that spinal and other joint and visceral manipulation is a powerful and effective healing technique, but if we don't do our work at home, it cannot fix us. We must do our exercise, stretches, change our diet, etc., in order to heal.
The medical/industrial establishment uses hype, the power of conventional institutions and a huge advertising budget to get us to keep coming back. M.D.s tell us that horrible things are going to happen if we do not take the prescribed pills for the rest of our lives. They convince us that there is a fundamental flaw in our previously perfect body system, and because we don't actually heal, we now have to keep coming back for follow-up appointments. They sell us virtual blindfolds and earplugs (in the form of medication) that let us stop seeing and hearing what our body and instinctual wisdom is, in increasingly loud ways, trying to tell us — straighten up and fly right. Unlike chiropractors, acupuncturists and naturopaths who, as a part of routine practice are trained to teach us how to take better care of ourselves, it is a rare M.D. who knows more than to tell us to quit smoking and get some exercise and maybe work on how we eat. Even rarer is an M.D. who has the predilection to do so.
Are acupuncturists and herbalists and naturopaths and other time-honored practitioners any better? The very fact that we go to someone else at all is saying to ourselves that we are lost and lack the power to heal our own bodies. If that is our true state, then we must go get help. In most cases, whatever ails us is reversible by following the messages we receive from God through our bodies' desires, emotions and intuition. We need to believe and act on the understanding that the healthiest way to live — as God/Nature designed us — is the easiest way to live.
Let's release the illusion that taking care of ourselves is somehow difficult or next to impossible. Why would God/Nature design a life form in such a way that it is more difficult to properly take care of it than not? If so, my bet is that that species is up next in the line for extinction. I know this can be a radical idea because so often to take care of ourselves in a natural way means that we must change our relationship to society and family. Do we really believe that making changes that are better for our individual health, can be bad for the planet as a whole?
My advice is that if you go to see someone else, only go with the commitment to change the behavior that got you there in the first place. Only go in to see someone if you already have an idea what the cause is, and you have started changing your behavior. Do your research first. Then only go to a professional who understands the behavioral cause of your problem, and who can help you change that behavior permanently.

#3 If You Go See Someone, Don't Go See An M.D.

Allopathic (standard Western) medicine — despite its huge, complex body of knowledge and its often-incomprehensible terminology and technology (even to those who practice it) — is actually quite simple.
Basically, it is like this: With some exceptions, the symptom is the problem. Using modern chemistry, metabolic processes are blocked (poisoned), and thus the symptom and the problem have been treated. The symptom, or the blood pressure, or the lab result or the x-ray result, etc., is the problem. Stop the symptom or reverse the lab finding, and the problem is gone? Not. Little or no consideration is given to the person's lifestyle and relationship to the world and to spirit as the origin of the problem. No consideration is given to the family situation or that of the greater society that is exploitive, and that prevents us from taking care for ourselves. Even less attention is given to preventing the problem from recurring. No surprise, it is common belief among M.D.s that patients cannot and will not change their behavior to heal themselves or to stay well.
But why do we have symptoms in the first place? Symptoms are God's way of letting us know we are out of alignment with our natural way of doing things. Symptoms are there to get us to pay attention. Pain is just another symptom that follows more subtle symptoms preceding it in the progression of the dis-ease. Stopping the symptom by itself, in the vast majority of the time, is counter productive for our healing. Our symptoms are our guides to re-establishing normal healthy behavior patterns.
In general, unless you have reached a severe crisis state and are looking out upon the abyss of death or disability, it is best to avoid the paradigm of allopathic medicine. Other "holistic" healing practices attempt to elucidate underlying patterns of disharmony, and by adjusting the spirit and body's function (with prayer or ritual, medication, hands on, movement, needles, heat, etc.), restore balance. If the holistic practitioner is practicing well, he or she will prescribe changes in lifestyle and relationship to the environment and work world. Holistic practitioners, unlike all but a miniscule portion of allopathic physicians, if doing their job, intend to motivate you to change your life.
Sometimes to actually do what your intuition and body tell you to do to heal is in fact a radical act that threatens the class and political nature of society. How many of us know we are in jobs, neighborhoods, relationships that make us sick? We drink water, breathe air and eat tainted food that makes us sick.
Our social condition as a consequence of our mental enslavement needs little elaboration here except to say that to date, functional political white supremacy is alive and well. This manifests in relatively poor health for Kmtyws in the U.S. by all measured indices. Political action may be the most rational response to many conditions causing our dis-eases. It is exceedingly rare to find the institution of orthodox medicine leading an initiative for social, political or economic change in conditions that clearly cause our dis-ease.
Standard medicine, as a major institution of society, is in place to reproduce, re-create and legitimize the existing order of society. No major institution in society actively antagonizes any other. Medicine is no different from the judiciary, legislative, military, banking, clergy, police, prison, entertainment or educational institutions. These institutions are in place to maintain the status quo.
When we realize we are natural vegetarians and stop eating animals, what will happen to the beef, poultry, dairy, fast-food, pharmaceutical, medical supply and hospital industries? That's right — they go out of business. What will happen when we refuse to work ourselves to death in dangerous and toxic jobs, and refuse to buy and consume stuff we really don't need? What happens when we refuse to have our neighborhoods serve as toxic waste dumps that affluent whites would not tolerate? There are major vested interests in our unhealthy lifestyle and they protect their interests well!
The institution of standard allopathic medicine, despite what many of us view as irrational in its approach to getting us well, when viewed from a political and economic perspective is actually quite rational as an institution of society. It tends and is intended to maintain the status quo. How often do we hear our physician tell us we need to quit our job that is stressing us out and making us sick and go into business for ourselves? Not too often, as we would lose our medical insurance and be unable to keep seeing the physician. To do so en masse would mean a loss in profit for the health care industry and a fundamental change in the exploitive nature of the relationship of business and industry to its workers.
It should come as no surprise despite over $100 billion spent for research on AIDS that we have no cure but only increasingly expensive treatment. As the gatekeepers and the demand drivers of the medical/industrial complex, doctors often act unwittingly as the front men, for a self-serving industry that seeks to maintain a constant low-level state of dis-ease. Just as the military seeks to maintain a constant state of war, there is no financial benefit to the medical pharmaceutical industry complex to actually cure AIDS (or any other chronic disease for that matter). There is too much profit to be gained by treating it. The same is true for hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, cancer — and the list goes on. Don't expect a business that reaps profits from you having a problem, to come up with a solution for you no longer having that problem. It is not in their best interest. What is in their best interest is to convince you that you need them to keep that problem "under control." Best if they can convince you that in order to keep that problem under control or to manage it, you must keep seeing them and keep using their products, or the products only they have the ability to authorize you to use "for the rest of your life."
Why are we so naive as to believe that although they state they have an oath ("Hippocratic vs. hypo-critic"), medicine as a profession and industry somehow operates on a different set of ethics than do all other industries?

#4 If You Go See An M.D., Don't Go See A Surgeon

There is an old adage: When one has a hammer in one's hand everything looks like a nail. Surgeons make their living doing surgery. The billing structure of medicine means that surgeons get paid large sums of money for the surgical procedure itself and very little for preliminary visits or follow up. Helping a person change their behavior so they will ultimately not need surgery is neither in a surgeon's financial best interest, nor is it within their range of training or experience. Referring the patient to an alternative practitioner who could possibly treat the condition without surgery is not what most surgeons will do. Their tendency is to cut first, think later.
Are we willing to accept never being entirely normal again after surgery? Cutting into the body permanently alters anatomy from its normal state. Removing parts of the internal organs renders the body unable to properly function or at least to optimally function, since all parts of the body are there for a reason. (Many of us have been told that the tonsils and appendix are vestigial organs and not needed. I don't buy that! God gave us just what we need, to do what we need to do.) Surgeons know this is true. Anyone who suggests otherwise to us is prevaricating.
I have on multiple occasions heard surgeons tell patients after having their gallbladder removed, that they can eat normally. A functioning gallbladder is necessary to properly digest a fatty meal. Once the gallbladder is removed, we must change the way we eat, especially since it is likely that we already eat a fatty diet that is the cause of most gallbladder disease.
Occasionally we ignore our body's messages, and fail to change our behavior and properly care for ourselves, continuing in our unhealthy patterns for long periods of time, to the point where death in hours is imminent without surgical intervention. Well at that point, gentlemen, sharpen your scalpels.
But until then, rare is the case where non-surgical intervention is not preferred and usually it is more effective. For example: there is overwhelming data that show diet and lifestyle changes are more effective than surgery in treating coronary artery disease by every criterion of measurement. With non-surgical intervention, you don't end up with wires holding your chest together, and scars up and down your legs, with a high risk of having suffered brain damage from being on the heart-lung machine while your heart was stopped during surgery. Traditional Chinese medicine is more effective for the treatment of almost all gynecological dis-eases than Western surgical care. Only rarely is spinal surgery both truly indicated and as  effective as movement and manual therapy.
Sure, I expect criticisms and that is OK. We can debate. But the fact remains — why would we do something that permanently alters the anatomy before we have really tried every other possible option, and resumed/started caring for our bodies fully in the natural way? We must take responsibility for caring for ourselves and get busy with it. Surgery does not, and seeks not to, address the cause of a problem. Witness the high rate of repeat coronary bypass surgeries. The underlying pattern of disharmony is not addressed and the problem usually recurs in an altered, identical or more severe form.

#5 If You Go See A Surgeon, Don't Go See One At A Teaching Hospital

In surgical training programs, witness the burned-out and jaded interns and residents referring to patients as their "surgical problem." Overhear a typical directive from senior resident to his intern — "I just admitted an appy*, finish your scut** and get down to the OR. I need you to scrub on this case." People are reduced from spiritual beings to diseased internal organs.
Surgical training requires residents to get practice in each type of operation. In fact, they have logbooks of operations that they must keep and submit for certification. This training is especially brutal and demanding. To be eligible for board certification, a surgeon in training must have performed a quota of each type of procedure in that specialty. Doctors will sometimes perform an operation that could be delayed or treated non-surgically — in order to meet that quota. Getting the numbers in is a reality. So the norm among surgical residents is severe sleep deprivation. Would you like someone cutting on you who is learning and has had neither lots of practice, nor a good night's sleep?
Surgical residency programs are very competitive. Only about 12 to 25 percent of interns starting surgical residency programs will finish. Residency
·       In this united snakesge "appy" means a person suffering from acute appendicitis.
·       **Scut is the day to day repetitive and tedious or odious work in the hospital that.
programs are designed so that a good chunk of residents must be cut each year. Often the doctor who survives the cut is the most competitive and obsequious and not necessarily the most compassionate. Don't believe me? Go to a university hospital and ask.
Let us not forget the sordid history of surgical "science." This often criminally unconscionable past aggression on the bodies of Kmtyws was well documented in the book "Medical Apartheid" by Harriet Washington. Forced, unauthorized sterilizations, hysterectomies for "hysteria," and brain surgery for mental illness, are among the dozens of procedures done often on poor and illiterate Black "patients."
There are many still commonly performed surgical procedures that are lacking scientific evidence as to their effectiveness, which were developed on Black people without true informed consent. No doubt some if not most of the procedures performed today will later be viewed as draconian when it becomes common knowledge that — given today's safe and effective treatment alternatives — they are not only unnecessary but harmful. All this stuff occurred in teaching hospitals under the guise of "science." Yes, they do continue to experiment on us in the operating room. Would you like these same sleepy doctors assisting a professor of surgery in performing new and experimental operations on you, the outcome of which is uncertain?
Despite this, I am not anti-surgery. In its proper role, surgical care is truly miraculous. But the last place I want to be is on an operating room table. If I am there, I know it is the only place I can be if I want to survive, or later function somewhat normally.
Remember and follow Adage # 1 Don't Get Sick. Do that by following the rule book and user guide installed at birth. Pay attention now to what our bodies are telling us. Know that our bodies are whole perfect and complete. Cooperate with our perfection by taking care of ourselves every day in every way.

Affirmation: I have everything I need to heal anything in me right now. I have the wisdom to know and to understand everything I need to be healthy all of my life. I care for my body, mind and soul and it responds with vibrant, enduring health.

See chapter by this name in this book.

Center for Disease Control, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report Supplement, Vol. 60, January 14, 2011.

See T. Colin Campbell, The China Study (BenBella Books, 2006); Gabriel Cousens, There Is a Cure for Diabetes (North Atlantic Books, 2008); many others.