I read a so-called leading American ‘health magazine’ recently, and I could not stop myself from shaking my head. In it were numerous advertisements and articles on wonder drugs and disease control methods. There is a heavy dosage of ‘how to cure’ rather than ‘how to prevent’. Is this where our modern health is reduced to? First we put a foot in the grave, then we try to figure out how to take it out?

I think this is ridiculous. Millions of dollars are poured into medical research each year to find a cure for whatever disease there is in the world right now. We give praise and media attention to whichever surgeon that discovers some miracle way to cure a certain disease.

Defective genes are blamed for contracting a disease e.g. cancer. We have an attitude that says, “Oh, I have a bad gene, I can’t help it.” This is nonsense! We can do something about it. First of all, we should stop attributing the fault to anyone and anything and take on the responsibility ourselves.

When we take on this responsibility and decide to do something about it, we are already one up above the majority of the population.

Some falsehoods we need to immediately get rid of:

-         Belief that some exercising machine that allows you to not move an inch and not perspire a drop of sweat, and yet give you health and fitness. Utter crap.

-         Good health can be achieved by popping lots of pills and supplements. Utter crap too.

-         We inherit defective genes from our ancestors and therefore we’re condemned with XYZ disease forever. Utter crap again.

Seriously, only persons with fried brains will actually believe that.

Good health comes with proper diet, correct exercise and sufficient rest. The human body that we have today was the same human body our ancestors had hundreds of years ago. So what made you think that the requirements governing their health need not apply to us today?

Seriously, the only difference back then and now is our environments, which we can control only so much, but our bodies, what we do to it, what we feed into it, what kind of care or abuse we apply to it, these we can control. And please, do not relegate this control to someone else. You alone are responsible for your own health.

Come on, every once in a while we will read of the ‘latest’ medical report debunking the earlier ‘latest, authoritative’ report. So, who is right? Who do we believe? You really trust those reports, which if we believe in, will result in commercial and financial gain for the very ones who wrote it?

No matter how much you do not want to hear it, the fact lies in what our forefathers already knew, that prevention is better than cure. Once a car is damaged in an accident, no amount of repairs can restore it to its former glory. The same goes to our bodies.

So start doing something about your lifestyle now. Change your diet and habits if you have to. You are not an island, and when you fall ill, you affect your loved ones as well. If you cannot pay for your own medical fees, guess who’s the one who has to pay it for you?

Be responsible, do something now while you still can. Do not wait until one foot is in the grave before you start figuring how to get it out.

Actively resist those who try to get you to believe otherwise, for these are usually those who gain the most from the billions spent each year on medical drugs and research. If nobody falls sick, guess who loses?