Food or drug? Can you tell the difference??

Was thinking over the past week that food really is like medicine. The more I study about food, the more I see how similar it is to medicines that I used to dispense in the pharmacy. Here are three of those things...


1. 
So many foods these days are almost as synthetic as the medicines we get. We used to eat a lot of REAL food (as in not processed or highly refined) but now food has been processed to the point where food is so synthetic it isn't really food anymore - our body can't recognise most of the ingredients in that packet of 'food' you get off the supermarket shelf so how do you expect it to metabolise it and break it down into something useful or of nutritional value. Half the stuff in the ingredients you don't even know how to pronounce and the other half are numbers cause they don't even have names for what they are!

In the same way in medicine we have moved away from the natural herbs and remedies our ancestors used to treat symptoms. Again it was a move away from natural compounds easily recognised and used by the body. Even as recently as a generation ago there were pharmacists that actually compounded medicines - not like today where all we get to do is put labels on the boxes of fully synthetic, pharma-industry-made medicines.

2.
Food has effects on the body and the body has effects on the food just like medicines affect your body and your body also affects your medicine. To oversimplify, in pharmaceuticals the study of how your body affects the medicine is pharmacokinetics and the study of how the medicine affects the body is pharmacodynamics. Food can change the way your body digests other foods - it can change the pH (how acidic or alkaline) in your body affecting many other processes. Medicines also have an effect on how your body works and the 'side effects' are just that medicine working in different parts of the body other than the area we were 'targeting'.



3.
There are unknown side effects from medicines that we don't know about and cannot or do not test long enough for in clinical studies. In the same way I am finding that 'food' is not always tested for human consumption over as sufficiently long enough period of time and in some cases there are no tests done on foods to assess the effect on the people. There are so many side effects we don't even know about - the crazy thing is that some of those effects that come from food are what we then go to the doctor for to get medicine which we think will make it better?! In many people those side effects we know about can show as food allergies, food intolerances, and food sensitivites. In many others these effects can take form that we just don't expect and so would never relate back to food.

More on this stuff to come....

Medicines in "chronic disease" - what we have been lied to about!

I was catching up with a GP yesterday who has been in general practice for the last 20+ years. He works in one of the practices that I do some work with so we know each other quite well now.

We were discussing medicines and why they have all of a sudden become, by a long way, the most common intervention used by doctors. Is it because we as patients go in expecting to get something and would feel ripped off coming away with nothing, or is it more because doctors are so overrun with patients that they prescribe to match symptom and don't have the chance to actually address the REAL CAUSE of the symptoms - possibly due to the patient wanting it fixed NOW! It is certainly an interesting dynamic. 

How would you feel going into the doctor and getting only advice about what you should and should not be eating and about the increased exercise you should be doing and not taking away with you any medicine to 'fix' the thing you went in for? 

Even more interesting is whether or not the doctors know or keep up to date about what the best lifestyle change advice is (is it still the food pyramid for nutrition? because that is the advice most often given to everyone that comes into contact with the health system). Then again, is it appropriate to try and help someone change their lifestyle completely in a 15 minute consult every 3 months? Do doctors even have the motivational techniques required to help people make changes? It isn't part of the 5 years at med school that's for sure. Do we really expect that the doctor can fix everything after some patients have abused their bodies for the last 30+ years and think they can return to complete health in a couple of weeks?! Some still see health as a guaranteed right but not realising it is a responsibility - and a personal responsibility at that.

For example, if your blood pressure is quite high one time you were visiting the doctor should you immediately be put on a blood pressure lowering tablet? Should other risk factors be taken into account first? Does the doctor have time to spend with you to identify WHY your blood pressure might be high - and do they then have time to explain what you can DO about it yourself?

I'm not trying to say doctors are bad or people are lazy or anything like that. I'm just saying that I find it interesting that we expect an overloaded health system (that is focused on disease) with a flawed model of delivery to keep us healthy?! The sooner we realise health is OUR personal responsibility the better - and the sooner we realise it is more cost effective for the nation to invest in our health from the earliest point possible in preventative techniques the healthier we will all be. 

But what will happen to the drug companies and the billions of dollars they make from finding a 'disease' (really just a set of symptoms they can then call a disease), and then matching that with their most recently developed medicine. Well I guess we will have no more need for them!! Especially not for those "chronic conditions". 

(I don't even like the term "chronic" because it immediately makes us as the patient believe that you have this for life - AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO!! If you make changes you DO NOT have to be on those medicines forever). 

In fact we have been lied to by big pharmaceutical companies trying to scare us into thinking that the risk of something bad happening to us is so much worse if we don't take their medicine. 

What they talk about is relative risk instead of absolute risk. What that means is that say there were 100 people and we put them all on a medicine. 5 of these hundred were going to get heart disease anyway. Of those 5, 2 did not get the heart disease as a result of taking medicine but 3 of them still did EVEN though they were taking medicine. This would be a great result for a drug company because they have reduced the risk of getting a heart attack by 40%!!!! ie 2 people of the 5 that were going to get heart disease were 'saved' and 2/5 is 40%. That is known as the relative risk reduction. Can you see the problem here??

What they don't tell you is that the ABSOLUTE risk reduction is actually only 2% as only 2 of those 100 people that took the medicine did not get heart disease as a result of taking medicine!!

Relative risk is how MANY if not ALL drug studies are written up and for obvious reasons. How much of a medicine could you sell by telling people it gave a 2% reduction in risk. I won't even go into this part yet but there is the whole thing of you won't even see that 2% reduction until after 10 years or more of taking the medicine... cRAzy stuff!!

Well I think I've gone on long enough and it wasn't even about what I initially was going to write so I will have to change the post title so it is relevant lol...

Anyway I would be interested to hear your thoughts, comments or questions about the current health system model and your experiences interacting with it so post/comment/question away lol

I wanna lose wheat!

Everyone wants to lose weight! But not everyone wants to do what is required to lose the weight..

Some research done recently shows that wheat has a HUGE impact on how our bodies store fat - particularly around the belly area which is where most of 'today's people' store fat. In fact they call it wheat belly now.

I've always thought but what about how in the bible it talks about wheat for man - well let's just say that we are not talking about the same wheat.

Wheat has changed significantly since biblical times. 

In fact in the last 50 years wheat has changed so much thanks to the geneticists and others that (with good intentions) have genetically modified the wheat in order to make it produce more - most likely with the good intentions of feeding the world and alleviating hunger throughout the world. And also of course for the money... but that's another story.

I've just bought the book Wheat Belly by Dr William Davis (a preventative cardiologist - check his blog in the link) and will be sharing some knowledge from what I get out of the book and how we as a family have tried to implement it in future posts so keep an eye out for them.

This particular idea to start with of not having breads, has been a bit of a journey for our little family. The first question was "so what will the kids take to school for lunches if they aren't going to have bread?" In truth this issue hasn't been fully solved as they still sometimes take sandwiches to school because it is the easiest thing to make (and they can make it themselves!). But as far as usage in our house overall goes we have reduced bread intake by at least 70%.

We have also stopped all pasta and cereals. Our kids are now having fish, steak, chicken, eggs, spinach or whatever else we as parents end up cooking for our breakfasts. They are loving it - our son will eat as much as we do if he could and he sure isn't missing cereals and grains. Our daughter on the other hand has found it a bit harder and still wants cereals and toast in the morning and is addicted to sandwiches for snacks. However, what I have noticed over the last few weeks is that because everyone else is eating something different, she wants to have what we are having now. Perhaps it has gone past the 'tipping point' for her because her brother now eats what we have been eating whereas before he would have what she was eating otherwise it 'wasn't fair'. And for snacks now instead of sandwiches they have fruit or a vegetable after school. We need to keep working on the lunches (and that just means we need to be better at preparing their lunches instead of doing last minute lunches or letting them do their own).

It really just takes some discipline and commitment to make changes and then slowly the changes will happen. It is certainly tough to get past the initial moaning and complaints and so on for the first few weeks but once you learn to be a little more creative with other foods around, it becomes so much easier!

So what's the difference?? No, our kids have not lost huge amounts of weight or 'lost inches off their waist' like all that other stuff you see on TV and of course we don't want them to (we already get in trouble as it is with grandparents for 'not feeding them enough').

But it's not about that - for our kids it is about teaching them what is the best way to eat so that in the future they are keeping themselves healthy and well and won't get into the problems and chronic illnesses that many adults are facing today.

If you are keen - give it a go and try not eating bread for a day.. or a week. Find some veges you like that you could use to eat instead of bread or different meal options. Let us know how you go!

What is the REAL cause of illness and disease?

So I was in a discussion today with some regional health funding organisations. We discussed what I believe to be the real cause of illness and disease and a program I've been working on that could potentially change the way health systems work in primary care.

No, it's not that people don't know what they should be doing because there is certainly no shortage of information out there. And with the Internet and Google you can pretty much find anything! So you can't plead ignorance. So it's not lack of information.

It's not even that people don't do enough exercise. Sure exercise is really important and essential to overall wellness but I don't think just lack of exercise is the real cause of illness and disease.

And it's not even the food. I know a HUGE part of it IS the food and if we could get everyone eating properly (as in eating REAL food) that would make a massive difference on peoples overall wellness and reduce the burden of disease. However, if best nutrition was available to all (which is NOT food pyramid by the way - even though that is what the dieticians other health care professionals in the health system are telling us we should follow), there would still be many that could/would not follow it.




Which leads me to what I believe to be the real cause of disease - a LACK OF SELF-MANAGEMENT SKILLS (and I can't really find a good picture for it...). If we really think about it, we could do anything we put out minds to yet we limit ourselves by not knowing HOW to apply new things and changes into our lives that will make us better, happier, more successful and so on.

What is self management you ask? Well it includes the knowledge, skills and ability to drive your own personal health and wellness - so you can be in control more of your health and not at the mercy of our health professionals (most of whom of course are well-intentioned but may not be following the latest information and therefore not giving you the correct, most current up to date information or in fact may not be giving you all the options that are available). The problem is that we have become lazy, too focused on instant gratification, too comfortable with what we do now, too good at telling ourselves that we are fine, too expert in justifying away what we do to our bodies - which for many of us is downright abuse of the gift we have been given.

How would this help? Well, these people would then have the skills to apply good healthy eating principles they have learned and eat better, they would understand the importance of exercise and know HOW to apply that into their lives, and would know HOW (by experience not just listening to how) look after their bodies in the best way possible. Surely that would lead to reduced burden of disease.

And how do I propose we do that? By taking people by the hand and walking them through it, gradually letting them do more and more until they are at a point where they can start taking more of a lead and then finally at the point when they can lead themselves and their families (and even influence others around them) to apply positive changes and move towards healthier lives!

Getting Results!

After all is said and done - what results have you noticed??

 I know as fitness trainers or health professionals we all TALK about 'results this', 'achieve that', 'abs here', 'tight and toned there' and give you lots of advice on what you should and shouldn't do, what you can and can't eat or drink and so on. We promise all kinds of things and some even give guarantees that you will get that result. We can even provide all manner of research, studies and opinions to back up what we are doing or recommending, or not doing and not recommending as the case may be.

But when it all comes down to it - you need to ask yourself 
"am I getting the results or outcomes I want?"

I have come to realise that as health and fitness professionals, we cannot GIVE you the result or outcome no matter how much we promise it or how technically correct and evidence based we think our programs or advice are. YOU must earn that result - you must put into place the strategies to succeed, you are the one that has to get more in tune with your body and realise how it tries to tell you when you have eaten crap food, you are the one that needs to get yourself off the couch and stay active regularly, you are the one that needs to get yourself to sleep at a reasonable time so you can recover properly.... and so on and so on.

When it comes down to it all we can do is provide solutions. What I'm saying is YOU need to actually put it into action. You cannot avoid the work, the sacrifice, the commitment and honesty required to achieve your goal or the result you want. We can invite and keep inviting you to make changes required, but only you can decide on whether to be or not to be; whether to act or not to act. They say "be before you are and you will become" (more on that another time).

So the question then is what do you want? Are you strong enough mentally, physically and all the other ways to make those changes yourself? If you are, then why haven't you already done it? If you need support what kind of support do you imagine you will need?

I think the only way you can be helped is by uncovering and tapping into the motivation or potential within. And I certainly can't do that for you. I can help with throwing off some of the layers that keep that motivating factor hidden and perhaps even opening your eyes and understanding to who you really are and what is available to you. I can even help to encourage you and provide an example for you, pull you through the tough times and most importantly BELIEVE in YOU. I probably believe in you more than you do in yourself.

To finish off this post let me just say this. Words are powerful - they can motivate change. Positive words will motivate positive change. Give it a go and start by talking good, positive words about yourself and how you CAN achieve your goal. You might surprise yourself with what YOU can achieve.

Say it; believe it; do it.

Simple yet profound motivators!!

How do we get more people into health and wellness?

First thing is do they WANT to be in the first place? If they have no desire to be healthy or feel better then you are flogging a dead horse as they say...

However! If they have a small hint of a desire to do something to improve their current situation, and are willing to do something then you are in business.

Next thing is how do you know they have a desire and what brings about that desire? 

I had an awesome discussion with a lady who was telling me a story about her 7-year-old granddaughter who she found doing star jumps in her room. She thought this was interesting so asked her granddaughter why she was doing star jumps?

The response amazed her when the granddaughter said,

"I don't want to get diabetes!" 

What this 7-year-old knew was that 3 out of 4 of her grandparents had diabetes and most of the other adults in the house were also on medicines for other chronic conditions. It highlighted the impact of disease and ill health of family members on a child. Even at such a young age she realises that she doesn't want to go through the things that she sees her role models go through each day (she is probably particularly worried about the insulin injections one of them has to take everyday cause even I'd be freaked out about that too!).

It seems that often we don't think too much about the effect of ill health on ourselves and even less about the effect of our ill health on loved ones around us. We have this kind of mentality where "I'm fine", or "I'll be OK and only I have to deal with it". Perhaps we have that sort of 'macho' thing going where we are so tough and even though we are sick we carry on doing what we do as if there is nothing wrong.

What I found interesting was that it was THIS experience that prompted the lady to ask me what she could do with her family to make some lifestyle changes to improve their health and wellness. No, it wasn't all the ads you see on TV, it wasn't the doctor or any other health professional saying you should do this and that, nor was it the fact that this lady and the rest of the adults already know all the things they should be doing anyway. 

IT WAS the simple yet profound comments and actions of a young girl expressing how she didn't want to get diabetes... that's powerful when you think of how much money is spent on all those other areas everyday that are supposed to motivate us to make changes!

So back to the first question... How do we get more people into health and wellness? I would suggest it is through their families. If they won't do it for themselves, perhaps they will do it for their loved ones, and in particular their children and grandchildren!

a new year!!

HERE WE ARE AGAIN at the start of a new year! How cool is that! 

I remember hearing a couple of friends recently debating the worth of making goals at the start of each year. One was saying that people that want to achieve something should go ahead and start working towards achieving it immediately as opposed to waiting until Jan 1st to start doing something. The other was proclaiming the benefits of having a set time to work within for achieving those goals.

For me I think there is no debate - it's great to have both. When I identify something that needs work (which happens quite often for me), I usually start working on it straight away if it isn't too big. For the bigger vision and dream kind of goals I like having the time frame of 1 year, 3 years or even 7 years so I can track progress over that time.


This came to mind because this past week I have seen SOOOOO many more people running in the morning past our house. I think it is awesome that so many more people have made the effort to get out there and do something. They are full on into them for the first couple of weeks - what I find sad is that come end of January I don't see them anymore...

I wonder what it is about human nature that makes it so difficult for us to change behaviour? They say you need to do something for at least 21 days before it becomes a habit. That's 3 weeks of sticking to something religiously every day and that is tough for anyone. It takes self discipline, a clear goal, a vision of the outcome, and alot of effort.

BUT IT CAN BE DONE!!

From what I have found with the people I train, most of us just need someone to hold us accountable to what we have said we will do. They need to be firm but fair. They need to be your friend but at the same time need to keep that distance so that you will still respect and follow their advice. So perhaps one way to improve your chances of achieving your goal is to tell everyone you know - but more particularly those whom you know will support you in your goal and provide a level of accountability for you.

I wish you all the best this year in achieving your goals whatever they may be - go forward with faith for we will never know what we can achieve nor what our full potential is until we exercise faith. That is, until we have faith enough to take those few steps into the dark outside of our comfort zones. Enjoy the journey and take someone with you along the way that can keep you accountable!!