Being healthy is your best protection from Covid and any other illness
Whilst the current methods used to control the Covid-19 pandemic are perhaps understandable, from a holistic perspective, it seems rather extraordinary that the prevention message and the need to reduce vulnerability has not been more prevalent in the debate.
It is estimated that 18m (66%) of people over 69 are at risk of severe Covid symptoms in the UK: but 34% are not, so age on its own has not necessarily been a sufficient indicator. A further 18m vulnerable people are under 69 and in their case their vulnerability has been put down to an accumulation of chronic diseases.
“it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society” - Krishnamurti
This shouldn’t surprise us, as the prevalence of chronic diseases has been increasing for many years and their onset have been getting younger and younger as our lifestyles have been getting progressively worse. Even some children now show signs of early degeneration of function.
It has been apparent for many years that it is modern lifestyles that are leading to increasingly unhealthy bodies and minds and that following a typical modern lifestyle now inevitably brings with it an increased chance of acquiring chronic problems such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, Type II diabetes, pulmonary disease, chronic pain, mental health issues, dementia and a whole host of other conditions of ‘deterioration’.
We can no longer ignore the modern lifestyle factors that reduce quality of life and health resilience.
Eating too many adulterated foods, especially ultra-high-processed foods, contributes not only to overweight and obesity but also to a whole range of health conditions. Similarly, modern screen-based lives create their own physical and mental issues. Indeed, experts overwhelmingly agree that the food and living environment that our current economic and social system has created is the predominant cause of people now becoming progressively weaker and sicker.
Even life expectancy, which has been rising for decades, has now started to decline, as the benefits of hygiene and acute medicine have levelled off and the effects of lifestyle deterioration have started to take over. In fact, those currently dying at average age, were born in the 1940s, before processed foods and screen-based lives took hold, suggesting that the greatest effects of our deteriorating lifestyles have yet to be factored in and that life expectancy for those now in middle age and younger may eventually prove to be significantly lower than current estimates.
What the Covid vulnerability data should now also tell us is that chronic health problems also make people more susceptible to breakthrough acute disease as well.
Given this, it seems obvious that, alongside measures to prevent the spread of disease, the message the government should surely have been putting out is that being healthy is not only a person’s best protection against chronic disease but also acute infectious disease as well.
They should perhaps also have reflected more on the fact that healthier people will recover from communicable illnesses more quickly, making them less infectious to others and less likely to harbour variants.
It seems obvious when we look at countries where people still eat less processed food and have less exposure to modern working and living practices, that their levels of severe Covid symptoms and deaths per head of population have been significantly lower. It is instead the more ‘developed’ countries with higher proportions of chronically unwell people that have been hardest hit.
So why isn’t the government taking significant steps to encourage a healthier population? Instead of asking which people are susceptible to the disease or failing to recover quickly, why aren’t they also asking which people are not susceptible, who recovers most quickly and why?
The government recently rejected a recommendation from their own Food Tsar to tax unhealthy foods, a plan designed to make healthy eating relatively cheaper and force manufacturers of processed foods and drinks to make a more appropriate contribution to the ‘total cost’ of their products on society. By rejecting this advice, the government demonstrated that despite the obvious warnings about our collapsing health, medical dependency and increasing vulnerability, it still isn’t prepared to put the wellbeing of its people first.
Indeed, the huge financial and social cost of the Covid pandemic should surely be focussing the government’s mind on what makes for a ‘healthy’ society and what being ‘healthy’ really means.
In surveys of the general population, 80% of people typically consider themselves “healthy” and yet research suggests that a third of middle-aged adults already have at least two chronic health conditions and even some children now also show early signs of chronicity.
It is clear therefore that many people overestimate their level of health. No-one who is overweight, underweight, has signs of chronic changes in their bodies or has a chronic issue that needs medication, can consider themselves truly healthy, and that includes children too.
We are ‘relative beings’, prone to comparing ourselves with those around us, but instead of judging how well we are compared to others around us, we should perhaps be judging how well we are compared to our ‘human potential’.
As Krishnamurti famously said, “it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”.
Living in modern societies gives us the impression that our current way of life is the only one possible. When we live stressed and pressurised lives, it can seem that sitting behind screens is unavoidable and that processed foods best fit our needs. But whilst the cost may not occur to us from day to day, in the long term the evidence of accumulating harm is undeniable.
If we want to avoid a further downward spiral into chronic ill-health and infective diseases, our goal should surely be to properly deal with the current chronic health crisis and enact policies that put the wellbeing of people and the environment first.
The Covid crisis has also shown us that the methods required to protect an overly vulnerable population will inevitably lead to other health conditions being ignored, to an immeasurable cost on everyone’s mental health and to countless indirect costs to the environment, education, work, economy, law, order, the arts and culture.
What’s more, in reflecting on its methods, the government should also factor in the uncomfortable subject of ‘quality of years lost’. A person in their eighties probably has fewer quality years left, especially if they are already in a vulnerable state, whereas a person’s life that is blighted by economic hardship, mental health issues or other indirect harm is potentially more profound, especially if they have dependents or still play an important role in society.
In our panic to eradicate future diseases, the government should consider not only its measures to protect the vulnerable, but also how to reduce that vulnerability and what cost protecting an overly vulnerable population has on the lives and wellbeing of those who aren’t vulnerable as well.
A number of years ago, I set up a holistic health screening programme at the Light Centres to assess not only whether people have current disease, but also how well they are doing against their potential. Our GHPs (General Health Practitioners) would then design lifestyle improvement programmes to help address a person’s ‘red and amber’ indications.
Importantly, the programmes worked on diet, physical health and mental health at the same time, as all of these areas tend to overlap. Repeat assessments over time would then show in which areas the person was improving and whether they were continuing to deteriorate in certain areas, helping them avoid reaching their tolerance levels and slipping into chronic ill health.
Through the Covid period we have had to put these holistic health screening and lifestyle improvements programmes on hold, but are now in the process of reviving them with a new and improved screening process run by medical doctors and a new emphasis on the type of lifestyle issues that are now more prevalent.
If you’d like to see how well you are ‘really’ doing and whether you are on the road to the typical chronic ill-health issues, then email me at mark@lightcentre.com and I will let you know as soon as the service is available again. Screening will probably cost no more than £100 and the lifestyle programmes will involve 3 or 4 one-hour sessions with your GHP over a 12-week period, costing around £60 per session.
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