Your Health; Prevent or Correct? Perhaps it’s time to understand what prevention really means.

When assessing how well a process is performing, I often categorize activities as outlined in the Cost of Quality. This concept relates to the total costs incurred to assess, prevent, detect, diagnose, and remove defects from a process, service, or product.

The basic premise is that it is far more cost effective and less intrusive when you assess and prevent failure from happening in the first place. If an organization is doing little to assess and prevent failure in their processes, services, or products, I guarantee they have a high cost of quality because they are doing a lot internally to find and fix failure or a lot of fire fighting after the fact.

In the case of our health, this same concept applies. You see, it took four decades for me to realize western medical approaches alone were not preventing my illness nor improving my health. Most interaction I had with my health care providers was all about detecting, diagnosing, and prescribing. We were dealing with internal and external failures.

Hardly any time was spent on prevention. Yes, I was active. Yes, I watched my diet. But my health condition was still declining as I aged.

That's when I went on a mission not to be another statistic of poor health. I began appraising the state of my health and looking for preventive measures - the missing pieces of my wellness routine.

LIVING LONGER – BLESSING OR A CURSE?

Medical research and advances have come a long way. As a result, we are living much longer than we used to. Great news - right? My answer is - it depends.

While no one can argue that expanding the average person’s lifespan is good, many people are not enjoying the quality of life that they hoped for as they pack on the years.

The latest statistic offered by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 85% of people who are soon to be or are classified as “seniors” have at least one chronic health condition that overwhelms their daily activities.

Even worse – 60% of them have at least two chronic conditions and even more are caught in a cyclical onslaught of illness or discomfort and expend a lot of effort and spend a lot of dollars trying to maintain some semblance of life.

And when I say a lot of dollars, I mean trillions. Health costs of one condition – blood sugar imbalance – are estimated to be over $250 billion per year. The average couple is going to spend close to $300,000 in medical bills after retirement. 62% of personal bankruptcies of people over 50 years old are due to medical related expenses that can’t be paid.

I was one of these statistics and it was not the happy ending I was working so hard for.

IT CAN BE A DIFFERENT STORY

What seems an unbelievable amount to be spending on corrective action – detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease - what’s even more unacceptable is most of what is plaguing us IS preventable.

Yes, true. The four leading causes of death are preventable.

These chronic conditions are heart disease, stroke, cancer, and pulmonary disease. The primary (not only) cause of heart disease and strokes are obesity and poor nutrition. COPD and lung cancer (as well as other types of cancer) are primarily caused by toxins that have built up and can’t be released. All root causes of these and so many other diseases are preventable.

But prevention is not something that western medicine provides. What is deemed prevention – your annual physical, mammogram, pap smear, prostate exam, colonoscopy, or bloodwork - is not preventive. All important and all still part of my wellness routine. These still fall into the category of detection to prevent progression of the disease.

And I absolutely agree early detection saves lives. My point is these protocols don’t prevent. They detect something already in process which will cost you more to address than if you took measures to prevent it in the first place.

The good news is that real prevention, primary prevention is available and accessible to everyone.

THE ULTIMATE PRIMARY PREVENTION ROUTINE

As with every mechanical thing we own, if we don’t take care of it as per the owner’s manual, its efficiency and life expectancy is diminished over time. By how much and how quickly will depend on the amount of abuse and upkeep of maintenance routines.

It is the same with the mechanical device that you label your body. If you have never taken the time to maintain it – clean up the inside, flush it out, and reset critical systems of the body, chances are there is a buildup and back up of a whole host of toxins that are causing a whole lot of stress on it. Which leads to chronic disease and other illnesses that diminish its efficiency and quality of life expectancy.

So what’s the best Primary Preventive Maintenance routine available? The one that will give you the biggest impact possible for your effort and dollar?

Ayurveda, the science of healthy longevity, outlines a framework for a Primary Preventive Maintenance routine called Panchakarma (or five actions). Although cleansing and detoxing are a part of it, it's magic is in the rejuvenation process which restores the body’s innate healing ability by stimulating very specific actions in the body.

It is the most impactful preventative, restorative, anti-aging strategy available and should be performed twice a year – spring and fall - focused on three things:

1.   Your intake - giving your digestive system a breather from allergens and heavy foods for at least a 10 – 14 day period.

2.   Your output – boost your channels of elimination in order to gather and release as much of the stored toxins as possible over a 7 day period during the time your digestive system is on a break.

3.    Rebooting your digestive fire – after the clean-up, it’s critical to crank up the body’s ability to transform your food allowing nutrients to be absorbed instead of passing through unused or stored as fat. 

These three simple things will reset you - turn on, turn up, and boost your ability to detox daily, naturally, as Mother Nature intended. This gives you the best chance possible to be one of the 15% of the aging population not dealing with a chronic disease or two.

CONCLUSION

The four top leading causes of death - stroke, cancer, heart and lung issues are preventable yet our current health care practices do little to prevent. The current idea to nip diseases in the bud before they become catastrophic is still after the fact. The disease is already present and will cost more to fix the further the condition has progressed.

That's not prevention.

It's time for an overhaul! But you can't afford to wait for the overhaul. You can take action now by adopting proven, practical, powerful Primary Preventive Maintenance routines which are specifically aimed at preventing disease in the first place.

Ask yourself… over your lifetime, how much in effort, time, and money has it cost you to prevent vs. detect, maintain, reverse, or eradicate illness once it occurred?

If you are honest with yourself, you just might realize that, like me, very little was spent preventing and a whole lot was spent on finding, treating, and managing conditions of my diminishing health.

What's the quality of your life costing you today? How about a decade from now?

If you are interested in prevention and want to adopt a Primary Preventive Maintenance routine, I invite you to consider Reset You – Fall 2019! A 14 day Ayurvedic sojourn to a healthier you. Join us this October!

To learn more, contact me at (508) 254-2561, email [email protected], or visit www.sharonniemi.com or www.yourwaywellness.com.