We live in rapidly changing times, and there is much discussion of creating resilience nationally and on a local community level. The issues we all need to tackle include growing our own food locally, creating our own sustainable energy and dealing with climate change. Here, I want to look at how we can become more resilient in our health – both personally and collectively.
Is Health Declining?
In many ways, health resilience in modern cultures is declining. On a national and global level, there is a culture of dependence on external health systems, and drugs manufactured far from where we live. In the UK, the panic that drugs may not be able to be imported because of Brexit demonstrates this. And on an individual health level, more and more people are finding it difficult to maintain their health.
One sign of this decreasing resilience is the enormous rise in allergies in western countries to natural things in our environment that humanity has lived with for thousands of years. In the UK around 10% of people have hay fever reacting to various pollens, and food intolerances and allergies are becoming epidemic. Recently I was eating in a restaurant, with every dish listed around 20 possible allergens – what is happening when our bodies can no longer tolerate foods like seeds, nuts and cereal grains that we have been eating for millennia?
This level of food allergies has increased rapidly in just the past 20 years and going into a restaurant 30 or 40 years ago it was just not necessary to list allergens. So what has created this? It is a breakdown in the body’s natural defences, both in the digestive system and in the lungs, nose and sinuses.
Creating Health From The Inside
How can we all develop greater resilience in our health? We need to create robust health for ourselves. Creating health mainly depends on what we eat, do, think and how we live our lives. So, creating robust health is primarily in our own hands. This is now being realised by governments and national health services, as they are faced with the ever increasing costs of treating lifestyle illnesses like type 2 diabetes. Here in the UK we see the Public Health England strongly promoting a healthier way of eating to reduce obesity, which is linked to many serious health problems and a shorter life.
Macrobiotics has always stressed how every individual and family can take much more responsibility for their health. It teaches a simple way of creating balance and health in our body, through eating a balanced plant-based diet, regular exercise, and balance in our lifestyle. Thousands of individuals have discovered how to create stronger health with more energy, and heal many common health problems themselves.
Everything we do to increase our physical health and emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing has a preventative affect, reducing our chances of developing both minor health problems and also serious degenerative diseases. Of course, if we need the expertise of modern western medicine then we should not hesitate to use it, but there is enormous potential for keeping ourselves well and greatly reducing our need for western medical interventions.
All our classes here at the International Macrobiotic School are teaching simple ways of understanding our internal health, and the dietary and lifestyle changes to increase our health and quality of life. On a social level, this is an enormous shift in how we think about health – from expecting other people to treat our illnesses when they occur, to preventing much illness ourselves and often being able to heal health problems like headaches, high blood sugar levels, coughs and colds, menstrual problems, exhaustion and depression.
A shift to a more balanced approach to health would not only save our national budgets a great deal of money, and take the pressure off our national health systems, but on an individual level people would find it empowering. To be able to take much greater control over our health and lives is hugely rewarding.
Want To Find Out More?
If taking more control over your health and enjoying greater resilience appeals to you, we run a range of short courses and longer trainings as well as offering one-to-one consultations.
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