I had a very interesting conversation today with my plumber. He was in my basement working on my boiler’s pressure valve and he kept getting a little dizzy and lightheaded. Obviously I wanted to make sure the man wasn’t going to pass out and/or die, so I inquired on why he thought it was happening.
Turns out he had, in the last year, lost 100 lbs. Wow, that’s impressive, why would that cause him to have these issues. Well, he was on blood pressure medication and now that he’s lost so much weight, they keep lower the dose. He has an appointment to see if he can get of it completely because, well, he doesn’t want to pass out every time he has to bend over too much… kind of inconvenient for a plumber.
We started talking about other ailments that he had since he has corrected his eating habits. He’s off of his IBS medication and his gout is gone…. he is like a new person. This was not accomplished by surgery, the medication only treated the symptoms… the change in diet and loss of the extra 100 lbs he was carrying attributed to changes he otherwise couldn’t have imagined.
According to the CDC 75 million or 29% of Americans have high blood pressure 75 million or 29% of Americans have high blood pressure, 137 million have high cholesterol, 29 million people have type 2 diabetes.. and these are just the major diseases.. this isn’t getting into IBS or gout, yet, most of these people choose to treat rather than cure, what is potentially life threatening diseases. In fact, 610,000 deaths a year are contributed to heart attacks… that’s 1 in 4 deaths that actually take place in the US.
I know right now that guns and terrorism and texting while driving are major hot topics, and all of those things are horrible…. but they aren’t 1/4 of the deaths happening in our country.We want to pass laws to ban guns, or ban religions. We already ban texting and 
driving. Why is it that when anyone wants to pass legislation or even private rules about banning junk food in schools, or putting a cap on giant soda beverages that’s the one thing everyone can agree is outrageous.
Last time I checked there was a law in this country against trying to kill yourself, but apparently death by twinkie is completely acceptable.
