We may all feel like we have had enough of this pandemic of the coronavirus. We want to heal and move on. The constant tension, worry, anger, and fear can only negatively impact our lives and our immune system.
A virus may not kill you, but an imbalanced mind and body may make you sick. And more people may be sick from other diseases, such as depression, anxiety, insomnia, alcohol abuse, obesity, divorce, cancer relapse, etc.I’m sure that many have realized, by now, that preventive approaches such as washing hands, wearing a mask in a public area, using sanitizers wipes to clean your hands, could have helped reduced the current epidemic.But these are individual decisions, and if people don’t want to this, then the infection could be passed from one to another.
Viruses, bacteria, parasites, and other microorganisms are everywhere. Some are more highly contagious than others. Even in hospitals, there can be a chance of staff infection. So, hopefully, we all learned how to protect ourselves, and by protecting ourselves, we protect others.
Health and Healing
Let us practice qigong, tai chi and other healthful exercises. Let’s change our diet, eating healthy and eating less. Let’s take care of our body, mind, emotion, and spirit. Because if we lose these valuable elements, we lose our ability to work, to create, and produce results.Let’s develop healthy habits: drink more water (8 to 10 cups a day),practice social distancing, wash your hands, wear a mask, and be mindful and careful in stores and supermarkets.
For many centuries, people practiced qigong for health and healing. The most valuable part of qigong is that the practice helps maintain a balanced immune system, opens the nervous pathways, and supports all organ functions. With a stable immune function, our body can heal from disease. People often disbelieve that simple qigong practice can change their health.
Inability to Prevent Chronic Lifestyle-Driven Illnesses
The cost of treating chronic illnesses in the United States accounts for 75 percent of the health-care budget. For the year 2009, when $2.5 trillion was spent on medical care overall, almost $1.9 trillion was allocated to the treatment of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, stroke, and cancer; 70 percent of all deaths in America were attributable to these chronic illnesses. That is an incredible waste of lives and money when you consider that a large percentage of these conditions could have been prevented by a healthier diet, more exercise, and smoking cessation. True, everyone must die someday, but wouldn’t it be so much better to die in one’s sleep from old age than suffer a debilitating stroke or a painful death from cancer or a virus?
Not all chronic illnesses can be prevented by optimizing one’s health, but study after study has shown that the benefits of exercise, proper diet, adequate sleep, and smoking cessation outweigh any benefit conferred by medical procedures or pharmaceuticals. Here is a summary of a few of these studies:
John Abramson, MD, author of Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine wrote:
- The benefit of exercise is two times greater than the benefit of an implantable cardiac defibrillator in preventing death in patients with an irregular heartbeat.
- The benefit of smoking cessation is 1.5 to two times greater than a cardiac defibrillator in preventing death in patients with an irregular heartbeat.
- The benefit of exercise is almost five times greater than that of medication in mild depression.
- The benefit of exercise produces a risk reduction of 40 to 50 percent for colon cancer and 30 to 40 percent for breast cancer.
- The risk of getting one of the following cancers increases if you are obese: ovarian by 95 percent, colon by 90 percent, breast by 66 percent and Leukemia by 61 percent.
M. deLongeril author of “Mediterranean Diet, Traditional Risk Factors, and the Rate of Cardiovascular Complications after Myocardial Infarction: Final Report of the Lyon Diet Heart Study,” wrote:The benefit of the Mediterranean diet (less red meat, healthier fats such as olive oil and nuts, lots of fruits and vegetables is three times greater than statin drugs in reducing heart disease in patients that already have that diagnosis.
These statistics are only a tiny fraction of those published that have demonstrated the vast benefits of a healthy lifestyle compared with the benefits of expensive technologies. So why, with so much evidence, is it so difficult for our society to properly address the growing epidemic of preventable disease by using simple and economical strategies? Once again, there is no straightforward answer.
As individuals, we must be willing to take the time and make the effort that such lifestyle changes require. However, being human, we are always looking for the effortless way out of a situation. It takes commitment to change lifelong habits, even when we know those habits can hurt us. Drug and medical-device companies are happy to let you think that the only and easiest solution to your problem is whatever they have to sell.
As a society, we have not prioritized the allocation of resources toward maintaining our own good health. On both business and governmental levels, it seems we are more willing to spend money on disease treatment than prevention. The CDC budgets only a small proportion for preventive medicine.
If we just keep our mind open, try new things (qigong is an ancient healing art), we may surprise ourselves by knowing, “A simple mindful exercise can make a big difference.” We all have a choice to live the way we want, but we certainly don’t want more death, or more disease. To achieve this, we must be willing to make some changes.
This is a historical time, nothing like any other time in the past. We need to re-think our life, health, and future. What matters most in our life? Not money, not a big house, or fancy cars, nor being famous. What matters the most are—our health, our children, our environment, our land, and our kindness to each other.
The above is based upon Dr. Aihan Kuhn’s April 2020 newsletter and her book, True Wellness—Best of Western and Eastern Medicine for Optimal Health, co-author with Catherine Kurosu, MD, L.Ac.,Pub date September 2018, YMAA Publication Center ISBN: 978-1-59439-630-4
