Brainless Health

Simple Health Habits for Smart People

John William Patton

• Publisher: John Patton
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781646630233
• Topic: Medizin
• Subtopic: Allgemeine Gesundheit

Health is finally hip. There are gyms on every corner, bottled water in every vending machine, and protein bars in every gas station. People are checking food labels in grocery stores and calories on restaurant menus. Athletic wear has become leisure wear, and everyone seems to be on a special diet.

At the same time, disease and disabilities are eating our lunch. Crippling health statistics dominate the news, but we keep popping antacids, loosening our belts and burning the candle at both ends. John Patton recognizes that people are not dumb—they are busy. Very busy. John Patton cuts through the marketing and medical jargon of health to deliver a frank and fun conversation about rock-solid health habits that can become as brainless as brushing your teeth.

Buckle up. You are about to get healthy, without even thinking!

CHAPTER ONE

GET OFF THE COUCH

IF YOU’VE NEVER heard of me, relax. You are not here because of me, but because of what I must share with you.

If you must know why I’m the perfect person to bring you extraordinary insights into what you should already know, I’m a professional health communicator. I get paid to communicate health for a living, and that qualifies me as an expert in the field. Please note, however, that I am not a doctor. I am not a nutritionist. I am not a dietician or a personal trainer. I am the guy who tells you to drop your cigarette, wash your hands, put down your fork and step away from the plate, take your dog for a walk, guzzle some water, wear a helmet, and start acting like you care about your health and the people you love.

I am the guy who works with smart people in the government who research what makes you healthy and what keeps you healthy. My colleagues are geniuses with doctorates in medicine, public health and related fields. They often speak in ways that most people can’t understand or simply don’t care to understand. These science geniuses have big vocabularies to go with their big hearts and big brains. Their language can be confusing or discouraging. They use words like physical activity instead of just saying exercise and physical inactivity instead of saying sitting on your butt.

The very fact that I don’t have a PhD and I don’t do longitudinal research studies or write medical articles makes me the perfect person to talk to you in ways that avoid medical jargon and confusing acronyms and abbreviations. I cut to the chase of how to get healthy. But that’s not why I decided to write this book.

INSANE BEHAVIOR

Over my last ten years of working in public health, I have had to pussyfoot around health communication in order to be inclusive, non-judgmental and politically correct, yet all the while watching people of all socio-economic, ethnic and sexual orientation fall off the deadly cliff of disease and disability instead of protecting themselves with completely brainless healthy behaviors. I literally watch thousands of people not washing their hands, not applying sunscreen, only taking the stairs if the elevator is broken, and shoveling tons of food down their throat long after they are pleasantly full.

The only explanation I can come up with for this insane behavior, despite constant health messaging, is that they simply don’t know the risk of their actions. Of course, they know that they should eat healthy and exercise, but they feel fine. After all, it’s Friday and they feel like a beer or an ice cream or a frappasugarccino. Heck, it’s been a long week, so let’s go to the movies and order the refillable popcorn bucket with the refillable soda.

Maybe you’re stressed out or anxious. Maybe you just deserve a break today. Or maybe you are young and feel invincible. Maybe you are getting older and you have survived this long, so there’s no need to change what seems to be working.

Whatever the reason, people everywhere are oblivious to the raging waterfall that is right around the bend in the river. It doesn’t matter your age or stage in life. Sadly, they don’t know that a few simple actions could prevent a lifetime of pain and suffering. That’s what I’m talking about—suffering, not death. I’m talking about horrible decades of nastiness that makes people beg for death.

Whenever I hear people say, “Well, you’ve gotta die of something” as they light up another cigarette, I cringe. Or what about “A little dirt isn’t going to kill you.” They are simply clueless; a little bit of the wrong dirt could in fact kill you or just introduce you to a friendly tapeworm that will make you vomit and convulse and never go out to a restaurant again. Hello?

These days, I eat healthy and exercise. But I didn’t always. About ten years ago, I was far from healthy. I ate a donut every day and I drank alcohol every night. At one point I kept a bottle of tequila front and center on my desk. I was a beast. I would treat myself to an ice cream cone most nights before dinner. Thanks to McDonald’s pervasive jingle, I believed that I really did deserve a break today and every day.

Then, I woke up and decided that I was “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” as author Bill Phillips famously said. I decided to change my lifestyle so that I would feel better when I went to bed and feel better when I got out of bed. Plus, I wanted to look better, improve my confidence at the beach and start to walk the talk at my job.

Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that the internet and infomercials did little to bolster my health comprehension. It was difficult figuring out what the doctors and experts wanted me to do to achieve healthy results. I had no idea what to do, where to do it or how to do it.

And so, I turned to the health and fitness influencers, the beautiful people on social media who make a living selling supplements and teeth whiteners. But the more I tried to find out which amino acids I needed in my diet and how to perfectly balance my macronutrients, I discovered that the experts agreed on very little. They were touting the newest preworkout or the latest branch chain amino acid. Since no one agreed, I didn’t know whose advice to follow. I didn’t have the education or the time to get educated.

That’s when I decided to focus on the things that pretty much everyone does agree on and are rarely debated. They are the actions and diets that every mother teaches her kid.

DEBATABLE HEALTH

This book cuts through what I call debatable health to help you focus on the brainless things that no one debates. They have already been proven for decades, if not centuries, to positively impact your health.

If you are tempted to think that most people already know everything in this book, just ask yourself why so many people waddle when they walk. Ask yourself why US obesity rates are at a record high. Ask yourself why heart disease is the number one killer, yet 80 percent of strokes are preventable according to the Stroke Awareness Foundation. Ask yourself why we spend $10 billion on antacids annually. Hello? Ten billion for one condition closely related to diet. Is anyone paying attention? Has anyone got an answer?

Maybe you personally don’t waddle, but do you loosen your belt after dinner? Do you polish off the bag of chips, the box of cookies or the bottle of wine on a semi-regular basis? Do you sleep but don’t feel rested? Do you know you should exercise but you want to lose weight first so you look better in your spandex at the gym?

Back in the day, no one was obese because they either couldn’t afford food or they worked so hard it burned right off their body. Today the American Medical Association has declared obesity a disease and it has been labeled an epidemic, something that is often preventable.

You will learn things that you either didn’t know before or never thought about in an accessible way. It’s likely that you are not following most of these brainless behaviors and that you have no idea how powerfully they can decrease your risk for chronic diseases and an overall life of disfiguring pain and disability. Likewise, you have no idea how much health and happiness, vigor and vitality await if you adopt these simple practices.

But first, I want to be crystal clear about how I define the word health. Health isn’t just the absence of disease or sickness. Even the healthiest people get sick. They get food poisoning, the flu, strep throat . . . etc. The difference is that healthy people get better faster. They rebound faster. They get off the medications faster. They feel better sooner and for longer amounts of time between sicknesses because their immune system is high functioning. They feed themselves with health and fuel their muscles with strength.

When debilitating diseases like cancer come calling, doctors will tell you that people who are in shape and otherwise healthy bounces back from chemo faster and battle the cancer cells with greater efficiency and success. It just makes sense, but it’s something we often don’t consider when we are feeling good. We think we will always feel the way we feel when we are healthy. Wrong! Illness has your number. It is coming for us. Our job is to be prepared and beat it away.

Health also applies to our mental, emotional, financial and relational life. Heck, you can be a cover model and miserably alone and forgotten. Maybe no one calls you because you are a relational moron. Maybe you never learned to have healthy relationships and value people. Maybe you are paranoid o...