Aging in Control or out of Control

By John Peri-Okonny

This is a thought-provoking book that goes the extra mile to demonstrate in detail how you can choose to live in control of your health. There are several books that deal with healthy living, but this book is unique in several aspects. It helps you answer the question How do you want to age? Or more poignantly, How do you want to die? It is the pertinent question in this book that everyone has to confront without getting frightened because the answer will help you choose the health path you will take.

The emphasis on nutritional awareness opens a gateway to healthier lifestyle choices. This book highlights steps that help negate the negative effects of some foods on our health. If your desire is to be happy and in control of your health this book is a valuable companion that fulfills your wish.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469161952

John Peri-Okonny

John Peri-Okonny, MD, is a senior research scientist. The death of family members from common preventable and controllable disease risks changed the way he looked at health care. The event led to a turning point in his life when it became clear to him that the responsibility of your health care is not in the hands of your health-care providers, the pharmaceutical industry or the food industry, but individual responsibility with consultations from your health-care providers. We are responsible for our health care and defining how we want to age “in control or out of control.” Since discovering this reality, he has devoted his life to helping people manage or avoid common preventable disease risks by changing their nutritional and lifestyle choices. He lectures on the need to know your health risks, manage your health-care choices, and encourages families to practice health and nutritional awareness at home before embracing the dangers of unhealthy lifestyle choices. He is vice chairman at the Barton Center for Diabetes Education and the director of Emaya Health Risk Assessment and Wellness Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he conducts seminars on health and nutritional awareness and how to take control of your health and be a part of your health-care team.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

THE DREAMS WE have and what every individual believes is that they are living a healthy lifestyle whether they have been identified with a health risk and are adhering to treatment therapy or they are free of health risks. A healthy lifestyle could mean anything because it is a general terminology and not easily measurable unless it is defined. Individuals have given broad interpretations to healthy lifestyle terminology, taking away our responsibilities and ownership of our healthcare and giving it to our health-care providers .The questions you need to urgently answer are these: are you stuck in the old paradigm of waiting for disease risks complications to occur when treatment options are few, or are you taking control of your health care and controlling how you grow old with fewer disease risks? No matter what you decide, each morning when you wake up and look at yourself with your clothes off as you take a bath, what you see on the mirror begs for a change in your lifestyle choices. The old, outdated health paradigm of waiting for disease risk complications to occur and then focus on disease treatment has changed to a new paradigm in the twenty-first century that focuses on disease risks prevention where disease risk complications are minimized and treatment options are many. Some of us believe health complications and aging out of control only happens to people who do not have the resources to buy the best medical care available or have special privileges or connections in society to buy replacement body parts. In short, we feel invincible until health risk strikes or the limitations of aging begin. Aging in control involves purposeful living guided by health and nutritional awareness and healthy habits. In fact, learning to age in control will motivate you to keep your body parts healthy and avoid multiple treatment therapies with all the side effects that accompany their use. Staying in control of your health will compel you to learn to make healthy lifestyle choices and avoid the limitation of aging out of control where hospital extended stays are the norm and disease complications require living assistance for daily chores.

Aging in control forces you to live for the moment and deal with opportunities, obstacles, setbacks, and successes that occur at the moment with a single-minded focus. It will give you an added privilege of not worrying about yesterday or tomorrow. Taking control of the lifestyle choices we make will take us to a whole new level if we are aware of our health and nutritional options and thousands of lifestyle choices we make each moment we are alive.

The level of health and nutritional awareness will magnify the events of the moment because it allows us to be selective of our lifestyle activities and modify our health habits and choices. To live for the moment allows us to do away with persistent procrastination about our invincibility to health risks and disease complications and adhere to health and nutritional awareness and disease prevention.

1

THE WAR OVER WHAT WE EAT AND OUR HEALTH CARE

THERE ARE TWO personalized wars going on in this country today: the war for our taste buds waged by the food industry and the war for our health care waged by the pharmaceutical industry. Caught in the crossfire is the health of our nation. The success and failure of this war hinges on individual responsibility and ownership for one’s health. This war has resulted unintended consequences like type 2 diabetes, being overweight, obesity, and increased health risks from sedentary lifestyles and excessive consumption of calories, especially foods loaded with unnecessary sugar and salt. These consequences are accelerated by easy transportation that prevents us from taking short walks as well as family history. Moreover, supersized meal portions and the taste of today’s foods encourage calorie overload. A visible line has been drawn in this war between unhealthy nutritionally risky habits and healthy nutritional habits—with the pharmaceutical industry standing by with treatment therapy to medicate the losers while viewing the winners as potential converts.

The quest to avoid hunger in this country has turned us into a society of endless gluttonous munchers where eating is the central activity and every other event revolves around it. Sometimes, we even eat until we fall asleep. When my children were born, we started feeding them every two to three hours and then progressed to three to four hours. Then, at six months old, the feeding time was changed to every four to six hours, which meant they ate about four to six times a day. The funny thing today is that adults are being advised to eat little meals every four to six hours, which means we are eating like children again, but with sugar-loaded snacks. When I was growing up, we ate breakfast and Mom packed our school lunch, and we ate dinner at home because in those days, we did not have as many choices for snacks as we do today. The food industry has spent so much money to research how to get our taste buds hooked onto their snacks or frozen food name brands. The losers of the food war are the consumers who are plagued with common preventable health risks like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, obesity, being overweight, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. The three types of losers in this food war are the Uncompromised Losers, the Compromised Losers, and the Total Losers.

Uncompromised Losers are those who are struggling to strike a balance between maintaining good nutritional habits, exercise habits, and lifestyle choices. This group still has control of their health care and makes the connection between lifestyle choices, disease risk, and death, but cannot escape the constant advertising of magical cures.

The advertising of magical cures range from diets that will melt away fat and help you lose weight to fruit smoothies or other drinks that will make your high cholesterol disappear. There are special fruits from third-world countries that are able to cure cancer and allow you to live a healthy life. Exercises that will help you lose weight without making you sweat, wonder drugs that promise you a good sex life, or lotions that will make you look younger than your age. These uncompromising losers are constantly struggling with the temptation to try one of these cures that is void of personal responsibility or ownership of our actions in connection with our health.

Further, complicating the lives of the uncompromising losers is the constant release of studies about the foods we love and eat daily like salt in frozen diets, decaffeinated coffee, nitrites in our hot dogs and white bread, and the dangers of gluten in our foods. All of these studies create more contradictions in our lifestyle choices and food selection. Furthermore, these contradictions put the uncompromising food losers in a difficult position that no matter what decision they make, they cannot escape the jaws of unhealthy lifestyle choices. Very few products are free of sugar, salt, fructose corn syrup, preservatives, or artificial ingredients, so no matter what choice we make, we are at the mercy of the food industry. However, because we are constantly raiding the organic food shops for healthy food and frequently preparing our meals at home, watching what we eat, watching how much we eat, and stuffing our plates with fruits and vegetables, we may never win the war with the food industry, but we are willing to lose without compromising our health. The price of a healthy you require that you take responsibility and ownership of your nutritional and fitness choices. We need to exercise more, eat more vegetables and fruits, drink less soda, eat less meat, eat less of high sugar and salt snacks, and floss every single day.

The Compromised Losers are very busy individuals with limited time and resources to hunt for nutritious foods for their family and consciously read the nutrition fact labels before making food selections. Occasionally, these individuals buy organic foods to supplement the predominant processed foods in the daily meals of the family, but fresh vegetables and fruits are a rarity. The central concern in these families is not how to prevent health risk factors or maintain good health, but how to feed their family. These families have not transitioned from dependence on the fast-food industry in their daily food consumption. With these folks, the definition of eating together means everyone watching television together while eating, and portion sizes are never considered, much less the amount of calories consumed. The connection between the lifestyle we maintain and the disease risk we are exposed to daily because of our poor health habits is never made. Every attack of disease risk process is cause for an emergency room visit if the affected family member is a child. However, if the individual is an adult, the hospital visits come later when treatment options are few and disease complications are active.

The compromised losers are the most gullible in this food war because they are quick to buy the latest advertised miracle food products that will help them lose weight and live happily ever after. These individuals are constantly on one diet after another, not sticking with any one diet so they can benefit from the results. Food awareness is never talked about in these families because being overweight is considered a sign of taking good care of your family. Over the years, these families have handed over the keys to who buys what the family eats to the children who tell their parents what to buy in the grocery store. Health-care expenses in these families are higher than average and obesity and being overweight poses a severe health challenge for them. The increases in health risk in these families have created a dependency on emergency room visits and the need for multiple medications to control their various health complications and weight control.

Total Losers have surrendered their taste buds to the food industry, and they eat whatever food is put in front of them without objection. These families have absolute faith in the food industry and strongly believe that the food they eat meets exact government requirements. However, the government cannot legislate how many cups of coffee or how many cans of soda we drink; these choices are personal responsibilities. The decision to consume or not to consume is an individual choice; however, these choices or decisions have health consequences and are not the responsibility of the food industry, but the choice of the individual. These choices guarantee that the Total Food Losers have chosen to die out of control where their second home is the hospital, and they depend on nursing aides and other health-care providers to supply their daily needs and care. Sadly, these individuals have surrendered their privacy and whatever dignity they have left to the health-care system. They are stripped of their clothes and given a hospital gown and a bed in a hospital long-term care unit or nursing home. In the hospital, they lay in bed with an intravenous line hanging from the wall and given medication for every perceived, real, or imagined pain. In most cases, individuals are trapped in poor health habits. They receive the respect and services they thought they were always entitled to from society but never received. They now have on demand capability where they ring a bedside bell and receive service and attention for every need. However, in exchange, they lose their individual freedom and activities needed to stay alive, like taking a bath, changing your own clothes, eating what you want; sleeping and waking up when you want are all surrendered to health-care providers because of disease risk complications.

The life of a Total Loser is a sedentary life void of any physical fitness activities or nutritionally healthy habits. Their days are spent on a computer terminal or watching television and snacking constantly without the motivation to exercise. These unhealthy habits are the primary drivers that are responsible for a rise in preventable disease risk and an increase in health-care cost in this group of individuals, according to health-care studies.

The winners of this health-care war are the insurance, pharmaceutical, and food industries, along with unintended potential winners like the health-care industries. The insurance industries are winners because they get more customers who refuse to take control of their health and personal responsibility for preventing health risk factors leading to increased health-care costs.

The pharmaceutical industries are big winners because they have defined being overweight and obesity as a disease and are performing more research for cures and making more innovative medicines for use in treating the condition. The pharmaceutical industry considers drugs one of the solutions to the many maladies of the sedentary, high calorie–consuming, supersize technology obsessed generation.

The food industry advertising on food taste cleverly uses the known characteristics of the tongue on deception and betrayal. Attempt to keep quiet for a day and see how powerfully your tongue reacts. Imagine one organ having so many dangerous zones that can strike and create havoc on your body’s organs, waistline, and appearance. The food industry has mastered the art of manipulating taste, so it becomes the reason we should eat whatever is on our plate.

2

POLITICALLY CORRECT DECEPTIVE TONGUE IN CONTROL OF FOOD WAR

The tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts.

Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The

tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It

corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire.

—James 3:5–6 (NIV)

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The deceptive taste

centers of the tongue

IS IT POSSIBLE for one system of the body to have many different feelings at the same time when exposed to different people making many false and positive claims at the same time? The tongue has many different taste centers that can be influenced by our emotions, political, religious, and ethnic choices all at the same time.

The tongue is a tool that can either build or destroy the body. Sometimes, we let the tongue control our nutritional choices and decide what we eat instead of using our common sense and knowledge. As if the power of the tongue to taste and lead our mouth is not outrageous enough, we complicate our lives by allowing our emotions to compete with the tongue. The result of this competition is increased calorie consumption because we are driven to stuff ourselves with whatever the tongue says is tasty when we are emotionally upset or excited by events in our lives.

The food industry has increased their research budgets to come up with advertising that will convince us that the food they sell to us is good for our health. They are always coming up with new findings about the foods we eat. Like when I read a few years ago in some article that white bread is bad for my health and wheat bread is good for my health, I stopped eating white bread and started eating wheat bread, which made me sick for almost a year because I did not know I was sensitive to gluten. I blamed everything from my cream to my body lotion when I started having breathing difficulties. No one ever thinks about food being the culprit when we get sick; we automatically enroll in the blame game. Sometimes, we will blame everything else but the food that is causing the reaction that makes us sick. This is where we become educated fools because we never ask the right questions, Is this food good for me or will it make me sick? and never seek the right answers to our questions. We are constantly being led like sheep to what foods we should eat with no questions asked and no personal reflections as to what effect it will have on our health. Our taste buds have become a testing ground for deceptive advertising for the foods industries. We are oblivious to the fact that the food industry is a business out to make a profit from our ignorance of the deceptive nature of the tongue, which happens to be the gatekeeper of the stomach. The food industry is relying on the powerful tongue, which has been proven over the centuries to be deadly, deceitful, and distasteful and out of control as a gatekeeper of the stomach. What is tasty for the tongue can be distasteful for our heart, waistline, appearance, and health. Everyone, including the food industry, depends on taste to determine if what we eat is good for us. Healthy calories and disease risk are never evaluated as the taste of food is graded. The tastier the food, the more craving or addicted we become to the product brand, and the more we consume it and tell our friends to join us as we increase our disease risk.

Some of the unintended potential winners of the food and health war are the hospitals and health-care providers, along with the weight reduction and physical fitness industries. These three unintended potential winners have reframed the responsibility debate on obesity, being overweight, and preventable disease risk away from the insurance, food, and pharmaceutical industries and onto individual responsibility. These industries have put the blame squarely on the individual’s inability to control their eating habits and maintaining a sedentary life. The food industries claim that their products have nothing to do with being overweight or obesity despite overwhelming evidence that food products contribute to multiple health risk factors. This argument is like the old argument of what came first, the chicken or the egg? If the focus is on the consumers of the products, then the solution can be contributed by the hospitals that benefit from treating obese individuals and the weight reduction industries that contribute to motivating and assisting overweight individuals to lose weight and get paid for the services. Finally, the fitness industry is playing its role to keep us healthy by pushing us to exercise and stay active.

The painful part of this debate is the inability of all involved to accept the connection between the food we consume and the preventable disease risk that is exploding. The unintended winners in this war are just trying to make peace by acknowledging the connection and providing the solutions to minimize the damage preventable disease risks are creating in our society. In the middle of this health war, the government is hiding behind free market principles and individual free choice and collecting taxes from these companies that are creating massive health problems and driving other companies out of business because of increasing health-care costs.

However, when you look at the ingredients and chemicals that the food industry adds to our food, you will be surprised that everyone is not sick or overweight! The answer is simple: because no one really knows what happens to the body when we consume foods with many different additives over a lifetime.

We have the tools to help us make healthy choices, but the government has surrendered its responsibility to protect our food from the food, pharmaceutical, and health-care industries to market forces because it is sharing the financial benefits through the collection of taxes. The food industry is mass-producing delicious tasty meals that may or may not be nutritious, but are loaded with calories. Living a longer, healthier life is within our reach, and the resources needed to accomplish this goal are presented to us daily from health experts. However, we need to change our lifestyle choices, exercise frequently, and eat healthy diets. It is true that the United States has the best health-care system in the world, but it is meaningless if we do not practice what we preach about health care. In 2005, a relative named Joseph died from a heart attack as a result of high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure. Since then, I have been thinking very seriously about what I need to do to free myself from