Taking Care of our heart, liver, lungs and Kidney: Our Health Matters - Part 1

Health prospects not looking bright?

Our health is under constant attack, with our key organs, heart, lungs, liver and kidneys - and some would say, our brain function - being under increasing attack.

In general, it seems to be the case that many, if not most of us are rather complacent and neglectful of the need to give more priority to safeguarding our health from harm.  This is quite surprising, when you realise that, for those of us who have access to the media and social networking websites, there is a constant barrage of doom and gloom about the increase in the various health problems which are affecting pretty much all nations.

These include cancers, which various charities in Britain, eg, have been promising for more than 50 years that they would beat, if only the public donate more money to them. Diabetes is on the rise, and so are Alzheimer and Senile dementia, which affect and destroy people's memories and ability to carry out mental, self-care and social functions. Obesity is also on the rise, even for countries where people were generally known for  not being overweight.

And what of some of the leading factors giving rise to this extremely worrying deterioration in the health of the people of all nations?

Probably the biggest contributor  is the change in people's life-styles, as influenced by major changes in how we produce our food, organise and live our lives as social beings, reduction in physical work, doing more stressful jobs, being more  sedentary, and having greater reliance on 'cure' than prevention, when it comes to our health. 

For the more developed and industrialise societies, process foods have become, arguably, a curse, with probably the most notable ingredients in them being that of Salt and Sugar. It would appear that the food manufacturers or processors and the fast food chains have set out to make their consumers 'salt and sugar addicts', thereby ensuring that as many of them as possible will come back for their 'salt and sugar fix.'  What is it about process foods why the ingredients other than the salt and sugar cannot stand alone, instead of the SaS (salt and sugar factor) becoming the dominant taste?

Not satisfied with distorting their consumers' taste buds, the food manufacturers and fast food outlets, with the assistance of their gluttonous consumers, then attack their bodies and waste line, leading to more people becoming clinically obese, and an increase in morbidity, diabetes, heart diseases, and so forth. So people become obese and more prone to being sick,  putting more pressures on already overstretched health facilities, and demand that society does not 'discriminate' against them by not making everything larger, so that it can better cater for them. 

And so you have the 'normalization' of a state of affairs which is neither in the benefit of the individual, whose participation in some or all aspects of social and productive life might become restricted, nor of the society in general, as it loses some of the contribution which the clinically obese individual might have or could have made, as well as having to meet his/her additional needs. There is also the impact of obesity on the family, in terms of role modelling and negative impact it can have on how family members think and function as a family.

OWOHROD