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Modify Me – The Shocking Trend that has Shifted Health in the 21st Century

I remember when I was a kid in school it was rare to see other kids carrying EpiPen’s, suffering from chronic asthma, or being overweight. It just wasn’t the norm…in fact, sadly these kids were typically picked on for standing out because of it.

Fast forward to my time as an educator in my local High Schools, the reality and trend has completely shifted.

What now seems to be normal and accepted is to be overweight. Look around you. You don’t have to look long to see our future generations struggling with their weight at a very early age.

What now seems to be normal and accepted is to struggle with fitness during activity. We see it all the time with our friends and family. Even as our own kids were growing up in a healthy and active family, it was always a struggle to get them to participate in a family hike, walk or run in the various parts of the world we were visiting…and we have athletic children.

What now seems to be normal and accepted is to have some kind of allergy or food sensitivity. In fact, the school office drawers are now filled with medications and EpiPen’s for student medical emergencies. Our very own son has grown up with an anaphylactic allergy to Peanuts and a few other food items. It’s been an ongoing fear and concern for him and us growing up in a world that is surrounded by potential reactors and as a result have spent many nights in an Emergency Room narrowly escaping a catastrophic exposure to peanuts.

Why?

In the years we have spent building a business in the Health and Wellness Industry and having coached and mentored thousands of people through their various health transformations…it seems this a question that is mostly never asked.

Despite all the compelling evidence around us that our communities around the world are becoming progressively more unfit and unwell, we don’t pause to ask “what has changed?” We have adopted the “it is what it is” mentality and “it’s out of our control”, along with “this generation of kids are too busy playing their games and gadgets on their computers and phones to get out and play”.

I did some digging into clinical articles and studies produced by a variety of cancer institutes and came up with some of these harrowing figures. Although nobody really shared these exact ratios, this was the best I could come up with using their own stats and figures. Because of this I can’t own the data but take it in being open to the trend that we are seeing.

2015 cancer rates have now escalated to a resounding 1:2 people, and has shown a significant increase since 1970… the year I was born. So, that means that close to 50% of all of us can expect to be diagnosed with a form of cancer in our lifetime. That is not a statistical trend that I am comfortable with in our Western Culture.

Food for thought? In 1953 UCLA did a study of a plot of farm land in California. They reported that one bowl of spinach gave your body the daily supply of iron and nutrients needed. In 1997 UCLA did the same study on the same plot of land. This time they found that 43 bowls of spinach was needed to give your body the daily supply of iron and nutrients!! We’ve also been told a similar stat from nutritionists suggesting would need to consume 12 apples today to equal the nutrition from a single apple from 1960. We could go on and on.

So, what has shifted these tables so much? The first reason is our desire for fast and convenient foods. Over processed and under nourished foods are the easy choice for so many people just trying to manage their face paced over scheduled life. With low nutrition and high calories comes a host of problems that we all see on a daily basis.

The other major reason is that so many people are unwilling to address our need for fresh fruits and veggies and are unending desire to have things bigger, sweeter, brighter than ever before. We are also putting an insane demand on the farmers land to produce which strips the land of its essential trace minerals and vitamins our bodies need so badly.

How do suppliers provide for this demand? 3 Simple letters:

G – Genetically

M – Modified

O – Organisms

Modern technology has created many miracles in our world. We humans are living longer…but are we living healthier as we age?

Truth is we aren’t. You don’t have to look much further than our senior care facilities to see them filled to capacity with the elderly who are dealing with a host of new diseases that didn’t exist 100 years ago. Our children are being diagnosed with all sorts of learning and behavioral conditions that I didn’t see in my early days as a teacher in High School.

I can see the logic in working to create more food to address increasing populations but is it logical to believe that if we modify the nature of our food, that it won’t nourish our bodies the way it did in the past. Does it make sense that if we over process our food supply, that again our bodies genetic makeup won’t recognize what it needs to do with it at a molecular level to feed the billions of cells in our bodies?

The further we seem to get from nature…from our Earth, the further we seem to get from the fundamental health we all truly desire.

I’m not here to preach as I know it’s a tough task to have the best health solutions for our growing and fast paced family life. Kari-Lyn and I have been equally challenged in making sure we make the best choices we can for ourselves.

Here are a few things we do as a part of our routine to help mitigate the risks of feeding GMO foods and nutrition to our family.

1. Be informed. Kari-Lyn is especially keen to read up on the latest health trends, blogs and articles on health issues, nutritionally dense products in the market and healthy recipes that look incredible and taste great.
2. Buy organic. I understand it’s more expensive but it’s cleaner and more nutritious. I’ve heard a report from a trusted toxicology and pain medical doctor that if we consume fruits and vegetables sprayed with herbicides and pesticides on a regular basis, over the course of a year, each person will have consumed over a gallon of toxic and poisonous chemicals. Did you read that!! Enough poison that if consumed at once, would easily kill that person…yet we do consume that over time…so the impact will be felt.
3. Try to stay out of the middle. When we grocery shop, we try to stay on the outside because that’s where the real food hangs out. The middle isles are typically reserved for those over processed and convenient foods that are the culprits for many of our health challenges.
4. Read the labels, know your facts. Avoid GMO foods, many of today’s food products have fancy labels identifying which foods are GMO free and organic. I’m still often skeptical of high-priced marketing games but I do my best to make the best choices I can for my family.
5. Prepare Your Meals. Take the time to put your meals together and eat as a family. It’s often times the only quality time we get together as a family. Also, it’s great role modelling for our kids. PS. No phones at the table.
6. Cleanse Your Body – by this I don’t mean one of those crazy starvation cleanses…but dig deep with a fully body, nutritional cellular cleanse. We don’t live in a bubble so we can’t avoid the constant barrage of toxins in the food we eat, water we drink and the air we breathe. Our bodies are a miracle but can only do so much for us before we need to lend it a hand. We find this this is an incredible way to keep our bodies in balance and functioning strong.
7. Supplement your nutrition. If we know that our fruits and veggies are lacking the essential minerals, vitamins and trace minerals we need to function, we need to source them outside our foods. Find a healthy option from a trusted source. Do your research as you don’t want to be pouring good money down the drain. This is an area you want to invest in quality vs quantity.
8. Move Your Body – I’m not saying you have to take on some new workout craze that you don’t intend to maintain…. but do something active that brings you joy. Whether it’s hiking outdoors, playing sport, yoga or working out in the gym, it has to be something that fuels your mind, body and spirit to support you living your optimal life.

One of my major breakthroughs personally in my life was to learn to be open to new information. To take my head out of the proverbial sand and have a look around. There are many things we don’t understand or can’t explain…and a host of others who spend Billions of dollars and countless hours trying to keep us uninformed. So now I have learned to ask questions, to listen to experts in the field and to do my own research.

Our health is our own true wealth and as the late Jim Rohn says, “if our bodies breakdown, where else are we going to live?”. I strongly urge you to look around and ask yourself “Is there something to this?”

Because if nothing changes, nothing changes.

We are a stand for creating healthy families and our hope is that you take a similar stand for yourself, for your family and for the generations about to come who deserve a healthier and more prosperous opportunity to live long and healthy lives.