Through seven figures come sensations for a man; there is hearing for sounds, sight for the visible, nostril for smell, tongue for pleasant or unpleasant tastes, mouth for speech, body for touch. . . . Through these come knowledge or lack of it.
—Hippocrates1
I’VE BEEN A DOCTOR for more than twenty-five years, following four intense years in medical school and another four grueling years of residency training at one of New York City’s leading hospitals. But if you came for a consultation with me today, you wouldn’t find me in a white jacket in a hospital or medical center. Instead, you would drive up a little dirt road in the village of Bedford, New York, and park outside a beautiful old barn, with a green lawn, a gurgling brook, a vegetable garden, and beehives. It’s very likely that Stanley or Stella, our resident peacock and peahen, would come over to say hello. They’re part of a menagerie of rescued animals that graze in the pastures here. Welcome to SunRaven: The Home of Slow Medicine—my clinic, my home, and the space I’ve created to hold and express the intention that individuals and our society as a whole will learn and move forward in their evolution, not merely to rid themselves of ailments, but to achieve a state of peace, tranquillity, harmony, and balance—the essence of true, lasting, extraordinary health.
When you step into my office, I offer you something I believe is worth more than any drug prescription or typical treatment regimen: I help you to learn to help yourself. Early on, I try to start empowering you. I show you that, while a good doctor is valuable, you already possess the more important tools to find the answers for yourself. At the foundation of this philosophy is the profound belief that on some level, you know a lot more than you might be consciously aware of on a day-to-day basis. In fact, in a weird paradox occasioned by our information age, our overdependence on the “knowledge” of medical authorities often obscures the deeper knowledge that exists within us. Our five physical senses are naturally attuned to our health. Most of us understand that much. But we need to retrain ourselves to tap into our sixth sense, our intuition, as well. And, going further, I’ll assert that we must hone our seventh sense, too—our common sense. This chapter is about using all our tools. I am encouraging you to literally “come to your senses.”
WESTERN MEDICINE AND WESTERN EXCESS
It’s my life mission to help you go beyond conventional medicine to your best, most extraordinary health. To be clear, though, never do I dismiss the achievements of modern medicine. First of all, I’m a skilled clinician, classically trained in one of the finest medical schools. I’m proud of what my profession has accomplished, and I still use my training every day. I don’t discredit the many milestones of conventional medicine, nor do I undercut the critical role that my trained and dedicated professional colleagues play in saving lives every day. But if you think about it, we doctors play our A-game only when it comes to acute conditions. If a patient comes into an ER with a compound tibula-fibula fracture, we really rock and roll. We can diagnose, treat, palliate, prevent infection, and generally heal this kind of traumatic injury very well and fairly quickly in the grand scheme of things (especially when you consider that in the not-so-distant past, a broken leg was a possible death sentence). We’ve come a long way since bloodletting and bone setting were state of the art.
But guess what? In the modern world—in the West, especially—the vast majority of our medical problems are not acute. Proportionally, we encounter far more chronic (long-term, debilitating) medical conditions, like high blood sugar and obesity, than we see acute (emergent, traumatic) problems like lacerations and infections. And the funny thing is, many acute problems, such as heart attacks and strokes, are very often preventable emergencies that occur almost inevitably as the last stage of poorly managed chronic problems. Meaning, if we treated the chronic conditions properly, we’d have even fewer acute emergencies.
So, first of all, if you have a burst appendix, there’s a screwdriver jammed in your thigh, or your eye has popped out of its socket, I highly recommend the standard of care in Western medicine. You can’t do much better. But if you’re suffering from a more chronic problem, one of those common but exasperating concerns that constitute the great majority of our health challenges—problems like migraines, PMS, joint pain, psoriasis, and the other Big 8 I outlined on pages 18–19—I suggest you look at the “success” rates for the most modern “treatments.” The very definition of a chronic condition includes the notion that it does not respond well to quick fixes. It’s clear we need to reconsider the way we handle such chronic health problems, which account for the bulk of the “patient load” that is straining our system and slowly killing us and our kin.
The good news here is that over those chronic issues, as frustrating as they are, we can exercise a huge amount of control through slow medicine. In many ways, as unpleasant as it might be to hear this, we got ourselves into our messes—and we can get ourselves out.
Think about it: Can we blame doctors and Western medicine for the failure rates in preventing and curing chronic illnesses? Partly. It’s obvious their message is not getting across properly, or rates of chronic diseases would not be rising so precipitously. On the one hand, these problems are simple. If you eat too much and move too little, you gain weight. If you gain too much weight, you’re likely to develop a group of other problems—the “metabolic syndrome”—and one or more of these problems, left unchecked, will ultimately put you in the ground. The condition, reframed in this way, is obviously preventable. Eat less junk. Move around more. Problem solved.
It sounds like I’m being facetious, but it’s true. Most of the solutions to our most common chronic conditions are just that obvious and just that easy, technically, to solve. Your senses alone, including your intuition and common sense, already have the answers to your problem. In fact, to a great extent, our most pernicious and debilitating chronic ailments (like type 2 diabetes and obesity) are almost entirely within our own control. Weird, isn’t it? As a culture, we get smarter every day. We’re very proud of our intelligence. We have access to more information than ever before. We spend billions on self-help. We venerate and slaver over the latest diet and health fads. So why don’t we get better? Is that our doctors’ fault?
We clearly have a cultural problem. The qualities that helped catapult the West into glorious triumph over enormous odds are exactly what’s digging our early graves, and hobbling us for years before the death that sadly many of us see as our only sweet relief. Just consider one element of this unskillful cultural heritage: excess. We do everything to excess. We eat giant burgers, drink giant beers, smoke giant cigars, and watch a giant amount of TV (on our giant TVs) over our giant bellies, all in service of our starving senses.
T. Colin Campbell, the Cornell University biochemist responsible for the single largest study of human nutrition ever conducted, devoted thirty-five years to studying thousands of people and interpreting thousands of other studies in what the New York Times called the “Grand Prix of epidemiology.” He proved that in addition to diabetes and coronary artery disease, even leukemia and breast, colon, lung, stomach, liver, and childhood brain cancers are all directly related to what he calls the West’s “nutritional extravagance.”2
Let’s talk extravagance for a moment. Someone I know just returned from a state fair where they were serving huge portions of deep-fried . . . wait for it . . . Kool-Aid! We pride ourselves on this kind of excessive ingenuity. Is it any wonder the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta predicts that one in three children born in the United States in 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetime? For certain parts of the population most at risk, that number is one in two.3 Is it any wonder we’ve forgotten what true, whole food tastes and feels like? Or what it feels like to get joy and satisfaction without 100 grams of carbs, 30 grams of fat, and that ineffable “purple” flavor?
Eating should be joyous. In fact, we’re hardwired to enjoy it. If we didn’t enjoy it, we’d probably avoid it and certainly therefore die. We should eat, but at the least begin to pay more attention to what we eat, rather than eating “mindlessly”4 from the trough of deep-fried treats. We should stay conscious of the various ways food scientists and manufacturers—as well as those vendors at state fairs—pack in the drugs (literally) that short-circuit the pleasure centers of our brain to give us quick, cheap highs and help us forget the misery of our physical, spiritual, psychic, and familial lives for a fleeting moment. Believe me, I’m sympathetic. I know it isn’t easy. If you give a man cocaine for ten years, then pull him off it one day and expect him to get “high on life,” well, you’ve got another thing coming. It’s no different with food.
Ideally, we could attack this kind of cultural challenge head-on. That fits into my ideal future. Sure, deep-fried Kool-Aid, Twinkies, Pop-Tarts, and apple pie sound yummy to most of us, at least in the short term. But is it worth the kind of serial amputations diabetics refer to as “salami surgery”? Is it worth the worst pain you can imagine, radiating from your chest to your limbs, as you fall to the floor in front of your grandchildren from your third and final heart attack? I’m sorry to go to these extremes, but they’re real, and edifying. As a physician, I’m honored to have been present at the deaths of many, many people. And in all that time, I’ve never once heard a dying person say, “You know, I wish I’d had more deep-fried cookie dough.” What do dying people regret? Your intuition will tell you that it’s not about satisfying taste buds. This whole book is about guiding you to a life in which you’ll never experience that kind of regret on your eventual, far-off deathbed.
Meantime, it’s imperative that we think about the easy and obvious things we can do today to prevent potentially horrific consequences tomorrow. We can drink enough water; lose some weight; eat whole, natural foods; get enough sleep; and eschew our tendency to revert to psychoactive substances or prescription drugs as quick fixes. That’s a very, very good start. You can start all that today for no cost and very little trouble, and the results will likely be enormous. Many physicians would argue that you could do those things alone—you could stop reading this book now if you implement and stick to that prescription alone—but I don’t agree. I believe you would certainly experience better physical health than your average citizen. But is that enough? Would it be meaningful? Could you even do it—sustain it, I mean—without a lot of support, not to mention the motivation and discipline that’s often hard to muster? If you could, you probably would have already, it makes so much sense. I know it seems easier said than done, but I want you to trust me that you can start taking positive steps right away. Keep reading!
Ultimately, your health success depends on all the other factors of your life beyond your Pop-Tart intake, almost universally ignored in such prescriptions. It’s clear we need to move well beyond this simplistic paradigm if we’re to achieve a wonderful, long-term, nearly impenetrable sense of well-being. What’s the point in keeping hydrated if you hate your wife? Why bother putting down the deep-fried ice cream if you can’t stand your life?
Will conventional medicine come along with us for this ride into a more sensible and inclusive health paradigm? I hope so. We shouldn’t give up on our doctors in this pursuit. On the contrary, we should hold fast to the expectation that our physicians should do more to guide us, teach us, and help heal us. Medicine in the West is a customer-service business, and the customer is king. If we start to ask the right questions, our doctors will eventually oblige and get with the program. But, in truth, we need to do a hell of a lot more to help ourselves, not the least of which involves embracing the broader slow medicine perspective on health and well-being, which I’ve been promoting. This doesn’t have to come down to an either/or mentality, though. There’s value in both the traditional, conventional way of practicing medicine and the holistic way. This is the “integrated” approach that makes the most sense, and carries with it the greatest hope for remarkable, life-changing, world-changing health.
9. Are All Your Senses Acute?
Remember, nobody’s going to just hand you such extraordinary health. It’s not up to your doctor. Because no two people are exactly alike, we must each discover our own path to health. Just as a violinist must tune his instrument to be in harmony with the rest of the orchestra, finding health is about discovering the right resonance or timbre within your own body and life. Once you’re in the “flow,” I promise you will know it. You’ll know when you’re healthy—all your senses will sing it out loud.
Identifying and developing your own innate strengths and skills is a good first step in finding the course that’s right for you. Your own five senses and your sixth sense—your intuition—are already giving you messages from your body. You just need to learn to listen to them (not ignore their screaming) and properly translate the message to understand what they’re telling you. Identifying and learning how to maximize these tools will be easier for some than for others, but the good news is that we all possess them.
GETTING IN TOUCH WITH OUR SENSES
Nearly all of us get to use our five basic senses every day. We taste our cereal, steak, and coffee. We touch our sheets and our spouses and our car seats. We smell our kids’ diapers, the spring breeze, and fresh-cut grass. We see the mountain range behind the cityscape, the eyes of our dogs, the chiaroscuro in a Rembrandt painting. We hear a great drumbeat, the buzzing of a hornet, a car peeling out down the block. But how consciously do we use the tools of our senses? And to what end? Many people I meet—both patients and friends—take their senses almost entirely for granted, and use them for little more than day-to-day survival. It’s not surprising that my patients who begin to losetheir sight or their hearing suddenly recognize how much they value the simple things they once took for granted—how terrified they become at the prospect of no longer being able to hear or to see. They begin to speak of the emotional bliss they experience when they hear their grandkids laugh. They come to tears when they describe seeing the sunset.
So first and foremost, it’s worth spending some effort on getting in touch with your senses, so to speak. Just a few minutes every day at first. Pay attention to the things you take in with your senses. Really look at the people on your commute to work, as the poet Ezra Pound did one day at the Métro station at La Concorde, Paris:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.5
That’s amazing. One of the most powerful poems ever written in English, full of image, movement, elegance, transience, and profundity in just fourteen words, not one of them a verb!
Every day offers such poetic opportunities for all of us. For just a few minutes today, really listen to the wind outside, the brook trickling, the birds as they discuss their day. Hear kids giggling on the playground, distant, rolling thunder, or the battle cries in Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” Imagine for a moment the isolation, the loneliness that would ensue if this sense were suddenly snatched from you—then open up your ears again in remembrance that you are in possession of a sense that can immediately sweep your heart into a tumult of emotion with only a whisper. That’s a miracle if ever there were one, and it’s a sin to take miracles for granted, isn’t it?
Attending, even temporarily, to our senses proves to us that regardless of any maladies we might suffer, we have incredible health right now—the ability to use all those powerful, miraculous faculties for experiencing the world around us. It reminds us that we’re alive, and we’re part of a big and interesting universe worth being a part of. You’ve heard the old wisdom: Open your eyes. Stop and smell the roses. Eat, drink, and be merry! Do it.
What does this have to do with extraordinary health? Well, on the simplest level, this practice promotes appreciation, which is paramount to good health. It helps us cultivate an “attitude of gratitude,” as wise men and women—and SpongeBob, in one of his most popular children’s songs—have suggested. When we appreciate what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, we are for that moment not focused on whatever other misery we might be enduring. We’re actually experiencing health.
Think about how you would quiet a baby having a crying fit: jiggle some keys or walk over to show her some Christmas tree ornaments. We can entertain the agonized infant within us in the same way. It’s not a distraction. It’s a focuson what matters. On life. That’s what I mean by a healthy relation to the universe.
10. Do You Take Time to Experience Sensual Pleasures in Healthy Ways?
My earlier diatribe against deep-fried state fair snacks notwithstanding, I’m not remotely an ascetic. I believe that good health includes experiencing the full range of sensual pleasures that God or evolution or chance has laid out before us. This is sometimes hard to achieve, especially if you want to achieve it with a measure of moderation, balance, or temperance.
On the one hand, we’re assaulted daily with messages about satisfying our sensual impulses. From television and other media, we face an onslaught of images that provide a cacophonous feast for every sense. Images of juicy burgers and moist, plump cookies are meant to stimulate us. An eyeful of perfect supermodel-looking people in provocative poses and situations is meant to arouse other senses. The nonstop, pulsing clatter of media is meant to keep our senses stirred and shaken, forever off-beam. But at the same time, our still-puritanical culture encourages us to feel guilty when we experience—or even think about—satisfying such pleasures of the senses. We’re taught at an early age to keep our hands out of the cookie jar, to keep our various pleasure-seeking behaviors in check. We’re not supposed to put our hands down our pants. We can’t stare. We can’t eavesdrop on adult conversations. We’re not allowed to say out loud when something stinks. We’re trained to delay gratification and work toward “meaningful” feelings of satisfaction. That’s fine. I get it. We have to live with others and learn to restrain certain impulses. And I think it’s a good exercise to train ourselves to avoid substituting the kind of pleasure we might get from, say, illicit drugs or overeating, for real fulfillment that comes from something like inner peace or self-esteem.
I think we can make a good argument that many of us are in fact trapped on the physical plane, easily seduced by those things—like food, alcohol, and drugs—that bring us immediate gratification, despite their long-term negative effects. Our overconsumption and obsession with commercial and material goods in particular has bred a collective mindlessness, resulting in an avoidance of real meaning, real happiness, and real health. You know this. You can buy a sleek, fast motorboat and drink the best tequila. You can live in palatial home with a view of the Rockies unmatched by any Ansel Adams photograph. And you can still be miserable. A complete focus on the pleasures of the senses, absent meaning, can blind us to the wisdom that fosters an appreciation of the big picture, moving us into an even greater state of imbalance.
While contentment is the sine qua non—the indispensible essence—of peace of mind, we live in a culture that promotes its opposite. Advertisements make us feel incomplete, encouraging the endless pursuit of material wealth and sensual pleasure. We seek superficial gratification with little regard for its future consequences for the world or ourselves. We attach ourselves to things and people to avoid personal discomfort. We have conditioned ourselves to believe that satisfying all our wants, cravings, and desires will bring us happiness. The message is that we can have it all. Damn it, we deserve it all! Of course, the opposite is true. Our attachments and cravings, particularly to material wealth and temporary gratification, are actually obstacles to real contentment and real health. In fact, the mindless, mechanical pursuit of these things does nothing to address our underlying anxiety and simply perpetuates our fear and longing for something “real.”
But I’m not talking about that kind of unbalanced excess here! I’m talking about an equal and opposite, unskillful and unhealthy problem. I’m talking about the danger that comes from inhabiting the other side of this continuum, where we get so caught up in our practical pursuits that we forget we have the capacity to even experience simple joy, fun, and pleasure from living through our senses: the fresh smell of rain or the majesty of watching a lioness romp with her cubs.
Get it out of your head that sensual pleasure is just for bacchanalian hedonists peeling grapes in their togas while slaves fan them with palm fronds. The simultaneous coolness and sting of a radish; the way the light plays on choppy bay water; the soft belly of a beagle; the thrill of a lover’s touch—these delights belong to everyone. Life is greatly lessened if we avoid them. We certainly can’t expect to experience extraordinary health without sensing the world around us in all its glory.
11. Do You Listen to Your Intuition?
THE ELUSIVE SIXTH SENSE
All cultures have a concept of a sixth sense, which we might loosely define as our intuition. Like our other five senses, many of us lose touch with this sense early on. This pattern typically starts with the reinforcement we receive from parents and teachers who unconsciously (or consciously) pick away at our confidence, slowly eroding our ability to think independently. When we’re young, adults often dismiss our feelings and visions as fabrications or fantasies. They belittle us or ridicule our pride when our predictions prove true.
As we grow, more naysayers—usually because they are themselves insecure or afraid—keep labeling our dreams unrealistic, making us distrust what we feel inside is our truth. Collectively, these experiences lead us to distrust our deep inner sense of what’s right for us. Eventually, many of us lose faith in our capacity for self-reflection and self-healing. When our confidence diminishes as a result, it’s challenging to remain secure in our judgment and instincts, and this situation will affect our ability to make informed decisions about our physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
So we begin to turn outside ourselves—to peers, parents, bosses, the media, and “the system”—to solve our important personal questions and to lay out paths for our future. Our lives are conditioned—and in some extremes, controlled—by the dominant culture, the conventional wisdom, that makes us feel terribly insecure without “their” approval. You know: “They” say you’re not supposed to get too much sun. “They” say you should spend three months’ salary on an engagement ring. “They” say work is supposed to be a drag. “They” say you’re not supposed to love this person or that one.
While there is some real wisdom out there, and while we can all benefit from a little guidance, we’re bombarded by “experts” with definite, but not always transparent, agendas. We have become totally dependent on these others for advice. Perhaps this is why self-help books are so popular and appealing. It would be okay if we were able to consider such counsel in reasonable perspective, if we were able to keep the “self” part of self-help at the forefront. But over time we’ve continued to lose even more confidence in our own judgment and sensitivity.
This might seem strange coming from a health book author who definitely does want to offer advice. But I want you to be clear up front that what I’m offering is a method for you to truly help yourself. If you’re seeking someone to take over the process of your achieving health and happiness, you’ve come to the wrong doctor.
But I understand the temptation. The world instructs us to follow conventional rules and norms of our society, so we do so, to fit in. But on some level, most of us know that society is out of balance with nature or even our own most precious values. But we learn early on that we mustn’t upset those at the top or the masses around us. Over time, we get used to these prescriptions and proscriptions, and find it easier to just go with the flow rather than creating waves. Notice, though, that when every once in a while a true self-possessed maverick comes along, we call such a rebel a hero. Those people change the world.
And the rest of us? Basically, we’ve become lazy. (If you object to the word “lazy,” perhaps you can substitute “asleep” or “unconscious.”) In any case, we sit back and wait to be told what to do instead of figuring things out for ourselves or using our own creativity to solve problems. We allow other, often less skillful people to influence our minds and behavior. That’s the definition of bad advice. Part of the reason we’re so susceptible to such bad advice lies in our vain quest for easy answers, to locate the “Idiot’s” or “Dummy’s” guide to all our problems. This quest stems from our acquired fear that we can’t trust or rely on our instincts.
While confidence in ourselves is in short supply, often our confidence in others is equally low. We might expect other people to bring us to our goal, but we often find that they’re flying as blind as we are. Even those in whom we place great trust, or to whom we turn for guidance—our leaders—ultimately let us down, sometimes with devastating consequences for our psyches. We all know what happens in Washington, D.C.; how often the “hope” of the election season turns into the “nope” of petty politics. In fact, this has become a sad joke, a reflection of a society that has become truly numb to hypocrisy.
In his renowned essay “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke eloquently of the need to rely on our present thoughts and impressions rather than those of other people. He urges us to trust ourselves, for “God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.”6 Emerson stresses originality, believing in a person’s own genius and ability to discover resonance from within. The human hunt for self-reliance, he says, is really a search for harmony in the universe, which can be achieved only by each person seeking his or her own unique means of self-fulfillment (here substitute “health” and “wholeness”).
So how do you find your own, unique and authentic self? Try turning off the faucet of others’ advice for a bit. Trust your instincts. Find quiet moments to sit and listen to what your inner voice tells you that you must do to feel better, to be wiser, to live more meaningfully. The more you connect with your deeper self, the more confidence you will find in your own perceptions and intuitions. Wake up your senses! Get outside. Adjust your diet so it’s more in harmony with what you know is good and right and healthful. Spend more time with your family the way you know you should. Mend relationships with lost relatives and friends the way your inner voice is calling you to. Start a good book you’ve been intending to read. Pursue your callings. Ignore the words of leaders who are misleading you. The more you do to empower yourself, the less power you will give away or lose in the process.
Let me reiterate that: stop giving energy and power to those whom you suspect (your intuition tells you) are not reliable or trustworthy. Whenever possible, limit your exposure to the negative messages that produce fear, anxiety, and shame. Learn to be more discriminating about the voices to which you listen, about who and what is feeding your brain. Get in touch with your self and listen to what it’s been telling you all along. This is an imperative step on the staircase to extraordinary health.
12. Are You Relaxed and in a Calm State of Mind When You Eat?
WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND WHEN YOU EAT?
Let’s get practical. All of this takes a lot of thought. It wouldn’t make much sense to care so much about what you feed your brain if you ignored what you put in your belly. But you should understand by now that the brain and belly are both part of a single integrated system. Perhaps the most essential element for the individual in pursuit of health is to understand what nourishes and sustains us, both physically and metaphysically. For that reason, it’s critical that we consider how to make the best use of the sources that feed us on every level. We need to explore the concept of “conscious eating.”
For the most part, food pundits and “experts”—although well intentioned—have overcomplicated the process of eating, leading to neurotic tendencies and frankly crazy behavior around food. I think it’s essential that we relax about food, because worrying about food is causing as many problems as eating the wrong kind of food. I would like to suggest that we enjoy our food as well as the company dining with us. I’d like to prescribe that we maintain a sense of gratitude and appreciation for what we eat, for all that goes into that food we consume. And I’d like to recommend that we don’t overthink every food choice we make. People have gotten so caught up with the science of nutrition that they’ve forgotten the art of eating.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t think at all about we what eat. I subscribe to the notion of “conscious eating,” about which many nutritionists, psychologists, and health authors have pontificated lately. However, in my mind, conscious eating is about more than just the specific foods you choose to eat, important as those choices are in terms of long-term health.
No, the kind of consciousness I’m talking about goes deeper—it’s about the choices you make about yourself in general and your health in particular. It’s about the way you consider and treat your self as an entity in the universe. Yes, it’s true from a health perspective that we are what we eat, but the underpinning and the real meaning of conscious eating is actually something more: assuming you’re not simply eating Twinkies all day long, what’s on your mind when you eat is as important as what’s on your plate.
There’s so much worthy advice out there about how to eat well to avoid disease and improve health that I hardly need to review it. In fact, I’m willing to bet that not a single reader out there remains unaware of the basic parameters of a healthy diet. You already know most of the things you need to do for better health. We all know, and we know that we know. Yet look around your average shopping mall, flea market, or sporting event. Do your neighbors and relatives and coworkers look like they’re practicing what they know very well? Are they listening to their intuition about skillful eating? I don’t think so. Why is that? There’s clearly some paramount consideration beyond common sense that compels many of us to ignore the obvious repercussions of our bad health choices. Perhaps we just feel as if we deserve to treat ourselves. And the treats that really seem to satisfy give us a short-term high (from excess sugar, fat, caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, and so on) that helps us ignore the long-term low that follows if we abuse them.
Suffice to say, we’re not really hungry for a pint of double chocolate fudge ice cream, but hungry instead for some feeling of wholeness and happiness and joy that we can’t seem to find anywhere else—so Häagen-Dazs will have do. In other words, we’re hungry for health. We’re just scooping from the wrong bin.
THE THREE KINDS OF HUNGER
We can review the practical “diet” part of this program pretty quickly. It will dramatically improve your overall health if you eat regular, moderately sized, and balanced meals, heavy on fresh and seasonal high-fiber fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole (unprocessed) grains, and limit excess animal products and processed food that contains unnecessary fat, salt, sugar, and chemicals. That’s it.
The only problem with this perfectly sane and sensible prescription is that practically no one is complying the way they should be. As a result, the rates of diseases caused by poor diet choices are skyrocketing in this country. If you’ve tried typical weight-loss diets such as Atkins and Weight Watchers, and found they don’t work, you’re not alone. Most people I see have at one time or another been on a diet. Very few are successful over the long term. What I want you to appreciate is that good health and nutrition are not as simple as prescribing to you an ideal set of foods that will make you healthy. Generally speaking, you’re not eating poorly because you’re physically hungry. In fact, there are three kinds of hunger: physical, emotional, and spiritual. If you think about your needs that way, it might open your eyes to a new perspective on eating. See, the problem is that we often confuse these three types of hunger. Rather than considering which hunger we’re feeling at a given time—much less why we’re feeling it—and attempting to understand the distinction between these hungers, we just “feel hungry.” So we eat. Usually some kind of unhealthy “comfort” food, specifically designed to change our brain chemistry in the same way that cocaine and heroin do.
If we’re emotionally or spiritually hungry, having not been able to “feed” ourselves effectively in those areas, then it seems to us that our only source of fulfillment for the sensation of hunger will be from food. But guess what? It doesn’t work! If a car needs gas, no amount of oil will make it go, and vice versa. So we get more emotionally or spiritually hungry, while at the same time, we’ve stimulated more physical hunger by releasing those chemicals in the brain that then compel us to eat more junk. It’s a vicious cycle.
Instead, imagine if you could address your emotional and spiritual hunger in a more skillful manner. Working this way, there would be no reason for a diet at all: you would simply not need to eat so much, and what you desire would be more in line with what is really best for you as well. It’s a win-win.
So don’t worry—this is not a book that will chide you for having a burger, fries, and shake once in a while. Yes, I’ll remind you about some basic choices you can make that will likely improve the way you feel right away. But you’ll also discover a whole new world of extraordinary health once you think beyond the conventional—when you think about how satisfying your work is; whether you have a purpose or mission in life; the extent to which you feel connected to a life force like God; and how in tune you are with the rhythms of nature. Inquiring into these things and making incremental improvements in these areas, even as we care for our bodies, can have dramatic and lifelong positive effects.
When we start to work on these oft-neglected areas, we achieve a sense of well-being and a legitimate quality of health that can generally withstand some less than ideal choices about what we do with (and to) our bodies. If you’re deeply in love and happy with your mate; if you serve your community and feel useful in the world; if you wake with gratitude every day—then your health can probably handle a few extra pounds, a beer or two, some chocolate, or the occasional bowl of Cherry Garcia (but maybe not the whole pint in one sitting, tempting as it is). I’ve found that in many cases, patients who work the 77 Skillful Questions tend to find it a lot easier to make better choices about their physical bodies. A patient recently came to me at SunRaven with pretty serious work and family stress. He found that as he began using techniques for keeping calm and centered, he felt compelled to rebuild his diet, too. He’d been consuming a lot of sugar and junk food, which of course was stress induced. And as he began to incorporate more whole and natural foods, some of his other physical symptoms—headaches and intestinal issues—began to abate. I see this all the time.
In other words, when your relationships with your past, your spouse, your boss, and the world around you are fulfilling, you tend not to seek fulfillment at the bottom of a Häagen-Dazs pint. When we do a careful inventory of why we’re hungry, we begin perhaps to respect ourselves more. We find greater worth in taking care of ourselves. We’re excited about our lives, and we’re no longer so “starved” for fulfillment, seeking to satisfy that starvation in sweet, fatty, salty places.
EATING WITH YOUR BRAIN ON
Along the lines of conscious eating, I have a few other food-related suggestions for you in your pursuit of better health. It’s in this context that the value of locally grown, whole, sustainable, and seasonal food can best be appreciated. It’s not just about the nutrients, but the fact that thinking this way takes into account the entire food chain and all the consciousness that goes into every aspect of raising, delivering, and preparing the food that we ultimately consume. If and when all the links in that chain are working in a healthy and sustainable way, we folks at the top of the food chain are more likely to achieve the health we seek.
When you grow some of your own food, you are forced to be conscious of every aspect of the food chain. But whether or not you have the means to grow your own food, you can develop the knowledge and resources you need to get nourishment from where it’s most beneficial. When you couple this with a mind-set that learns to be at peace at the time when you actually sit down to eat, you’re on your way to healthy eating.
Let’s think further about the concept of the food chain. It’s one thing to eat foods we all know are healthy, but another entirely to focus on where those healthy foods come from, how they’re made, and, most important, what conditions maximize their nutritional value. A person who makes skillful food decisions has the potential to receive more “nutrition” (in the broadest sense of that word) and to simultaneously live more skillfully by positively affecting all life on our planet. Eating with awareness sets you up for a more enjoyable and wholesome dining experience. To paraphrase an old Hindu mealtime prayer:
The creative energy in the food is divine,
The nourishing energy in the body is divine,
The transformation of food into pure consciousness is divine.
If you know this, then any impurities in the food you eat
Will never become part of you.
At one time or another, we have all engaged in unskillful eating habits. To make the point, here is a graphic example of an unskillful food practice: veal production.
Typically, handlers separate young male cattle from their mothers immediately after birth (females are reserved for breeding and milking). The male calf is then chained in a two-foot-wide wooden crate and kept in darkness most of the time. The calf can’t turn, stretch, groom itself, or even lie down comfortably. Significantly, it’s not allowed any interaction with other calves. Because the goal is to produce the pale, flabby meat that we consumers prefer, ranchers deliberately ensure the calf becomes anemic by feeding it an iron-deficient formula free of the roughage that’s part of a cow’s natural diet. Because the hungry calf would desperately eat any hay bedding, it has to lie on a bare, slatted wooden floor, covered with its own waste. It would seem miraculous that any animal could survive in these conditions. And in fact, only a diet of antibiotics and other powerful drugs keeps the calf alive for its brief, unpleasant life span. Even so, many calves die, and others are so ill or feeble at sixteen weeks that handlers have to drag them along the bloody ground with hooks to their slaughter.
Sorry if I spoiled your appetite. Many people find the practice of veal crating so odious that some countries have banned it outright. While a small proportion of ranchers raise veal calves with “amenities” like hay bedding and the opportunity to eat and interact with other animals, this “humane” treatment is more the exception than the rule.
I’m not saying that you should give up veal. That’s a personal choice that I respect either way. What I am suggesting is that you develop an awareness of the circumstances under which your food—all our food—is produced. In this way, you start to cultivate a consciousness about what you’re putting on your plate and in your body. In my view, this gets us much closer to a state of health than mere adherence to some specific and restrictive diet. Having said that, developing a consciousness about the circumstances of food production will tend to redirect a person’s food choices away from unhealthy options and toward more wholesome and sustainable ones. If more people visited hot dog–making facilities, a lot fewer people would eat hot dogs.
I’m not trying to bash meat here, either. My suggestion is that you honor the entire food chain. In the case of vegetables, for example, think about all the work and the people involved—from the seed supplier to the farmer and the farmworkers. Reflect on all the effort required to harvest the plants and to pack, store, and ship them to their final destination. Imagine the hours spent each day stocking produce aisles. Along the way, scores of fellow humans—often overworked and underpaid, but that’s another book—have expended a monumental amount of energy and effort just so you can buy an avocado, or a bag of “baby” carrots (typically just regular carrots machine-cut down to miniature size). It’s important to mention that anywhere along this journey, not only the environment but also the conditions of the workers can variously “pollute” your food. And the process itself can be harmful to both the humans involved and to the environment.
Have you ever caught a fish and cooked it over a campfire? Or grown your own tomatoes and sliced them up for a salad? Anyone who has knows well that such food simply looks and tastes better, and makes you feel better. It’s very likely that without any processing or pollution, such fresh and whole food is, in fact, healthier. You can experience this for yourself by gardening if that’s possible. If you live in a city or otherwise don’t have property, consider a simple herb garden or a window box for a few choice veggies. Or look into a local community garden. Community gardening projects open acres of land, often in the middle of urban areas, to the entire neighborhood, allowing volunteer participants to learn to cultivate organic, biodynamic, and sustainable crops, and to gain a mindful awareness of nature that promotes personal and collective growth and overall community and ecological health. Plus, it’s a lot of fun, and you get to meet cool people who share a community-minded ethic.
In my experience, these projects are particularly allied with health and slow medicine because they encourage participants to celebrate seasonal cycles, such as the equinoxes, the solstices, and the full and new moons, helping to align us with the forces of nature. Here again, the value of the produce that results is important, but perhaps secondary to the benefits of working in the natural world to sustain our families and the human family. If you don’t have a local community garden, why not start one?
But you don’t have to go to such extremes to start a healthier, more conscious eating program. You can start by supporting local farmers over mass supermarket chains, or simply by trying to understand more about where your food comes from. The idea is to come into alignment with everyone and everything around you that contributes to the food you ultimately choose to eat.
Whatever you eat, you should honor your food, and see how this honor affects your overall experience of eating and your health in general. Consider how they do it on Sardinia, off the coast of Italy, for example. There, the typical diet consists of homegrown fruits and vegetables, dairy products from grass-fed sheep and cows, home-baked flatbreads, fresh fish, and wine produced in small vineyards from indigenous grapes (writing this is making me hungry!). Sardinian families, generations of whom often live under one roof, typically eat together, and the stereotypical celebratory atmosphere of the Italian table is no fiction. Sardinians typically involve themselves in every step of the food process, from planting and growing to harvesting and cooking. Interestingly, more men live past the age of one hundred on this Italian island than anywhere else in the world.
Some experts suggest that a healthy, low-stress, agrarian lifestyle is the main reason why Sardinian centenarians have outlived most of their compatriots in urban and suburban Italy. Others suspect that genetics underlies the unusual male longevity, which appears to run in families, but of course, if genetics is the cause, it might just be the result of thousands of years of this relatively stress-free, rural lifestyle centered on the whole-food diet. Whatever the true explanation, this overall conscious, simple, skillful approach to food that many traditional agrarian societies take is worth emulating if you want to “live long and prosper.” So, mangia! I know this is probably not what you expect a doctor to tell you in a chapter that includes a prescription for healthy eating. Instead of succumbing to restrictive rules and regulations, focus, starting today, on food consciousness. Ask the following kinds of questions before meals:
•Where did this food come from?
•Who was responsible for it?
•How did they make it?
•What’s in it?
•Can I still recognize what it used to be?
•How did it get to my kitchen or this restaurant?
•Why do I want to eat it?
•In what way am I hungry?
•How am I feeling right now as I’m about to eat?
•How will I feel soon and later if I eat it?
•What are the likely consequences to my health if I eat it?
•What are my other food choices right now?
Finally, when it does come time to eat, try to foster a peaceful and loving energy to surround your meal. Think about joyous and grateful times when you’ve shopped for, prepared, cooked, served, and eaten your meal with people you love. Not every meal and snack will automatically have that kind of energy, I know, but meditating for a minute each time you eat—such as certain religions intend when people hold hands to say grace—will help you to make better choices, eat better, digest better, feel better, and live better. Then, as you take your first bite, turn off the voice of judgment inside your head and enjoy what you have chosen for that moment.
13. Are the Environments You Live in Clean, Pure, and Conducive to Health and Peace?
CLEANING UP YOUR ACT
This one’s pretty simple. Use your senses and your intuition to assess the relative healthfulness of your immediate surroundings. You know now you need to turn off the spigot of bad advice around you to reconnect with positive, healthy intuition. You know you have to stop the flow of unhealthy food to open yourself up to better choices. Well, so, too, should you stop the tide of negative physical influences and strive to surround yourself with as pure, clean, and natural an environment as possible. What circulates around and in your body affects what you get out of that machine.
When you think of your environment, what comes to mind? Be honest: Are your kitchen and bathroom less than pristine? Is your bedroom full of dust? Is your workplace akin to one of those veal-fattening pens I just described? Are you, like many modern workers, suffering in a cluttered cubicle under fluorescent lights, permeated by the stench of copier toner?
You wouldn’t go out of your way to drink filthy water, would you? So why would you deliberately breathe bad air? Or subject yourself to other “toxins” in your surroundings? Truth is, every drop you drink and every breath you take that contains pollutants and toxic chemicals will ultimately foul up the machinery of your body and tax your systems as they attempt to clear those poisons. So cleaning up the environments where you spend the most time—your home and your office—is a prime opportunity to improve your overall health.
This is not just a good idea—it can literally save your life. Research shows that a quarter of all disease in the world is caused by environmental factors, and environment plays some contributing role in a full 80 percent of all diseases, according to the World Health Organization.7 Unhealthy environments kill a staggering thirteen million people a year,8 often through diseases of the respiratory, digestive, hepatic (liver), and blood systems. Nearly all of these diseases are preventable by cleaning up environments—primarily our air, water, and household toxins. In the most extreme cases, in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, where diarrhea and malaria are two of the most common killers, poor environmental conditions take nearly 100 percent of the blame. But these factors affect us in the West as well. A large body of recent evidence points to significant indoor environmental contributors to asthma, for example.9 Exposure to toxins in the home and workplace can cause or contribute to lupus; Parkinson’s disease; reproductive problems; any number of cancers, such as mesothelioma and breast cancer; and a range of other serious diseases and conditions, including, possibly, autism.10
Just use your intuition and your common sense. Don’t you feel better when you get fresh air? When your sheets, your toilet, your countertops are clean? When you eat more wholesome, unprocessed, natural foods? Doesn’t the sun feel healthier than artificial light?
Here are a few simple suggestions for purifying your environment in pursuit of better health:
•Eat wholesome, natural, unprocessed foods.
•Consider eating organic where possible.
•Grow some of your own fruits, vegetables, and herbs without pesticides.
•Drink plenty of fresh water, filtered if you’re concerned about your local source.
•Clean your house regularly of dust, dander, pests, and other allergens.
•Consider getting a HEPA air filter.
•Limit your intake of poisons such as nicotine, alcohol, and illicit drugs.
•Limit your exposure to toxins such as chemicals in the household (room deodorizers, for example) and at work.
•Reduce your use of toxic chemicals on your body, from fragrances to strong chemical antiperspirants.
•Pay particular attention to the cleanliness of your bedroom and your desk/office, where you spend most of your time.
•If your pets sleep in your bedroom, keep them and their bedding constantly clean.
•Don’t forget to avoid noise and light pollution whenever you can; these can have serious negative effects.
•If you don’t have control over your work environment, take frequent breaks, especially getting fresh air whenever you can.
•Get moving! Physical activity can help rid your body of environmental toxins.
Just as important as the physical issues relating to pollution is the benefit that can be derived from mindfully adjusting your environment to be more in alignment with the overall principles of slow medicine. In this regard, intentionally adding beauty to your environment, or arranging the furniture of the rooms in which you spend a lot of time so that it’s most conducive to work, rest, peace, harmony, or whatever else you are doing there, will contribute substantially to your state of ease, balance, flow, and productivity, all of which are essential components of the health you’re after. The Chinese call this feng shui, and for four thousand years, they’ve put it to good use.
You’ve heard the phrase, “Clear desk, clear mind”? Well, this is quite true. In the same way, a healthy environment makes for a genuinely healthy person. Further, when you clean up your personal space, you’re actually serving others at the same time. After all, we share the planet with each other, not to mention every other living thing.
PRACTICAL PRESCRIPTION 2: FINDING TREASURE
At this point, I suggest that you try an interesting experiment on your path to integrative health. Try thinking of every day of your life as a kind of treasure hunt. There are moments each day to find various treasures, literal and figurative—even during periods of suffering. You can use your senses to unlock these treasures. As you navigate the path of your life, physical conditions might persist and pose challenges. However, you should always keep in mind that the physical realm is just one component of health. Yes, your trick knee can hurt like hell, but it doesn’t diminish the brilliance of your husband’s smile. Your nose might stay clogged today, but that doesn’t eclipse a gorgeous sunrise.
You might even be facing the gravest of health challenges, waiting in hospice for imminent death itself, and still find wonder, joy, and appreciation in the things big and small beyond yourself—a tiny spider laying eggs in the corner of the ceiling, the sound of bullfrogs in a distant stream, a Beethoven symphony, the memory of your first kiss. I understand it’s often difficult to transcend physical and emotional problems—but it’s very much worth trying. It’s “healthy” in the best definition of the word.
If you open your heart and mind, you’ll find that very often, the journey of life presents critical opportunities to bring even more meaning and beauty into your life. You just have to look out the windows once in a while as you ride through life to see the meaning and beauty radiating from those you love and who love you; the meaning and beauty you can sense in the wonders of the earth; the meaning and beauty of your dreams, imagination, and hopes for yourself and others. The hope that springs from your intuitive sense of where you could go if there were no obstacles.
If this sounds corny or silly to you, I urge you—I beg you—to give it a try. How about you look for treasure for ten minutes a day? How about for three minutes while you brush your teeth or wait for a red light? Spend this time daily considering and truly appreciating such meaning and beauty, and I guarantee you will feel better, happier, more whole, more balanced, more in tune with the world—in short, healthier.
Are you asking, “What *&^%# treasure? My shin splints are killing me! My bunions are the worst!” Well, how about treasuring the time you have alone on the cool tiles of your bathroom as the sun streams in and you notice in the mirror that your eyes remind you of your beloved father? How about treasuring the nonstop, stupid, loyal love of your dog when she sees you’re awake and ready to take her for a walk? How about treasuring the miracle that your faculties are intact; that you can dream and picture wonderful things for your grandkids and even yourself? How about treasuring the mystery of the future? Whatever happens, it’s going to be a surprise.
There’s treasure, too, in embracing who you are on your unique journey. Finding health requires a personal transformation that’s not accomplished by blindly following others toward short-term goals, but by going after the ultimate state of peace and tranquillity—the real treasure. And you can’t find peace and tranquillity if you’re running away from yourself. Can you find a kernel of something to treasure about yourself right now? It’s one of the saddest heartbreaks that many of us believe we cannot. It takes practice; it doesn’t come naturally. It feels selfish. It feels prideful. Bull! You’re cool. You’ve done some interesting things. You’ve overcome a lot. You’ve touched people. You’ve left a mark. You’ve learned stuff. You have a heart and a mind and a soul and a body, all imperfect, but all yours, and all wonderful and awesome, in the true definitions of those words. Please, please, for just those three minutes while you wait on the bank line, allow yourself to feel this instead of gritting your teeth in frustration. If it works, maybe expand this practice to your evening ablutions. Then maybe every time you find yourself on hold with customer service. Then whenever you’re about to go to bed, and so on. Look for the moments—they are there.
If you’re still uncomfortable finding treasure in yourself, think about others. Think about your friends. Think about soldiers. Think about firefighters. Think about children. Think about horses. Think about God if that’s consistent with your beliefs. Think about the formation of the sun and the planets, quarks and quasars, black holes and red dwarfs and dinosaurs and all the sponges bobbing in their brown shorts below the sea. Think about your favorite stories from childhood, your favorite jokes, your favorite cookies that your grandma used to make.
Note that it’s difficult to find treasure when you’re constantly putting out fires. Too often we’re focused on the thousands of tasks at hand throughout our overly busy days. We move so fast that we lose sight of the beauty that surrounds us. We’re so busy looking for our kid’s socks that we forget the profound, almost painful love we feel for them. We’re so intent on finding our umbrella that we forget how lovely the rain feels on our faces. Remember when you were a kid and the most fun thing you could think of was to jump in a puddle? Exactly when did we change our minds about that? And what good did it really do us to grow out of it?
Again, for most of us, this practice will not come easily and will not work perfectly right away. We’re so conditioned to find fault, to focus on problems, to concentrate on pain, that some of us go our entire adult lives without finding any treasure. How do you hedge against this worst of tragedies? Well, this might sound morbid, but imagine that today’s the day you will die. (We ought to have learned from recent events that it very well might be—we just never know.) I think the vast majority of us, given twenty-four hours or even one hour, would not simply curl up and wait for the grim reaper’s sickle. We would deliberately and passionately seek the treasures in our lives. Our senses would come alive, and we would not take them for granted. We would savor the touch of those we love. We would make love if we could. We would feel profound love for those who’ve supported us, and we might even find forgiveness for those who’ve “trespassed.” We would relish the breeze on our face, or the brush of our cat’s tail against our leg. We would feel the pulse in our arteries and the breath in our lungs, and find them astounding. I can assure you that we wouldn’t worry about getting our Hush Puppies muddy—we would jump headlong into any puddle.
Funny thing is, we don’t typically find such treasure, in part because we don’t believe today should be “a good day to die.” Today feels like just any other day, and, frankly, today kind of sucks. But does it really? Open up your senses and you’ll find that it’s amazing. It’s awesome. It’s a miracle. It’s plain common sense.
QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER REFLECTION
14. Are You Grateful for the Blessings in Your Life?
15. Do You Feel Physically Attractive?
These two questions are worth some additional thought. Actually, they require practice. Can you learn to draw your attention to the positive and to accept all that is? Can you see light and beauty even in the shadows? This is worth the effort, I can assure you.