Twenty years ago a certain book was first published with a title designed to get your attention – and maybe make you a little bit angry too: “Love Your Disease, It’s Keeping You Healthy”. I confess to feeling more than a little irritated myself: It smacked of an unhelpful “you brought this upon yourself” attitude. Did this title annoy you as well? Surely the author isn’t suggesting that being unwell is a good thing?
But I read it, and eventually the title made sense. Then over the last decade or so of clinical practice I began to see where he was coming from. Today I’d like to share with you why this medical doctor author might just be correct about the connection between disease and health.
Virtually all of us have at least one health challenge to manage. Perhaps there’s some part of you that’s never worked completely because you were born that way. Maybe something went awry with your mental health or hormones in adolescence. Possibly a series of health challenges have seemingly just descended on you out of nowhere. Maybe an accidental injury has changed your life. Maybe you’ve been able to avoid any health challenges. But sooner or later, most of us get at least one.
Having a health issue, injury or disability to manage, especially the chronic variety, often means you have to take extra actions as preventative maintenance. Like, for example, a daily stretching routine to help you minimise your pain and maximise mobility. Or maybe you have to include or avoid certain foods to keep your digestion content. Perhaps ensuring you get enough sleep and meditate daily so your brain supports your mood and mental health better. Funny thing is - stretching, eating well, meditating and sleeping enough are great health boosters on their own.
If you were one hundred per cent healthy and functional you might regard these activities as optional extras in life. But then you might not do them at all, feeling you could get away with those unhealthy practices. But because your particular health challenge forces you to eat well, manage your movement and coddle your brain, for you these health practices have become compulsory.
Was this what the author, Dr Harrison was trying to communicate? He’s recently re-released the book, plus two other books, one focussed on smoking. Maybe you’d enjoy reading them too – if you can get past the unfortunate titles.
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“I think we’d better keep these in for the week”. I admit to mixed feelings when the plant hospital wouldn’t let me take my office plants home. Well, they did look a little tired. Seems they needed re-potting and a nutritional boost of some microbes and fertiliser. Indeed there is such a thing as a plant hospital – at least in Murwillumbah - and they’d been running a plant clinic.
If there is such a thing as rainwater tank envy, I bet many of us experienced it recently when our shire’s water supply became polluted with salt. Overnight, our tap water became a far less pleasant drinking experience and having your own water supply became priceless.
It was probably confusing as a child, but now you’re an adult it makes sense. Maybe you got a swift kick under the table. Or a subtle arm-pinch, perhaps just a pointed glare. You were having dinner at someone else’s home and it seemed your parents didn’t appreciate you voicing your unique, indefensible opinions about politics, religion or immigration. You were taught that to keep social events congenial, it’s considered polite to refrain from controversial topics. Following this custom also meant is was more likely you would be invited back another time.
You’ve probably had this kind of lightbulb moment. The television presenter breathlessly reports research that seems just the answer to your health problem. Maybe it’s about the importance of a vitamin, a magic formula for weight loss, or reassuring news that red wine and chocolate really are good for you. But you know that some reported ‘research’ might not be genuine or credible when examined closely. How can you uncover what’s real and what’s not in science?
Swiping through Facebook the other day, I enjoyed the video clip about a nun regularly competing in triathlons. That’s a little outside what we would expect our religious to be doing, but that wasn’t the most unusual aspect: she was 86, and had taken up running in her early 50s as a spiritual exercise. It stuck. 
The alarm rings, signalling it’s time to catapult yourself into a new day. Most people have really strong habitual routines; around what they eat, their fitness, and their mood. I’d like to invite you to consider whether your own morning routine is boosting or undermining your health.
The butcher warned me, as he must have warned many other customers: “This is going to taste a little different”. I was purchasing a packet of bacon made traditionally – from free range pigs, genuinely smoked (you know, over a fire), and without preservatives. What a relief. I’d had a hankering for bacon but was unwilling to settle for the smallgoods usually available: made from pigs kept in cages, their meat injected with smoke extract to create the flavour and then embalmed in preservative for long use-by dates. It made me think about how real food can now taste ‘odd’; when in reality it’s just that our palates have become jaded by industrial production of food.
Noticed how some meals are really satisfying, and some leave you wondering when the ‘real’ course will arrive? Several decades ago I got taken in by the advertisement for a famous name slimming breakfast cereal that is still available today. Entranced by the television images of this slim, apparently successful and contented looking woman on the screen I rushed to the supermarket, and the very next day enjoyed this breakfast cereal that was going to make me slim, successful and happy too. 
