Health Lunacy and Rocket Science

The failure to use what we have known for more than two decades to prevent up to 80 percent of all major chronic disease -- heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, dementia -- is costing virtually every one of us years lost from lives we love, and life lost from years. Since this is all entirely fixable with knowledge long at our disposal, the calamity of it all is, in a word, lunacy. Of course, in the vernacular, that just means crazy. But the origins of the word point to the moon. And reflections on the moon, as it turns out, could prove... illuminating. There are footprints on the moon for three basic reasons. First, we wanted to go. Second, we are an enterprising, resourceful, and at times maddeningly relentless species. And third, we knew where to find it. As NASA set out to realize President Kennedy's lunar ambitions, there was, to the best of my knowledge, no debate about the location of the moon. There were no competing theories about where it was in the sky, or whether it was truly in the sky at all. Had there been such debates, and had both the public and experts gotten caught up in them, the moon would still be footprint-free. We would never have agreed on where to aim our rockets, and thus- never have gotten there. Alas, in the world of disease prevention, health promotion, and lifestyle as medicine, those are the very debates that prevail. The relatively simple imperatives of healthy living, including healthy eating, that matter most- have been clear for dec...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news