Are Fatigue, Cravings, Indigestion and Headaches a Sign of Health!
Finding the Cause?
The United States is spending more than 2-3 times the amount of money on health care than the second leading country. Unfortunately we are not getting what we are paying for when you consider the fact that we are only the fifteenth healthiest country. Which begs the question, are we treating the cause to our health problems or merely addressing the symptoms with very expensive drugs.
Think about it, did you wakeup one morning with arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, irritable bowel, osteoporosis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue or any of a number of health issues? Or did these problem begin to build or develop out of a list of other health ailments that went untreated?
The first set of questions you should ask your health care provider when he gives you a prescription for a medications is – are these drugs going to make my body stronger and healthier? Are they addressing what is causing the problem? Or do they only address the symptoms?
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Most medications given only treat the symptom, they don't help strength your immune system, heart, joints, intestines, liver, kidneys, etc…Are cholesterol lowering drugs and blood pressure medications helping your heart or are they only lowering the markers we measure that tell us our cardiovascular system is in jeopardy? Are the acid blockers and antiacids fixing your digestive system or are they just reducing the pain in your tummy? Are pain medications for arthritis, joint pain,or fibromyalgia fixing the problem or are they only disrupting the pain signals your body is sending? Are hormone replacement drugs balancing out the imbalance by adding hormones or fixing the imbalance so you don't need to take the hormones?
Let's not forget about the side effects from these drugs, which only addresses or suppresses our symptoms?
Better maintenance for our car than our body!
The human body is very much like a car. It gives you signals, little warnings that something isn't right. It seems like most people do a better job of responding to the signals their car gives them then their body. Symptoms like fatigue, indigestion, cravings, headaches, elevated cholesterol, blood sugar, etc. are nothing more than signals – letting us know that something isn't functioning right. It's our job to pull over and "look under the hood" to see what is causing the problem.
All those tummy problems are telling us our digestive system isn't functioning properly, which can lead to poor absorption of our nutrients and even deficiencies. How can you expect your body to recover and re-build itself it the food and nutrients you are feeding your body aren't absorbed?
If fatigue is your problem could it be simply lack of sleep? Could your hormones be so out of whack that it is throwing your metabolism off? How about cravings? Are we eating the wrong foods - too many carbs and not enough good protein and fats? Too much refined, processed foods? Are we skipping meals? Either way it throws our blood sugar off and leads to moodiness, irritability, inability to concentrate and focus and a prime cause for adult ADD/ADHD
Blood sugar imbalances put additional stress on our adrenal glands, which cause an overproduction of our stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. This contributes to weight gain. But it also throws our reproductive hormones (estrogen,progesterone and testosterone) out of balance. Blood sugar imbalances cause high blood pressure and elevated triglycerides, which eventually can lead to high cholesterol.
So don't assume that blood sugar problems only cause diabetes. That is a huge mistake and one of the biggest reasons traditional medicine hasn't been able to help so many of these degenerative problems. They are not addressing the true cause.
Take for example arthritis, heart disease even fibromyalgia. A lot of the problem is a result of inflammation and the best way to overcome inflammation is with diet. The body makes its own anti-inflammatory drugs that we buy if we feed our body the right foods. The omega-3 fatty acids found in fish, fish oils, olive oil, nuts and seeds. Do we eat enough of those good fats or do we eat too much saturated fats, which trigger inflammation?
Everything is a choice, we just have to figure out the right choices, which is often times hard with so many people offering different opinions. But the choice I present – is a choice to do it naturally. A choice to address the true cause, not merely the symptoms! A choice that addressing so many of today's health problems that aren't getting better by bombarding the body with harmful drugs.
The first step to help you figure out where your problems are coming from begins by identifying where your symptoms are coming from and how they affect you. I invite you to use our "online health quizzes" to help you identify your problem areas. Once you know that you can begin to attack the cause of your problem and stop addressing merely your symptoms.
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Dr. Len Lopez is a nutrition and fitness expert and author of "To Burn or Not to Burn, Fat is the Question." His approach to health is to "treat the cause – not the symptoms." To learn more about health and wellness go to www.DrLenLopez.com and listen to his radio show, read his health blog or take the online health quizzes.
