Current economic state of our health

Health Statistics

Arthritis is the most common cause of disability in Americans , 19 million people.  20 percent (46 million) of people report M.D. diagnosed osteoarthritis and rates are expected to increase to 67 million by 2030.  Arthritis results in 36 million outpatient visits, 750,000 hospitalizations and 81 billion dollars in medical costs (1 percent of the GDP).   Physical activity is promoted to assist in health and wellness however many people are limited in their physical activity because of arthritis.  1 in 3 Americans, nearly 100 million people, live with some type of cardiovascular disease causing 6 million hospitalizations and 81 million outpatient visits each year costing a total of 448 billion dollars.  Dropping cholesterol levels by 10 percent in our people could yield a nationwide decrease in heart disease by 30%.  66 % of people who suffer a heart attack never return to work and are permanently disabled. 

We spend 1.4 trillion dollars in healthcare costs which is about 75 % from chronic diseases.  Chronic disease accounts for 5 of the top 6 causes of death.   Chronic disease accounts for 70 % of the deaths in the U.S. which are the most preventable causes of death through lifestyle modifications.  There has been an increase in American obesity in adults age 20 to 74 years over the last 30 years from 15 to 32 percent.  There is an increase in obesity in children and adolescents from 5 % to just almost 20% in the same time period.  Obesity currently represents a cost of about 117 million. At the current rate, 33% of all children born after the year 2000 are predicted to develop type II diabetes.  There are currently 11.8 million persons with diabetes.  A staggering 24% of our people have metabolic syndrome with associated insulin resistance.

These numbers can't be ignored.  Wellness is the solution!

Healthcare Statistics - Current economic state of our health

Arthritis is the most common cause of disability in Americans , 19 million people.  20 percent (46 million) of people report M.D. diagnosed osteoarthritis and rates are expected to increase to 67 million by 2030.  Arthritis results in 36 million outpatient visits, 750,000 hospitalizations and 81 billion dollars in medical costs (1 percent of the GDP).   Physical activity is promoted to assist in health and wellness however many people are limited in their physical activity because of arthritis.  1 in 3 Americans, nearly 100 million people, live with some type of cardiovascular disease causing 6 million hospitalizations and 81 million outpatient visits each year costing a total of 448 billion dollars.  Dropping cholesterol levels by 10 percent in our people could yield a nationwide decrease in heart disease by 30%.  66 % of people who suffer a heart attack never return to work and are permanently disabled. 

We spend 1.4 trillion dollars in healthcare costs which is about 75 % from chronic diseases.  Chronic disease accounts for 5 of the top 6 causes of death.   Chronic disease accounts for 70 % of the deaths in the U.S. which are the most preventable causes of death through lifestyle modifications.  There has been an increase in American obesity in adults age 20 to 74 years over the last 30 years from 15 to 32 percent.  There is an increase in obesity in children and adolescents from 5 % to just almost 20% in the same time period.  Obesity currently represents a cost of about 117 million. At the current rate, 33% of all children born after the year 2000 are predicted to develop type II diabetes.  There are currently 11.8 million persons with diabetes.  A staggering 24% of our people have metabolic syndrome with associated insulin resistance.

These numbers can't be ignored.  Wellness is the solution!

Wellness is the Greenest Medicine Part 2

Wellness is the Greenest Medicine Part 2.

There is a delinquency in the level of awareness of common beneficial health and wellness practices in the people of the U.S. employed outside of the healthcare industry.  We are currently in a serious epidemic of obesity and poor health in our country.  Health insurance premiums are escalating at an outrageous rate.  There is a serious movement towards proactive health and wellness at this time.  

Health insurance companies are beginning to pay for wellness programs, corporate wellness incentives, gym memberships etc.  They are beginning to realize it is cheaper to promote prevention than paying for the effects of not preventing.  There is an escalating proportion of our disposable income which is being spent on wellness products in an effort to maintain our youth, good looks, and wellness which was more than 200 billion dollars in the year 2002 and is projected to be more than 1 trillion by 2010. 

Currently, even lay people realize that taking antipyretic (anti – fever), antibiotic and anti-inflammatory medications to do not fix the cause of the problem only masking the symptoms.  The common cold is caused by a viral infection and physicians still prescribe antibiotics which have been demonstrated harmless against viruses.   

Individual people are becoming empowered, are able to make better decisions and are better consumers.  Every day you can see wellness on the rise.  Restaurants are adding healthier alternatives to their menus. There are more exercise facilities than ever.  More vitamins and supplements are being glorified in mainstream advertising.  

Wellness is a ubiquitous product and will sell for many reasons.  Technology and increasing demand are lowering the price.  New health insurance plans will also make wellness products more affordable because of their financial need to advocate prevention.  Medicare typically dictates the reimbursement trends of the entire health insurance field and is now beginning to promote wellness and prevention.  Medicare currently pays for preventative services such as colorectal screens and flu and pneumonia vaccines, ultrasound for abdominal aneurysms, mammography, PAP and pelvis exam, prostate screening, diabetes, glaucoma, bone density testing(females after age 60), medical nutrition therapy, smoking cessation, and nutritional counseling for those who have hyperlipidemia or other significant risk factors for cardiovascular disease

People seek wellness because they see that it helps their peers, currently a luxury that causes envious demand.  Wellness has legs and partially sells and markets itself.  Anytime someone sees a person of their own similar caliber get stronger, look younger, improve their performance, or advance themselves in any way, the person wants to know about how they did it.  There are currently television shows and programs which are centered on wellness, e.g. “the Biggest Loser”.  Wellness products are some of the most continually consumed products on the market.  Once someone is exposed to a wellness product or has a positive experience with them, they often become fanatical.  This leads to sampling of other potential products which might be of benefit. 

Information is a product that can be continually consumed.  More awareness only leads us to seek more awareness and leaves us more open to the reception of future changes and exposures to products.   Everyone truly wants good health and to delay the aging process.  It’s just a matter of time before they seek it proactively. The wellness industry provides the solutions to this universal dilemma which everyone eventually encounters.  

People are becoming more aware that the deterioration of our physical condition due to the aging process does not have to occur so quickly.  Disposable income is inversely related to leisure time today.  People are more likely to not purchase an item today not because they can’t financially afford it but because they can’t make the time to enjoy it.   Wellness services significantly expedite the process towards attainment of this universal need and want.  People will now be able to accomplish more of their goals and aspirations because they will have more time and will be even healthier for a longer time to allow them to function at high levels to achieve these goals.  

Wellness programs may alter the world as we know it and boost our economy like never before.  The more well people there are the more effective they can be at any endeavor they so choose to conquer.  It is clear that wellness will affect us all and will change our lives just as the personal computer and automobile have.  50 years ago wellness was a luxury.  The majority of people had to work very hard just to obtain basic needs such as food, shelter, clothing and healthcare.  Today lay people have more disposable income than ever.  Wellness is a natural step in the fulfillment of human destiny which is a realization of a higher ethical foundation for human society.   

Wellness is the Greenest Medicine Part 1

Wellness is the greenest medicine.

Getting older is not the same as getting sicker.  People in our society have significantly correlated the two but they are not directly related.  It takes many years of negligence and abuse for the body to start to break down and to enter a truly pathological state.  There are many things that occur in the body as we age that causes it to become weaker and more susceptible to pathology.  This doesn’t mean that we cannot slow down the process.  More and more we are witnessing people living longer and some of those people remain essentially disease free, healthy and physically active well into their golden years to enjoy the benefits of retirement.  Many others however are learning that they have not prepared well for their golden years and are about to enter a difficult time filled with frequent trips to the doctor, hospitals and a rapidly declining ability to move freely about their environment. 

The effects of the Baby boomers born from 1946 to 1964, have been and will be widespread.  The first boomers are now entering their senior citizen term of life.  By 2030 the number of U.S. citizens over the age of 65 will double to about 71 million people.  Healthcare spending will increase at least another 35 percent due the increasing age of the population.  Medicare costs have increased almost 10 times in the past 25 years from 37 billion to 336 billion dollars.  Baby boomers are responsible for the increase in sales in all of the trillion dollar industries as they have been leading the consumption trends for decades.  Baby boomers are responsible for 5 trillion dollars in sales of the 10 trillion spent in the U.S. today.  Generation X, (1965-1980), initially called the baby bust for the small number of births compared to the baby boomers, has followed the trends of the Baby Boomers and will continue to do so.  Generation X will be entering their most productive years starting in 2010. 

Baby boomers will continue to want to work for social and health advantages.  Baby boomers now more than ever, have the ability and need to continue to work past retirement age.  They have more advantages such as Celebrex to ease pains of aching joints and less financial ability to enjoy retirement.  We also have the Americans with disabilities act enacted in 1990 which limits discrimination of disabled Americans and provides legislation requiring accessibility to businesses for disabled people.  Older Americans will need to work and they will have to be provided with employment opportunities to see that they are able to provide for themselves into their golden years. 

Harry Dent has proposed many economic forecasts which have manifested and is well known for his age wave theory.  Dent, an economist, proposed that the American economy would crash in 2007 to 2009 because of the beginning of retiring baby-boomers.  Consumer spending typically peaks around age 50.  2 million people per year will reach retirement age and most will not be retiring.  Dent proposed that many jobs may have winter off options and prescription drug coverage.  We may see sodium free and other healthy snacks in office food areas.  People will want to stay healthy to allow themselves to work and avoids injuries such as car accidents and falls.  

It is obvious to see that many people saw their retirement age get extended a few years after the economic crash.  Many people need to have saved millions of dollars to be able to thrive and enjoy their retirement years.  The people who have not prepared appropriately will need to continue to preserve their ability to work and provide for themselves and their families.  Wellness is on the rise.  Our society must progress this way.  It is inevitable.  

Evolution of Wellness Part 5

Times have significantly changed and so has the wealth of the average American.  80% of people living under the poverty line in the U.S. have a car. Healthcare, hygiene, nutrition, physical activity and wellness however have not followed.  Our basics of needs have been met.  We are able to have an endless amount of luxury yet, we continue to eat like peasants.  The average American spends a lesser percentage of their income on food than nearly every industrialized country in the world.  For most of us, if we can, we spend as little as possible on food.  We have to save our money to get the things we really need to be “happy” such as a cell phone, big screen TV, super efficient computer, Ipod, luxury automobile or better yet booze, cigarettes and drugs.  

Our society, in preservation of its own capitalism, provides poor quality, cheap nutrition options on every corner via convenience stores, gas stations and fast food restaurants.  We wouldn’t need as much of the medical services used today if we would simply learn and understand what we need to do for ourselves to be happy and healthy and why we need to be proactive to do so.   True health care scales at the level of the people. 

Mankind has become addicted to instant gratification and the availability of abundance while seeking to provide more and more concentrated forms.  As with all addictions, the first step is to realize that the addiction is the problem.  As with all addictions, the avoidance of healthy behaviors and the acceptance of unhealthy behaviors in everyday practice are ultimately leading to failure of the human body and the collapse of societal responsibilities.  

As we proceed into the future, there will be a turning point.  We will, at some time in the future, reach a critical mass in which people will have too many problems and societal breakdowns for those in power to allow it to continue.  Over the past 100 years society has flourished, advances in technology have been made and mankind has reaped the benefits.  In the same period, we have however been ignoring the truth that all of this has led us to experience increasing declining health.  

Attempts have been made to find every shortcut possible in order to live an immoral and unhealthy life while still remaining intact as a society.  Soon we will enter an age when people will see the transparency in the errors of our ways during the period in which our morals were forgotten and our health ignored.  Soon people will gravitate away from this past era that is currently being promoted.  Soon we will gravitate again towards the improvement of mankind. 

Wellness is the ultimate luxury.  Wellness is the pursuit of self actualization and can only be achieved once all basic needs are met.  Mankind will resume its pursuit of self-actualization, its pursuit of wellness.  Some day in the future mankind may look back at the last 100 years and refuse to accept the fact they are descendants of a society that acted so irresponsibly.  Much like the people in our society in the present who view the days without personal hygiene (like toothbrushes and daily showers), the people of the future will view the behaviors of mankind today like we are cretins.  20^th century Americans will become the new Neanderthal.  They will say you are acting like an American, generation negligent and greedy.  The only generation in history that couldn’t keep man evolving towards its natural progression.  The generation, which in its own arrogance, greed, poor self discipline and complacency, stifled the progress towards societal wellness and self-actualization.  

As I said before times are changing.  The Revolution has begun!  We are ushering in a new generation of wellness that will effect change on our society.  I am very excited!  I hope you are too.  I also hope you are enjoying reading this.  Thanks for the support!

Evolution of Wellness Part 4

Evolution of Wellness Part 4

We also applied this microscopic view on our nutrition.  We moved from eating foods for their whole value to simply focusing on the smaller parts of the foods.  Scientists corrupted the food industry by pledging allegiance to specific nutrients and condemning others.  Foods are what are good for us not nutrients.  Nutrients may play a significant role, but there is limited evidence that suggests removing nutrients from a whole food and ingesting them individually actually plays a role in good health.  Many foods carry their nutrients on the fiber or skeleton structure of the food and are digested differently when removed from the fiber.  Some other nutrients do not work when removed from other nutrients in the whole foods form.  Food is not to blame but the economic competition of people which has destroyed the diet.  

During the 1950’s common people did not eat outside of the home regularly nor did they workout at gyms.  Technology and competition has driven the market to change significantly.  On one hand there is an abundance of food which is unhealthy.  On the other hand, gyms are sprouting everywhere because people want to look better and maintain some level of physical fitness to combat the terrible food they eat and the increasingly more sedentary lifestyles they are creating.

Our bodies were developed over millennia to consume certain food types and get plenty of physical activity.  Our physical and mental health is heavily influenced by our homeostatic balance and hormone regulation which is directly related to our diet and levels of physical activity.  Throughout most of history, the only carbohydrate foods that were available were the wild roots, tubers, fruits, vegetables, and nuts that our ancestors gathered. These foods were loaded with fiber and nutrients.  They were slowly digested and absorbed to provide a slow-release, sustained form of energy. 

With the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, humans began to cultivate grains such as wheat, rice, corn, oats, and barley. These foods quickly became a foundation in the human diet.   These foods were also consumed in their natural unprocessed forms. Whole, cracked, or coarsely ground grains were made into porridges or baked into hearty whole-grain breads.  They were very different from the carbohydrate sources the average person consumes today.  These foods were also not easy to come by and people had to work hard to farm or gather foods from their environment which exponentially burned calories by the second. 

While the introduction of cereal grains substantially changed the human diet, the past 200 years have had an even greater impact on the types of carbohydrates available in the food supply, starting with the invention of high speed grain mills in the early 1800s. Using this technology, producers remove the fibrous bran and nutritious germ from grains to make finely ground flour from just the starchy endosperm portion of the grain. People eagerly adopted this new flour, which had a very long storage life and made softer and lighter breads, cakes, and pastries. Unfortunately, this new white flour was also virtually devoid of the vitamins, minerals, and fiber found in whole grain products.  Its superfine texture makes it quickly digested and absorbed in the body, causing a rapid release of glucose and subsequently insulin into the blood. The past fifty years have brought the most dramatic changes of all to our food supply. Products made from quickly digested white flours, such as breads, bagels, crackers, pretzels, and baking mixes, have become a staple in most people's diets.

Cultural changes usually take place over millennia.  The long duration typically allows the culture of the people to adapt to better ensure their survival in a new climate or while using a new technology.  As mankind entered the age of abundance, we have achieved a plethora of options and luxuries much too quickly. We were not prepared to handle the responsibility.  Man has acquired the ability to instantly gratify with just about everything and has also been enabled to be complacent. 

We have had a movement in western civilization in the past 100 years in which abundance has quickly replaced the lifestyle of scarcity.  From the ancient Greeks to the industrial revolution, the average human had very limited resources and had to keep a preventative mind set in regards to health and life.  After WWII, the baby boomers emerged on the scene and the U.S. experienced an economic boom of unparalleled proportions.  Since that time, technology and quality of life have soared and the ability to have the American dream has been realized.  We have more gadgets and more luxuries than could ever have been imagined by our ancestors.  It is now all made very affordable and achievable to us as well.  Everyone can have a home, blackberry, super efficient computers, big screen TV’s, IPods and luxury automobiles.  The efficiency and longevity of a car from my childhood cannot even be compared compared to an economical car like the Honda Civic or the Hyundai Sonata of today.  These cars are loaded, have sun roofs, and they never break down.  

Everything has seemed to progress towards improved quality of life.  Everything except for our health.  

Evolution of Wellness Part 3

Evolution of Wellness Part 3

These changes in health care have greatly shifted our focus of attention regarding our own health.  As I will mention many times throughout this writing, people make their decisions through incentives.  They choose by picking which decision will have the greatest benefit and the least amount of consequence.  When a person has health insurance they are lulled to sleep in terms of being alert to their own responsibility of their health.  They did not have to worry about getting sick because their health insurance would cover medications and surgeries that would eliminate their symptoms.  

Medicare allowed people to not have to plan for a healthy life as they grew older.  People could virtually be careless and worry free because their medical costs and healthcare would be covered when they entered old age.   Medicaid was developed to allow people with disabilities and those living below the poverty line to have coverage.   

It is obvious that people do not find as much value in anything they receive for free.  This in turn allowed the insurance companies to begin a dictatorship over the healthcare industries setting fee schedules for reimbursement of services they deemed necessary.  People did not care how much these services cost nor did they have enough knowledge to determine the appropriate treatment for their type of ailment.  Unfortunately, these mandates have caused doctors to only prescribe treatments that the insurance companies reimburse for.   Insurance companies also do not reimburse for lifestyle modification training programs for patients that are diagnosed with these problems.  Insurance companies are reimbursing less and less causing the physicians to have to see more patients, ultimately allowing them less and less time to spend on patient care.  

Physicians are also being employed more and more through hospitals and less and less by private practices.  Hospitals are a system that focuses more on the bottom line and is ran by people with MBA’s and law degrees not healthcare practitioners. 

I have heard so many stories from my patients that sound something like this, “I was recently diagnosed with high blood pressure and was placed on medication A.”  I ask, “Did they talk to you about your diet and exercising?”  The patient usually says, “Yes, they told me to start exercising and eating healthier, but I have a bad back and I have tried to lose weight but it never works.  There are so many different diets out there that focus on carbs, no carbs, high protein?  Its all just so confusing.  I have cut down my sodium intake in the past year as well.  What else can I do?”  The patient then tells me that regarding the exercise part the physician says, “Well just do what you can” and regarding the diet, “it sounds like you are on the right track just keep up with what you are doing, and maybe you could try weight watchers.”  

Patients with herniated lumbar discs and that are not dietitians or personal trainers struggle with the basic understanding of exercise and nutrition and need a structured plan and guidance.  Unfortunately the doctors are not educated this way, the pharmaceutical companies wish to preserve the status quo and insurance companies do not reimburse for effective exercise, weight loss and nutrition programs.  These people are left to slip through the cracks only years later to have a triple bypass heart surgery, along with type II diabetes and a total joint replacement from becoming less and less active making the hospitals and the pharmaceutical companies, you guessed it, billions of dollars.  

Why would they want to change, they are getting rich off of the current system.  Any social system that has members capitalizing from the misfortunes of other members of society will eventually be exposed, sure to have trouble, and have to change its ways.  This time is not far away. The revolution has already begun!

Evolution of Wellness Part 2

Evolution Part II

In ancient times of the early Greeks, wellness was highly recommended and practiced.  Preventative medicine was heavily utilized prior to the 20^th century.  Many early physicians such as Hippocrates(460 -370 BC) and Galen(AD 129 – 217) wrote about and advised people to be proactive in their wellness and hygiene.  Not only did hygiene entail cleanliness but it also required a significant regimen of diet and exercise principles.  The Greeks term for wellness was regimen.  

This wellness was not done in the pursuit of luxury but out of necessity.  The Greeks understood that lifestyle choices would affect their health.  In ancient times, the consequence of irresponsibility in our own hygiene would often lead to death.  They could not be kept alive through the technologies or medications we are so lucky to enjoy today.  The consequences were felt more immediately and because people lived in a small community everybody saw the error of the ways of the socially negative deviants.   When someone was sick everyone had an opportunity to experience it.  There is an obvious incentive.  If you knew a person that was sick it would only make sense to not do what they did to make themselves sickly. Today people can avoid being around sick people.  In fact children are rarely exposed to the real reasons why people are sick and most adults live in denial that poor behaviors and decisions lead to chronic disease states.  They do not spend time in hospitals and they do not draw the connections with many of the subtle yet negative behaviors their family members and friends make to propel them towards chronic disease.  We caudle our children so much today that we do not tell them the truth even though it is what is best for them.  When someone gets cancer or has a stroke or heart attack, it is preventable on many levels.  

For many people , their answer is genetics, God, or fate.  Many people do not realize that the chronic diseases plaguing our society today are almost entirely preventable.   Many people do not understand and recognize the fact that these people made conscious choices to end up where they did.  Some of them, however, were unaware of the harmful effects their behaviors would have on them in their future.  These people are typically doing what other people around them do and were not asking questions of contemplation.  We do not have to have the same fate.  There are some aspects that we cannot control and these should not waste our attention.  However, there are aspects which we can control and should control in order to save our quality of life. 

At the end of the 19^th century significant changes occurred in the way we approached health and wellness.  The invention of the microscope allowed us to identify compounds which could destroy bacteria and combat diseases.    This was a great time in our history but just like everything else, our human nature has once again spoiled the technology.  

• Dynamite was originally created to help with mining and was then utilized to kill people.  

• Priests were created to spread the good word and hold up the principles of the bible.  Then human nature caused them to be corrupt, greedy, abuse power and molest the youth.  

• McDonalds created fast food to help people get their meals more quickly and over time the food has become full of more and more harmful products and assisted with ruining the diet of people in the U.S. and is now growing throughout the rest of the world.   

• Gas stations meshed with convenience stores to provide a quick one stop shop to refuel our cars and our bodies.  Unfortunately the gas prices continue to rise and the food they provide is primarily of an unhealthy variety that should not be consumed on a consistent basis.  In fact, I cannot remember seeing one wise food choice in the last gas station I went into during my travels this weekend.  The gas was $2.89 a gallon and provided cakes, candy, chips, chocolate, cigarettes, soda, energy drinks, and many other unhealthy choices.  At least they had water, maybe the only consistently consumable product provided.   

• The microscope, although greatly beneficial, caused a cultural shift in the way we approached medicine and health.  Medicine as a science relies on evidence to determine best practices.   Physicians and scientists now had a tool which allowed them to see the effects of chemicals on microorganisms.  This creates a significant conundrum.  On one hand we can now affect harmful microorganisms in order to cure diseases and heal the sick.  On the other hand, if something could not be seen by a microscope, it could not be studied and evidence could not be created.  Therefore science was completely reliant on a tool that could not answer all of the questions that were being asked.  None the less, for nearly a century, small substances such as vitamins have not been able to be studied in terms of their beneficial effects.  Medicine and science shifted from being preventative to searching for a pill or chemical we could place in side of the body to alter a disease state or control someone’s symptoms.  As we can see today, medicine and pharmacology are not solving our problems and may even be perpetuating the current state we are in today.  

Every time we go to see our physicians, we expect them to use their high levels of understanding, knowledge, education and experience to do the best things for us.  We end up getting little or no access to their knowledge of healthy behaviors, spend less than a few minutes with them, and leave the office with a prescription for a medication or to make an appointment for some invasive medical procedure. 

We now know today that many, but not all, physicians do not know how to help people without giving them a pill.  For example, when a person is diagnosed with a chronic disease such as high blood pressure, type II diabetes, high cholesterol, or obesity, the most effective treatment is through a slow process of lifestyle modifications, proper nutrition, exercise, and more daily physical activity.


The cause of the problem was not initially a chemical or hormonal imbalance that can be fixed with a pill.  The cause is our behavior, our culture.    


I have never seen a representative from a broccoli company marketing to physicians.  In fact, I  have never seen a commercial for broccoli either.  If we want health, not sickness, we must take some of the control and responsibility.  No one is going to look out for you better than you! 

Evolution of Wellness part 1

Evolution

Throughout history it has been very important to select appropriate foods to nourish the body to allow us to do our work, remain healthy and survive.  People in the wilderness were surrounded by a plethora of potential food sources.  However, one wrong choice could mean the end.  Just as the Mayans and many other ancient civilizations used the sky to navigate the world accurately, they also had great awareness and understanding of which foods were nourishing and which foods were potentially toxic or fatal.  Furthermore, most of our ancestors had to work all day everyday just to secure enough food to nourish their bodies just to start the process over the next day.  What a rat race!  

People however were always innovative and desired to have more free time to pursue luxuries outside of meeting the basics of needs.  The pursuit of luxury and developments of technology have left us no longer gazing into the heavens for directives.  We have been left with getting less physical activity needed to sustain our metabolism and strength of our bodies.  We are also placing food substances in our bodies with little or no thought of the purpose of eating or how the food substance may affect our health. 

Over time mankind has progressed to unfathomable height.  We were originally a creature that struggled to survive in the wilderness.  Mankind has evolved, and thanks much to the expedience technology provides, has achieved a higher quality of life.  For many years, technology has provided man with the ability to make life easier and have more luxuries.  

Luxury is defined as something that is inessential but is conducive to providing pleasure and comfort.  Luxury is something that mankind has relentlessly pursued and earned.  Due to our ancestors living a life of great scarcity, we are biologically hard wired to desire abundance.  This hard wiring has not evolved as our culture has evolved.  Mankind currently has an abundance of everything and has limited ability to neither handle the responsibility nor delay gratification. 

It reminds me of the NBA rookie drafted straight from high school.  This child is given an abundance of everything and, more often than not, does not know how to handle the situation.  The NBA and other professional athletic organizations have recognized this problem and now have educational programs to address these concerns and teach these children how to be responsible with the abundance and privileges they acquired so instantaneously.  

The rest of us, less privileged individuals, also have an abundance of choices to make and need just as much guidance to appropriately govern this world.  It was a staple in early times to provide an education to our people to help them make appropriate decisions to ensure the progress and stability of society.  We must revisit practices of the cultures of the past who were entirely focused on survival and maintaining the highest levels of health and daily performance.