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Take Care of Yourself
© Björn Söderqvist
Necessity is the mother of invention, right?
Quite often, folks need to hit rock bottom before they make serious changes to their lives. It’s a bit ironic that I should write a book called Habit Guide because I was as resistant as anyone when it comes to change.
I guess that’s what makes me so qualified to speak about habits — they dominated my life (the bad ones) and that was a massive factor in me becoming so ill that I barely got out of bed for 13 years.
It’s a long story really so I’ll just give you the very brief version…
The start of the nightmare can be traced back to when I was just eleven years old and had glandular fever. I had it pretty bad and it took me a long time to recover. After that I was hospitalized for three weeks with complications (serious constipation) and my health was never the same again…
Bad habits compounded a bad situation — in high school, I struggled with focus. Looking back I now know that my blood sugar was all over the place and the resulting mood swings meant I was constantly in trouble.
By age twenty-two, a stressful time combined with a twelve cup a day strong coffee habit, poor diet and many other factors meant my body could cope no longer.
I was raised with a drive to succeed and when my body finally crashed, I still dragged myself into work even though I was so tired I could no longer hear my alarm clock going off. And it was a LOUD fog-horn one. I wouldn’t hear it for up to two hours.
My body didn’t recover. For thirteen long years I was in the depths of hell. I was sent to every specialist and had every test. It seems as though I had as many different illnesses as there were specialists to see! Eventually I was told I had CFS/ME which was very poorly understood back then.
I eventually gave up on the idea that medicine would or even could help me and so set about finding a way out of hell. I could write a book just about my experience with chronic ill health and the nightmare but I won’t. The good thing that’s come out of it is a very clear understanding of health — what causes health and what causes illness.
Combined with a very long drawn out illness was an innate tendency to question everything. Yes, I was one of those annoying kids that asked questions from morning to night! So I wanted to know answers when I got sick. Why am I sick? And how do I get better? These were the main ones. Not as easy to answer as you might think.
So that’s it in a nutshell. I guess it takes something really extreme to see clearly the gaping holes in our so called “health care.” The truth is that unless you take care of yourself day in day out, no medicine can compensate.
Not only is nearly all chronic illness created by poor lifestyle but medicine cannot cure chronic diseases such as osteoporosis, arthritis, depression, obesity, heart disease, diabetes or cancer. Heck, medicine can’t even cure a common cold.
Take care of yourself — Habit Guide shows you how…
All the best,
Mike Kinnaird
Habit Guide: How to be Happy & Healthy
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“Not only is nearly all chronic illness created by poor lifestyle….”
Where did you get the proof about this statement? So Sjogren’s Syndrome, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus is caused by poor lifestyle? What about genetics? My family has a history of autoimmune diseases that would shock you. My lifestyle had nothing to do with getting these diseases.
I’m not trying to attack you but rather educate you that blaming people about various health conditions in which they have no control over is hurtful. Please re-consider your statement.
Hi Connie,
I agree that genetics plays a massive part but how your genes “play out” is lifestyle related. It’s certainly true that given the same conditions, some people would develop an auto immune disease and others, not.
I don’t think it’s hurtful to say that “nearly all chronic illness is created by poor lifestyle”… it’s empowering. The “pill for an ill” and victim mentality is rife. In my particular case of CFS, the percentage of people unwilling to accept their fate was surprisingly small. Unfortunately, most are all too happy to blame outside factors and take on the role of unwitting victim.
As far as proof goes, to me it’s self-evident. You have genetics and then you have lifestyle and environment. These are the only two considerations. When cancer authorities state that 30% of cancers are caused by poor diet, you have to ask yourself how the heck they come up with an actual figure of 30%. Everything affects every other thing.
I’d love to know why you think “My lifestyle had nothing to do with getting these diseases.”
Perhaps you feel you’re already living the healthiest lifestyle as far as modern day advice goes. But I have to tell you that in my case, normal healthy advice would not have made a dent in my condition. To REVERSE my condition I had to go to what, in our culture would be considered extreme measures — I fasted for 11 days on just water and ate very little else other than fruits, veg, nuts and seeds for six months. This along with daily 30 minute walks and other measures.
Reversal is a different proposition to prevention.
So unfortunately I cannot reconsider my statement. Perhaps you can prove to me that lifestyle is NOT responsible?
The fact is that a person first has to be open to the possibility that lifestyle is a root cause and THEN they have to be willing to do what it takes, which in some cases, like mine, is quite extreme and difficult.
For me it was Hobson’s choice. I had no other options and when I finally took the drastic action it was a case of “do or die” I had literally HAD ENOUGH.
The extent to which genetics can be affected will be different in every case and also, depending on the current state of the body, it may well be possible that health cannot be restored. But in my experience, these cases are few and far between.
I have heard about the most incredible healing from every type of condition with natural methods.
Isn’t this EMPOWERING?
~ Mike