An excerpt from Family Health Revolution: The Definitive Approach to Elevating Your Family’s Health by Carla Atherton
“The fast pace of our lives is vastly contributing to the decline of our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health. We live in a culture where being busy isn’t only the norm but is often glorified. In this culture, there’s no time for rest, taking care of our bodies, or listening to our bodies or each other. Tune in to feel the insanity this is causing society as a whole. Picture a traffic jam with honking horns and rude gestures or a long line-up at the grocery store at 5:00 p.m. Imagine you’re feeling imbalanced, didn’t sleep long enough, are hungry, too busy, late for something, or aren’t feeling well with a cold or flu or worse, a chronic condition. These situations can put the body into full-on fight or flight multiple times a day.
In our modern culture, there’s little time for patience, and people want things now. We’ve become accustomed to instant gratification and often don’t notice the beauty of our earth, the people around us, or ourselves. If we don’t take notice, it’s harder to be grateful for what we have. If we don’t pay attention, we don’t care, and if we don’t pay attention to ourselves, we miss signs and symptoms of brewing disease and ill health. The speed at which modern families live gives rise to the quick fix and medicalization of health, without addressing what’s driving the decline in mental and physical wellness.
Again, human beings aren’t supposed to live under chronic stress. When the body gets tired and can’t cope with the stress any longer, imbalance occurs, then disease, then symptoms, and if it’s bad enough, death. In order to reduce stress and thereby give the body an opportunity to heal and ultimately become dis-ease-free, significant shifts can be made. We can address external stressors through making changes to jobs and relationships that are toxic to us and employ stress-relieving activities, such as meditation and exercise. We can also address internal stressors by first identifying them then taking action to heal using functional/lifestyle/radical medicine and a holistic approach. The first step in reducing stress is to identify how we view our lives: what we do every day, how we handle situations, and if we respect and listen to the body and act upon those discoveries.
It’s impossible and not necessary to eradicate all stressors in life. Stress can actually be a positive force in that it can increase our chance of survival when we need to take quick action in a dangerous situation. It’s when stress becomes chronic that it starts to harm us; therefore, it is important to understand how to manage the stress that is not an imminent threat to our survival. We won’t die if we don’t get to that appointment on time, but our bodies will react as if we will. Add all of those stressful moments of every day together, and you have a body wired, tired, worn out, and chronically ill.
Some stressors can be dealt with by modifying lifestyle, such as exposure to toxins, nutrition, and exercise. You can control the amount and quality of sleep you get, eat healthy foods, reduce your exposure to toxins, eliminate food from your diet you’re sensitive or allergic to, exit bad relationships, and even change how you think and act by employing mental exercises and exploring spiritual philosophies and practices. (Refer to Part III of the book).
For the issues we can’t always control, such as accidents, physical injury, and infection, by nurturing ourselves and bodies in every way, keeping our immune, detoxification, and digestive systems functioning well, by maintaining a healthy brain, and by freeing our bodies from the burdens of unhealthy lifestyle choices so they can focus on healing, we can recover much more quickly and fully when disaster strikes or when we’re challenged with a problem we couldn’t prevent.”
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Carla Atherton, MA, FDN-P, Family Health Consultant, is the director of The Healthy Family Formula, host of The Children’s and Teen Health Summit, author of Family Health Revolution, editor, book junkie, research geek, insatiably curious mother of three grown (son age 22), almost grown (daughter age 20), and growing (daughter age 18) children, one of whom has Type 1 Diabetes. Carla lives on an acreage in rural Saskatchewan, Canada, where she works from a home office with families from all over the world on the reversal of conditions such as, Autoimmunity: Type 1 Diabetes, PANDAS/PANS/Autoimmune Encephalitis, Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Celiac Disease and Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity; Asthma, Allergies, Eczema, and Reactivity; ADHD, Autism, Sensory Processing Disorder, Learning Disabilities; Depression, Anxiety, Mental Health Disorders, Eating Disorders, ODD; Other Neurological Conditions; Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, and Metabolic Disorders; Untangling Mystery Symptoms, Complex Cases, and Co-Morbidities (having more than one condition); Mold Illness; Multiple Chemical Sensitivity; Lyme; Other Infection; and Addictions. Carla is on a revolutionary mission to empower families to transcend our new normal of ill health and chronic disease.
