When Did Taking Care of Ourselves Become So Damn Complicated?

Common sense and your health should go hand in hand, but somewhere along the way, we’ve managed to make staying healthy far more complicated than it needs to be.

I don’t know about you, but I think the world is running seriously short of common sense.

Maybe that’s one reason I’ve become something of a hermit. I find it increasingly difficult to understand why people make such simple things so unnecessarily complicated.

And nowhere is that more obvious to me than when it comes to our health.

Think about it. We have more doctors, more hospitals, more prescription drugs, more medical technology, and more health information available than any generation before us.

Yet somehow, we’ve managed to convince ourselves that taking care of our own bodies is something best left to somebody else.

When did staying healthy become somebody else’s responsibility?

I think we’ve got the whole damn thing backwards.

Your Health Begins With You, Not a Doctor

I’ve never understood why people believe they need a doctor to tell them how to live a healthy life.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting doctors have no purpose. If I need a blood test, an X-ray, surgery, or help diagnosing something serious, I understand the value of medical expertise.

But why should I need a doctor to tell me what to eat, whether I should exercise, how much sleep I need, or whether smoking and drinking are doing me any favours?

Isn’t that something every human being ought to understand?

We should be teaching children how their bodies function, what proper nutrition looks like, why physical activity matters, and how everyday choices influence their health.

Instead, we seem to have built a society that knows more about treating diseases than preventing them.

I’d rather learn how to stay healthy than spend the rest of my life learning how to be a patient.

Real Food, Mostly Plants. How Complicated Is That?

If there’s one message I’d like everybody to remember, it’s this:

EAT REAL FOOD. MOSTLY PLANTS.

Not food manufactured in some industrial facility with an ingredient list that reads like a chemistry experiment.

I’m talking about vegetables, fruit, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, whole grains, and the other wonderful foods nature provides.

And yes, fish, meat, eggs, and some dairy can have their place, depending on your preferences and nutritional needs.

But the foundation should be real food, mostly plants.

Walk into a grocery store and look around. A tremendous amount of what’s being sold isn’t what I would consider proper nourishment.

Brightly coloured packages. Sugary cereals. Sweetened drinks. Processed snacks. Products advertised as healthy because somebody added a vitamin or removed a gram of fat.

Here’s an idea.

Spend most of your shopping time in the produce department. Buy fresh vegetables and fruit. Pick up some fish, some wholesome protein, some beans and whole grains, and go home and prepare yourself a real meal.

You can find perfectly good foods in the middle aisles too, including dried beans, oats, nuts, and canned fish. The point isn’t the location of the shelf. It’s what’s in the food.

Learn to read the ingredients.

Learn to cook.

And stop allowing the food industry to decide what goes into your body.

That seems like common sense to me.

Your Body Was Made to Move

Here’s another mystery.

Why do we need endless advertising campaigns, fitness programs, special equipment, and expensive memberships to convince people to move their bodies?

We were designed to move!

Walk. Dance. Stretch. Squat. Work in the garden. Ride a bicycle. Whatever gets your body moving and keeps it moving.

I spent years running 10 kilometres regularly. These days, I prefer my morning walks, along with a few minutes of free-form dancing whenever the mood strikes me.

I’m not trying to win a competition.

I’m trying to keep this body functioning for as long as possible.

And that’s something we should all be thinking about, particularly as we get older.

You don’t need to become an athlete. You need to make movement a normal part of your everyday life.

Common sense.

Sleep Isn’t a Luxury. It’s a Necessity.

We spend roughly a third of our lives sleeping. Does anyone seriously believe nature arranged that by accident?

Yet people routinely sacrifice sleep to watch television, stare at their phones, work longer hours, or squeeze another activity into an already overcrowded day.

Then they wonder why they’re exhausted.

Sleep is when the body carries out essential maintenance. It’s involved in memory, immune function, metabolism, and physical recovery.

Make your bedroom comfortable. Establish a regular bedtime. Give yourself enough time to sleep.

And stop treating rest as something you only deserve after you’ve finished everything else.

Your body needs it whether you’re busy or not.

Why Aren’t We Teaching People to Understand Their Own Blood Tests?

Here’s something else that makes absolutely no sense to me.

We get blood tests, and the results often go straight to a doctor, who tells us whether everything is okay.

Why aren’t we teaching people how to read those reports themselves?

I’m not suggesting everyone should become a laboratory specialist.

But surely we can learn what blood glucose means, why cholesterol is measured, what kidney and liver markers tell us, and how to follow changes in our results over time.

We should understand that reference ranges are not always the same as optimal values for an individual, and that an abnormal number doesn’t automatically mean we have a disease.

We should know enough to ask intelligent questions.

A knowledgeable patient can have a much more useful conversation with a doctor than somebody who simply sits there waiting to be told what to do.

Your blood. Your body. Your information. Why shouldn’t you understand it?

That’s not rejecting medical knowledge.

That’s making use of it.

When Did a Prescription Become the Answer to Everything?

Turn on American television news for a while and tell me what you see.

Prescription drug commercials. One after another.

There’s a smiling couple walking through a meadow, somebody playing with their grandchildren, and a cheerful voice explaining how wonderful life can be with the latest medication.

Then comes the list of possible side effects.

Some of them sound worse than the bloody condition being treated!

And invariably, there’s the familiar invitation to ask your doctor whether the drug is right for you.

Well, here’s a question I’d like to ask first.

Have we done everything reasonable to address the conditions that might be contributing to the problem?

What are we eating? Are we moving? Are we sleeping? Are we smoking, drinking too much, or carrying around years of unhealthy habits?

I question a culture where advertising encourages us to think about another prescription before we’ve seriously considered how we’re living.

A pill may treat a problem. It doesn’t automatically make the lifestyle that contributed to that problem any healthier.

We ought to be asking better questions.

Common Sense Also Means Paying Attention

Your body is talking to you all the time.

Changes in your energy. Your digestion. Your sleep. Your appetite. Your strength. Your ability to recover.

These things matter.

We shouldn’t become obsessed with every little sensation, but neither should we ignore persistent changes simply because we’re told they’re a normal part of getting older.

Learn what’s normal for you.

Pay attention when something changes.

Do some research. Ask questions. Keep track of what you’ve tried and whether it actually helped.

And recognize when a problem needs professional investigation rather than another home experiment.

To me, taking responsibility means being curious, observant, and willing to learn.

It doesn’t mean pretending we know everything.

Prevention Should Be Our First Priority

Common sense and your health should go hand in hand. Prevention isn’t some complicated medical mystery. It’s about making sensible choices every day, something I’ve already discussed in my article, The Best Health Insurance There Is!

Imagine a society where children grew up understanding nutrition, movement, sleep, and the basic workings of their own bodies.

Where people learned how to prepare wholesome meals instead of depending on food manufacturers.

Where everyone understood that their everyday decisions could influence their health decades down the road.

And where doctors were valued not only for treating illness, but also for helping people understand how to prevent it.

Wouldn’t that make a hell of a lot more sense?

I don’t expect perfect health. Nobody can promise that. Genetics, environmental exposures, accidents, infections, and plain bad luck all have their say.

I’ve had more than enough personal experience to know that living carefully doesn’t guarantee an easy ride.

But that doesn’t make our everyday choices meaningless.

And there’s research to back up the importance of those choices. A large study published in the journal Circulation found that people following five healthy lifestyle habits had an estimated life expectancy 12 to 14 years longer than those following none. Think about that. Eating well, staying active, not smoking, and maintaining sensible habits could make a remarkable difference. You can read the study on PubMed here.

It makes them even more important.

Your Health Is Your Responsibility

Common sense and your health begin with the choices you make every day. Give your body better food, regular movement, and proper sleep, and you may be surprised by how it responds. I’ve explored this further in my article, How Quickly Can Your Body Recover?

At the end of the day, nobody lives inside your body but you.

Nobody makes every decision about what you eat, when you go to bed, how often you move, or whether you take the time to learn about your health.

You do.

And although not every health problem is preventable, there are countless opportunities to give yourself a better chance.

You don’t need to master a complicated medical textbook to begin.

You need to think.

You need to pay attention.

You need to develop some sensible habits and practise them consistently.

And above all, you need to stop handing over every responsibility for your well-being to somebody else.

Eat real food, mostly plants. Move your body. Get your sleep. Learn how your body works. Question what doesn’t make sense.

It isn’t a complicated formula.

It’s common sense.

And maybe it’s about time we started using it.