A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

I'm 59 years old, and I'm not as frisky as I was when I was, say, 30. Or 40. Or 50, though even then I was starting to fade. The general wisdom in our culture is that this is a normal and unavoidable consequence of age. But is it?

In 1808, a 103-year-old grandmother discovered New Hampshire's Flume Gorge, a previously unknown and spectacular waterfall, when she hiked several miles from her house to go fishing. After discovering this unique natural wonder, she caught enough fish for dinner, brought them back home, cooked them, served them, and mentioned the discovery to her family.

My friend, Dr. Lindsey Lafford, is 98, still drives cross country, and last year recovered from major surgery. Is it possible they just aren't "making them like they used to"? And if, so, why not?

The difference is in toxins that permeate the world around us. In 1705, when that New Hampshire grandmother was born, there were no artificial toxins where she lived. There were no lead pipes; water came from springs and was carried into the house in earthenware jugs. There were no power lines. There were no exhaust fumes and no insecticides. She ate her own produce, grown on her own land, in a manner we would now call "organic". But, back then, it was just the way one grew food. Milk came from a cow never fed growth hormones; meat came from chickens and pigs never injected with antibiotics. And that situation remained pristine until she died at 105.

(The belief that you, dear reader, now have that she was lucky to have not died from salmonella comes entirely from the media, which is partially owned by the companies that make these medicines and must convince you they are needed in order to stay in business. But that doesn't make it so.)

Dr. Lafford was born in 1912, well into the Industrial Revolution; however, even then food was produced organically; and Dr. Lafford lived in the country. When he was 20 years old, he moved to Hong Kong where he spent a number of years. In those days Hong Kong wasn't much industrialized; so Dr. Lafford avoided most industrial toxins for a few more years than most of his European peers.

That's the year my mom was born, too. She died a couple of years ago, at 93; yet despite smoking most of her life, and surrounding herself with a perpetual cloud of Lysol mist, she was still spending the day walking Wal-Marts across the country six months before her death.

Compare that to the terrifyingly significant percentage of American preteens who need an industrial crane to lift them off the sofa. Despite Michelle Obama's observation, the problem isn't just inactivity. A lot of the kids I watch in my grandson's karate school are plenty active, but clearly obese.

Part of the problem is the exponentially-increasing amount of environmental toxins we ingest, inhale, and absorb on a daily basis. Another part is allopathic medicine, which waits until a medical crisis comes along, and then treats the symptoms of the crisis, instead of examine a person's entire environment and lifestyle and recommending changes that result in avoiding the crises altogether.

That's what naturopathic medicine does, and why, as an approach, it is superior to allopathic medicine.

Here's a list of my medical complaints:

• Migraine headaches since I was 4 years old (now mostly abated, but the tendency is still there).

• Kidney stones every two or three years between the ages of 20-45.

• High blood pressure, first diagnosed about 10 years ago.

• Type II Diabetes, first diagnosed about 5 years ago.

• Obesity, with weight gain first noticed in 1975. I am now about 60 pounds over the recommended weight for my height and frame.

• Sleep apnea, treated with a CPAP machine.

• An area of numbness along the outer side of my right leg, between the knee and hip. Lately starting to encroach on the front of that leg as well.

• Soreness on the first left metatarsal bone (big toe) ever since an extended hiking in ill-fitting shoes about 11 years ago. (Note that this is probably not toxin-related, but naturopathy wants to see everything—sometimes, seemingly unrelated symptoms are actually part of a larger pattern.)

• Low testosterone, currently remedied by biweekly injections.

• Eyelids have gotten baggy; bags have gotten puffy in the last couple of years, to the point of sometimes being hard to keep my eyes open.

Now, even I know that many of these conditions are related. Both high blood pressure and type II diabetes are known to be related to obesity. So is sleep apnea.

But, from what I've been reading about environmental toxins, they cause the obesity, which causes the sleep apnea and high blood pressure; and the toxins directly cause the diabetes by interfering with the cellular mitochondria's ability to process glucose and insulin. It's possible a similar mechanism is responsible for the low testosterone, as well as my foot's being unable to heal an 11-year-old injury. Even the puffy eyelids could be related.

So it will be interesting to see how many of these symptoms can be relieved after detoxing, and if it is possible to reverse what most people accept as the inevitabilities of aging.

I'm okay with getting old. But, on the other hand, I'm also okay with not showing the "signs" of it.

I want to be the kind of 103-year-old who discovers waterfalls.