Observations of the World

The title may seem deep, but I don't know that it really is. Just a couple things I've noticed within the past day or two.

1. Time and what you spend your breaks on. (Especially important for diet veterans)
Being a diet veteran myself I find this especially important because at times I can lose focus on overall health while trying to lose weight or obtain the 'perfect' physique. I say 'perfect' because what you realized once you start achieving your goals you realize there will always be something you can change, just as a car enthusiast will tell you about their project car. Anyway, back to what I was saying about losing focus (that was a perfect example). So with the new semester I am taking a hodgepodge of health classes, with health science backgrounds and kinesiology backgrounds. So as the first few days of class, of course we go over the history of what we have described health as, back in the 50-60's it was just as long as nothing is wrong with you, you are healthy, then in the 80's it changed to the triangle of health, physical, environmental, and then mental. Then added a side to the triangle (so now a diamond?) which included spiritual and social, and If you were strong in all of those you had optimum health. And now today there aren't really levels of health but more a health continuum that you place somewhere on (hopefully high) 0 is dead and 10 is optimum. With that it got me thinking, especially because yesterday I got out of school early and I had enough time to make lunch for later. After that I was confronted with two choices 1. go to work early to actually get a workout today or 2. go to get coffee with my girl friend and throw away any chance at working out that day.
For me I chose number 2, naturally. But thinking about it maybe back two years ago if I had a girlfriend and thought of diet and exercise much differently (more of how the fitness community does) I would've chose number 1. This bothers me because of How i used to think and because of how the fitness industry expresses health and fitness. Health is a jumble of all of those sides I talked about not just about being active. So they expect you to throw out social and go with physical, anyone else ever feel amazingly health when you feel lonely? I don't.

2.Again in school we talked about two different kinds of professionals, typically is regular drs (can't think of the word) and the other is holistic (they think of the problem is a sum of multiple parts). My chiropractor Dr. Thomas Sawyer, is like the latter, one of the main reasons I keep going back, also he is very good. Many people tend to be confronted with a problem physically or mentally, so they go somewhere to fix that said problem and don't even take a second to look at what may have caused that problem.

For instance lets look at a circumstance, you have a constant nagging back injury. So you go to a regular chiropractor and he adjusts you and the pain goes away for maybe a day, a week, or maybe even a month. Only for it to return.
The second example you would go to a holistic chiropractor, he may adjust you as well and you start feeling better, however, he will also help you to assess which muscle are tight and which are causing your problems, then will help to loosen those muscles through stretches and exercises you may do to help expedite the process.

Now typically the first is usually quicker and which is why people tend to gravitate more towards that way (instant gratification, this typically tends to screw us). However it is a dangerous mindset that I see more and more people fall into, its something we as a whole need to get out of. However, the government isn't a large proponent for things like this, they make far more money taxing antibiotic companies that help to treat problems. Where as if they were to help with prevention of these diseases or problems, there wouldn't be much money to be made. The sad truth is money controls pretty much anything, which is why you must be careful taking advice from others and you need to look at what the facts are and why might such an outcome occur.
My favorite example of correlation is about shoe size and math skills.
There was a study done and the correlation of bigger shoe size was tied to better math skills. Now if you looked at that blindly you would think you've got to increase you shoe size some how. But if you took a deeper look at the study you would find that the study was done at an elementary school. Now lets think at elementary schools what are the populations of people. Children usually kindergarten-6th grade. Now lets look at the Kindergarteners, they have poor math skills due to them being young and un practiced, they are also small and have small feet because they are young. Now looking at the 6th graders, the big kids on campus, they've had far more experience with math and years of practice, increasing their math skills, also they are older and have grown more increasing their foot size. Well look at that Bigger feet, better at math, that must be the correlation. Now we all know that is complete bogus, but thats how a lot of studies are setup with certain protocols especially in the fitness industry and is why its ever so important to look at why something may happen and not be so nieve and believe everything you see or read somewhere.