Common Sense Health: Introduction

So many people ask me questions about new age type ‘cures’ such as crystals or energy work such as reiki or detoxification regimens for particular problems.  After a while, it gets old because most people have not worked on common sense type things to fix their problems before trying some things that can be kind of ‘out there’.  It’s probably that most people want to just take a pill to take care of their health problem, to have a magic bullet.

Common sense is not a science.  It is more about what ‘everyone’ feels to be true.  There is an interesting article at Wikipedia on common sense:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_sense

I’ve been wanting to write about this lack of common sense, that people are not working on the building blocks of health before they use subtler types of cures.  I feel that the building blocks of your health can be determined by the following questions:
    1.    How much sleep are you getting?
    2.    How often do you have a bowel movement?
    3.    How much water are you drinking?
    4.    What types of food are you eating, how often and how much?
    5.    What types of body movement do you do on a regular basis?  
    6.    How is stress affecting your life?
    7.    Do you have good friends you can talk with,  be yourself with?
    8.    Is your spiritual life supporting you the way that you need?

These questions are separated out for focus, but they all interact with each other.  Stress and anxiety may make it difficult to sleep.  If you are not drinking enough water, it can cause constipation.  If you’re not getting enough sleep, you may not want to go exercise.
This being said, I am not saying that things like energy work or homeopathy or crystal healing don’t work, because they often do.  I just think that it is better for your health overall to address the questions above before diving into the fine tuning.

In the interest of not having a Borg cube of text, my next post I’ll write about sleep and sleep optimization and separate the topics out into eight posts.
Questions? Comments?