Our Health In 20 Years Is Our Report Card For How We’re Living Today

I’m taking a break from the mental overload of the end of the year bookwork for the business, farm, and rental properties – not to mention our personal finances. While the kids work on a few crafts together I’m going to ramble. Wanna join me? LOL

We were watching “Assignment Discovery” the other night about acids and bases (yes, a bit too “much” of a science lesson for our kids but it’s always amazing just what they do understand – even when they think they don’t get it at all). There was a nutritionist on the program who said something that really hit home with me. He said something along the lines of:

“Our health 20 years from now is our report card for how we’re living today.” He was talking very quickly about how what we put into and do with our bodies doesn’t tend to show up in our lives until much much later. He made another statement about how the rates of disease has increased dramatically in recent generations and how that is directly related to how we are taking care of ourselves when we’re younger. I’ve heard this similar thought often in the past few weeks related to the ‘obesity’ of our nation’s population and the increase of things like diabetes.

Then I heard a lady on the radio today talking about a particular health plan that she was promoting and she said something along the lines of:

“I want to live as long as I’m alive. I don’t want to have a condition that prevents me from living my life to it’s fullest. I want to live my life as fully as I can in order to serve my Father as fully as I can.” She was talking about quality of life when we so often talk about longevity of life. There’s nothing wrong with living long, but we need to take care to live well so that our longevity is filled with as much life as He allows us. (did that just make sense?) If my hands hurt too bad to open a door, my eyes can’t see my children very well, my body can’t handle a walk through town or up the steps in my home, or something else along those lines – I may not be able to be as useful to my Father as I could otherwise be. My mind will be spending more time on my condition than on Him, I’ll be slowed down more than I would like to be, etc.  Please don’t think that I feel that someone with a health condition can’t be used by Him, I don’t feel that way at all. I’m merely trying my best to repeat the concept that this lady was relating to her listeners.  My own grandmother, of blessed memory, had the worst case of rheumatoid arthritis I have ever seen. That is eventually what killed her. She didn’t ever let it stop her from living life. HaShem used her in spite of her conditions (which also included breast cancer and other ’smaller’ conditions) and she grew in spite of her conditions.  She was a source of encouragement and joy to so many people who were blessed to know her.

I’ve noticed a theme of things that I keep bumping into in my daily life the past few weeks – ever since a friend of mine told me that she felt the L-RD tell her that her favorite treat – ice cream – is “the nectar of death”. It seems that almost daily there are a few things that come into my life that I find myself chewing on related to health and our family diet, why we do some of the things we do. I thought I’d share my thoughts with you all and see if any of you have anything to share with me on the subject.

First of all, we do our best to keep Biblical kosher. Outside of our congregation, people think we’re strange. Giving up marshmallows, the kids tell me, was a million times harder than giving up christmas or easter (for a bit of an explanation as to why that is, see Worshiping G-d in His Holidays). Summertime bonfires just don’t have the same appeal without s’mores, yams just aren’t the same without the marshmallow topping (the cream just isn’t the same…). But all in all, nobody misses anything that we used to eat. Well, except for marshmallows… Other than kosher, there’s no more store bought cookies (homemade instead), no more candies (except for special occasions) but a lot more dried fruit these days, we don’t eat much processed food – as little as we can, and we never eat out anymore. Our families think we’ve lost our marbles.

When we moved into our new house almost two years ago we switched from using regular cooking pots & pans (you know, the teflon kind) to cast iron. My reasoning was more the novelty of it all more than the health aspects of it, but after I had decided on this move I started hearing quite a bit about how teflon is now being found in the blood streams of infants, imagine how much it’s being found in the systems of those who are actually eating the food cooked in those pots and pans. I also read an article that was saying that after we stopped using cast iron for cooking the rates of anemia increased dramatically, this author was connecting the two (you know, the iron factor). I don’t know if that’s a correct assumption but it was interesting anyway. We really have liked the taste of our foods in the cast iron and I really like that they’re so easy to clean. Health benefit or not, we’re sold on the cast iron. We also have a few stainless steel pots but threw our all of our aluminum.  Some say there’s a connection between aluminum and alzheimers. We’ll see. I think the Coke (in a can or not) might be worse for me than the pots are.

Long before we moved into the house I started to cut out all plastics in the kitchen. My reason for this was mostly taste – I hated the plastic taste that the foods would have. I also had heard that the plastics leeched toxins into the food and liquid, and that was of great concern to me. I had heard about the pseudo-estrogens in plastics and was sure that those weren’t a necessary part of my families diet. I switched to glass bowls for storing/reheating left overs and sending DH to work with his lunch in ceramic/glass containers rather than plastic. We found some water bottles that were a harder plastic and didn’t leave that plastic taste to the water, and we were assured by others that these harder plastic bottles don’t leech any “stuff” into the water.  But we have moved on to re-using glass juice bottles as water bottles now.

Then there’s the seed catalog that came this week. We started talking as a family about what we’d like to grow in the garden this spring/summer/fall. Is it ever too early to start planning the next garden? Our oldest daughter, Myriam, has been reading about various herbal remedies lately in her constant quest for medical/veterinary knowledge. She was talking about certain plants and their uses medicinally (like rutebega and honey for a sore throat). I found it quite interesting and my mind started going to Shmuella (our youngest “daughter”) and her constant battle with sickness before she came to our family – all the medicines and chemicals that have been put into her system. We soon found ourselves talking about our meat – since we raise it ourselves. Our goal is to raise more and more of our own fruits and veggies too, and to store them (freeze them, primarily) for use througout the year. It really struck us this spring when Reuven and Shmuella came into our family just how “strange” our diet is compared to most. Now that they’ve become accustomed to our diet the school hot-lunches make them sick and the thought of going out to a restaurant with their family makes them groan. LOL But the dark circles under their eyes are gone and their skin has cleared up almost completely. We have moved farther and farther away from traditional medicines and things of that nature, unless there isn’t anything else to treat the problem and we feel it’s necessary (like Shalom and DH’s inhalers that they haven’t needed for over a year now). We’ve been growing quite the herbal remedy cabinet over the past few years.

These bunny trails all seem to go along with the ones about how we’ve cut out almost all of the refined sugars and replaced the sugar with honey or organic refined cane juice, or how I’m a water-pusher or fruit/veggie pusher. LOL I have people ask me, more often lately than not, “Do you use a microwave?” which completely dumbfounded me at first. Yes we have one. Do we use it? Not much really, DH uses it to cook his oatmeal for breakfast. I started making my own bread just over a year ago and now we can’t hardly stand store bought bread (never mind that we’ve discovered that commercial bakery and pastry products contain the highest amounts of those nasty trans-fats). Besides, it’s not nearly as fun! I’ve come across more than a few articles/radio programs related to processed foods and the increased rates of various diseases since WWII (when the popularity of canned food took off and hasn’t looked back) . Is it just me or is all of this health stuff a very popular subject these days?

I guess the theme of all of this has been how I’ve been trying to make good choices for our family for several years now and how I’m trying to ensure that our report cards in 20+ years show some good healthy habits. I am not one to stand on a soap box and preach about health or diet or exercise – my soap boxes are of a different nature. But there is a part of me that wonders – is there more to this than I previously thought and is He revealing something to me that I’m at the early stages of grasping? I know that my body is the temple of the Ruach here in this world and that when Messiah returns that I’ll be given a new body/temple/mansion. That doesn’t mean that I don’t take care of the mansion I have now. (LOL Yes, I do have some weight I could drop.) My primary goal is to teach my kids good dietary habits, an appreciation for exercise, and a good foundation for overall health. My kids won’t learn if I don’t do it myself. “More is caught than taught” I hear.

So check back with me in 20 years and let’s see how our families general health is then. Maybe we can say that because we didn’t use plastic and we did use cast iron that we’re better for it. Maybe we will find out how horrible those things really were for us. Who knows. Maybe the aluminum will have done it’s job and I won’t know what on earth you’re talking about. LOL I don’t usually spend much time thinking about such things but lately it seems to be a theme somewhere in my every day life.

I’ve rambled WAY too much and I hear all the kids dancing to “Jew & Gentile” in the other room. I need to go interrupt them so we can get our evening Bible reading in before bed.  Thanks for rambling with me, it was fun.  :)