In my last blog post I posed the question, “Can you imagine anyone, not wanting to be healthy?” In some ways, that seems like a silly question. But the reality is that every day, people make choices to ensure poor health. Why do we do this?

I spend a majority of my time coaching patients on healthy nutrition lifestyle choices and the impact they will have on present and future health. The first step that is critical for them or anyone desiring better health is to become aware. It’s amazing yet understandable that many people aren’t even aware they have health issues.

I spent years in denial about my own health. At first the symptoms were tolerable. They got worse, but it wasn’t all the time. Of course as time went on, the frequency increased until they became more the norm than not. Somewhere along the line I realized the pain and arthritis weren’t going to magically disappear. Chronic health issues can develop so gradually as to escape our alert.

This is compounded by the cultural obsession with taking and doing things to numb ourselves from the reality of what is really happening to our health, or life. Just turn on the TV and in a short while you’ll be bombarded with the advertising of pharmaceutical solutions to anything you could possibly feel – physically or mentally. We have been programmed to cover over the symptom and any investigation of cause. I call this cultural phenomenon, Symptomism.

Overcoming the systematic numbing of one’s awareness that a problem exists is the first step toward creating health. The next critical step is to ask the question, “Why did I lose my health?”

Tune in next time and we’ll see how increasing your awareness is the first key to the restoration and maintenance of health.