I’ve started more than half a dozen
blogs in the last few years (and that doesn’t even include the Livejournal
please-oh-please-give-me-attention days) but none of them have really stuck as
something I could feel my heart going into.
I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to figure out that that was the
problem, but I suppose many things in life seem simpler than they really were
in hindsight. It’s been a very confusing
few years for me, and though it’s scary to state my mission and turn my life
into a commitment, I’m ready to do that.
I’m ready to focus on a career that I know is what I want, ready to blog
about what matters to me—ready to write from my heart and share it with
others. I’m ready to talk about fitness,
and why it’s become so important to me, and what I’m going to do about it.
My primary goal is to fight the
overconsumption of OTC and prescription medications by people who really just
need to treat their bodies better. Before
we start giving teenagers things like citalopram and amphetamines, how about
asking them things like what they’re eating, how much soda they consume, how
much sleep they’re getting, how much they exercise? How about sitting gas and heartburn and
gastritis victims down and really helping them understand how many harmful
things they could be doing to their digestive systems on a day to day basis, before giving them gas pills or prescription
antacids? Why balance the existing problems
with new ones instead of treating the foundation of the problems? Nobody should be living on things like
Prilosec for years at a time to prevent them from suffering…ever. And
yet it happens ALL. THE. TIME.
This brings me to one of the
driving forces behind my mission. What I
just described is how one of my best friends died—his name was Ian Isberg, and
he succumbed to esophageal adenocarcinoma on September 30, 2010 after a
one-year battle. For almost a decade
previous to that he’d suffered from heartburn and had been treated with little
other than antacids of various strength and dosage. When someone finally started paying attention
(at my insistence he made an appointment after having seen blood in his usual
stomach acid vomit) he was at Stage 4 Esophageal Cancer, and a year later one
of the most amazing people I’ve ever known was dead.
I won’t say he lived the healthiest
life, but nobody told him he had to, or what could happen if he didn’t. None
of the doctors he saw seemed to even consider that a tumor already developing
at the junction of his stomach and esophagus could even be a possibility. 22 was unusually young to receive such a
diagnosis for sure, but at least one of those doctors should have told him the
risk for developing this type of cancer begins as soon as the damage to the
esophagus begins. The drugs that quelled
the acid just enough for him to be comfortable from day to day ended up being
what killed him.
I’m not trying to challenge the big
drug manufacturers who make these “remedies” for our bodies’ valid complaints;
I’ll let Pepto Bismol and Miralax go on filling the shelves. Nor am I trying to attack doctors; they often
have ridiculous overflows of patients and not enough information about them or
time to get to know them. (And even when
the doctor is at fault, malpractice is a real bitch to prove in most cases.) If I tried to go against either of those institutions
case by case I’d be acting just like those remedies all around you, the ones
that aim to calm your stomach because you just had to have that pizza and beer last
night, or supply your feeble body with vitamins because you never learned how
to eat your vegetables. (I’d also
probably have to be a lawyer.) No, I won’t try to fix what happens after the problem has taken its toll. I’m going for the problem itself: The way the
average person treats their body, and the astounding ignorance in this country
about what it actually means to be healthy.
It's a seemingly endless cycle of people who don't want to put in the effort, and people and companies whose jobs it is to convince us that we don't have to because using their product is easier.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist; I
don’t sit around dissecting the relationships of the drug companies to the
doctors and the stores that push these aisles and aisles of unnecessary
medications, screaming about how cures are being withheld for whatever reason (although there is something to some of those theories.) And ***I’m absolutely not trying to tell you
with any sort of medical authority that any medication you may be taking
currently is wrong.*** All I want is to
help people wake up to the things their bodies are really asking…no, begging for, before they start popping
pills and sipping Kaopectate. I want to
teach people to listen to their bodies before
doing themselves harm, instead of only when it’s too late. And I want to spread the message and legacy
of a wonderfully unique and brilliant young man who was taken way too soon by a
disease that I believe could have been prevented.
I hope you’ll follow me on my
journey to become a certified personal trainer and begin helping people learn how to live
fuller, healthier lives.
Be well.
Lauren
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