Why are we all so messed up?

Cholesterol, Hypertension, Stress Disorders, Obesity, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Nervous Disorders.  We have pills for this, therapies for that, on and on and on. Why are so many of us so messed up? It seems that as we develop as a civilization, we’re collapsing as a living creatures.

I recently attended a meeting of the Dallas Holistic Chamber of Commerce . At one point in the meeting we were having a round table discussion about how our different disciplines approached the subject of anti-aging. Listening to the different practitioners talk about their different approaches, my mind drifted (as it often does) to all the different maladies collectively we seem to be suffering.

It seems the more advanced we become technologically, the worse our general health becomes. Now this brings the counter argument of “but our life-spans are so much longer now,” and that’s true, but not as much as one would think. If you negate infant mortality and basic hygiene, our ancestors were almost as long lived as us. More surprising is the relative absence of some of the modern world’s biggest health issues. Our ancestors, as far as we can tell, had very low cancer rates, not much diabetes, heart disease, a lot of today’s big issues.

The thought that came to my head was this: One of our ancestors living 10,000 years ago lived in very much the same way as one living 3,000 years ago, or even 500 years ago in much of the world.  Basically, the rate at which the world changed, and the rate at which we migrated around it, was slow enough that we, the human animal, could physically adapt. Groups of people settled in different regions and their bodies changed to accommodate local conditions. After many generations, people who settled in cold climates developed subcutaneous layers of fat to help control their body temperature. People who settled high in the mountains developed larger lung capacities and higher red blood cell counts to maximize oxygen uptake. The general pace of life was slower. Their problems were just as dire and their lives were by no means as easy as ours, but it was rare for things to radically change. That all ended in the late 1800s.

Starting in the late 1800s the pace of life started to accelerate radically. People started migrating around the world en masse. Consider someone whose ancestors hadn’t traveled more than 20 miles from their village in Scotland for 10 or 15 generations. Suddenly, this someone was placed on a sailing ship and sent to the other side of the world to Australia. Someone whose ancestors had lived as rural farmers in central China for 1,000 years was now digging a railroad tunnel through the Rocky Mountains. And the pace of change accelerated. Someone who was born in the age of sailing ships lived to see aircraft carriers. My grandmother was born before the Wright brothers flew and she saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Guglielmo Marconi sent his first radio transmission in 1885. By 1985 we swam in a sea of electromagnetic waveforms, covering the spectrum from ultra-long wave transmissions used to communicate with submarines to microwaves that could bake a potato.

The reason we use so many prescriptions and have so many diets and health fads, the reason we need hypnosis, meditation, yoga, exercise, vitamins, etc., etc. is this: The rate at which our minds have changed our world has vastly outpaced our body’s ability to adapt to the changing conditions. This adaptation used to be a natural process, but in this rapidly changing world we need to be mindful and help our bodies along. As individuals and as a society we need to be mindful of what we change and make sure to slow down every now and then and let ourselves catch up.

Wes Graham C.C.Ht.