The Need For A More Holistic Solution

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Virtually every day we hear of more troubling statistics concerning every day Australians – a scenario which is similar for most countries across the globe. Let’s take a brief look:

A brief snapshot of our nation in 2017:

Physical Health – where are we at?

◊ Around 2/3 of Australians are either Overweight or Obese.

◊ Around 300 Australians develop Type II Diabetes every single day.

◊ Around 2.5 million Australians have Cardio-Vascular Disease – it’s the Nation’s biggest killer.

◊ Around 140,000 Australians are diagnosed with Cancer each year – approximately 50,000 will die each year from cancer and its expected to increase by a whopping 40% by 2020.

◊ Every 10 minutes in Australia someone gets a Stroke.

◊ Around 2 million Australians have Chronic Kidney Disease.

◊ Around 3 million Australians suffer general Chronic Pain.

◊ Around 4 million Australians experience general Back Pain.

 ◊ Over half of the nation don’t get a proper night’s sleep and 1 million of these have Sleep Apnoea.

Apart from the explosion of physical disease in recent times, the same can be found for mental health, including psychological and social disorders…

Mental Health – where are we at?

◊ Virtually every second Australian will experience a Mental Health Problem in their life time.

◊ Around 17 million Australians admit that Stress is affecting both their physical and mental health.

◊ Around 1 million Australian adults have Depression, and over 2 million have severe Anxiety.

◊ 60,000 Australians per year attempt Suicide – 8 per day taking their own life. It’s the biggest killer of Australians up to 40 years of age.

◊ Almost 1 million people call Lifeline each year in Australia.

◊ 1 in 3 Australians have Body Image and Self-Esteem Problems.

While these sound like conditions found in only the sick or elderly, instead they are today being found in everyday people, including many of our children — a frightening fact.

Mental Health & Addictions – where are we at?

◊ 300,000 Australians use Methamphetamine’s like Ice. This has tripled over the past 5 years and is up 175% in the past year alone.

◊ There are more people dying of Prescription Drugs than Illegal drugs in Australia.

◊ 4 million Australians have a drinking problem – with 1 million drinking on average, eight standard drinks a day.

Before I go on, I just want you to pause for a minute and take in the enormity of this situation.

What’s even more troubling is that every year that goes by, these stats are getting worse not better and so much so that they are becoming the new normal.

You may directly relate to these statistics or you may not. But due to the sheer prevalence of these issues, we all have love ones or know others who can relate to these statistics.

What is the net effect of all of this?

This leads to much suffering and lowered quality of life, and it also contributes to pre-mature death and aging. Sure some of us are living longer than we once did, but without the quality of life we should be living.

It also leads to soaring financial cost to the nation – with the Government constantly scrambling to find enough money to deal with these issues. For example, 60 billion per year is spent treating obesity related illness alone.

It is clear that many Australians are struggling to maintain a sense of balance and well-being in their lives.

The need for a better solution?

Looking at these statistics, it’s also crystal clear that we desperately need a better solution. But if you listen to any of the many conversations around establishing solutions towards reducing the prevalence of any of the above conditions and associated problems plaguing society, you keep hearing the same bureaucratic responses – this is a very complicated problem with no easy solution. And so what happens is that we often just end up resigning to the fact that it’s all too hard and then we sit by and watch these problems grow bigger, whilst we throw band-aid solutions at them and hope that they will just go away.

But the reality is that we make all of these problems much more complicated than they actually are.

All we really need is a solution which addresses the many underlying and interrelated mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, social, cultural, lifestyle, environmental and economic factors driving all of these problems to begin with.

‘The nature of the body can only be understood as a whole, for it is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the soul from the body.’ Hippocrates.

Science clearly shows us that nothing exists or makes sense as a separate entity but rather only makes sense as the whole. In essence it is clear that we need a more ‘holistic’ solution – one which restores balance by reducing stress and promoting w/being. A holistic solution is one which takes into consideration the health of the whole person.

This is essential because given that you are a whole person, changes in any one area of your life affect every other area, either directly or indirectly. Therefore your health, happiness and fitness are dependent on the harmony of this whole. If even one part is out of whack, then it can throw the whole thing out. As such, anything other than a holistic approach to resolving these, or any other of life’s problems are merely band-aid solutions.

Fortunately, many of us now are beginning to have a much greater familiarity with mind and body therapies, as well as the philosophy of ‘health for the whole person’. This is evident through the widespread practice of many natural and preventative-based therapies largely from the East, which are being utilised on their own or in conjunction with conventional Orthodox or Western Medicine. Examples include Chinese Medicine, Naturopathy, Yoga, Meditation and many more.

However, as evident by the ever growing troubling statistics, this is clearly not enough. So many of us are still really struggling to achieve the balance that we so desperately seek in life. And we are seeing this in our health, in our relationships, in our work, in our finances, in our sense of meaning and purpose and in general everyday life.

The point I want to make here is that these aren’t just statistics – these are our children, our mothers, our fathers, our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our loved ones, and these people matter – they matter to us, they matter to the world and we need them!

And so there has never been a greater time in history, of the need for a more holistic and thus a more effective solution towards enabling us to live happier, healthier fitter lives.

What is this holistic solution?

The holistic solution we so desperately need comes down to 3 key areas;

◊ What you Chew

◊ What you Do, and

◊ Living True.

The reality is that by focusing on these 3 simple key areas, not only are all of these problems reversible, but they are also largely preventable in the first place. The result – a happier, healthier and fitter you. So please, don’t get disheartened by reading this post – sure the picture I have painted of our nation isn’t very pretty. But the reality is that we have the ability to turn all of this around, because we are so much more in control of our lives than we realise, or that we have ever been led to believe. And we can do this by living the 3 keys.

In-fact, the applications for the 3 keys are endless, and reach far beyond all of the problems mentioned in this post. The 3 keys really are the most simple and most profound solution we have to restore balance and therefore overall well-being back into our lives. It’s one solution with endless applications. And it’s a solution I’m super excited to tell you more about in next time.

Q.So tell me, what your thoughts on all of this? What do you see as the solution to all of these problems and why? Do you agree that a ‘holistic’ solution is what is required?

Robert