Moving from ‘fight or flight’ to ‘love and light’

(This article was contributed by Guest Author Herby Bell, DC)

After watching the militant Muslim reaction around the world — the purely insane response to a substandard film created by another fanatic about God knows what — I got to thinking about a startling analogy.

I’m in the healthcare business.  My biggest competitor is the sick care business, and here’s how it works (and stay with me–I’ll connect the dots):

We have an innate genetic intelligence that responds in a healthy way to whatever is in the environment.  Our environment has become increasingly deficient and toxic in terms of the water we drink to the air we breathe, along with countless other modern living stressors.  Accordingly, our body’s healthy, genetic response is to place us in a state of “fight or flight” in order to survive.

The problem arises when this fight-or-flight state of being becomes the rule, rather than the exception, due to the ever-present and increasing environmental stressors. Dis-ease and ultimately disease ensue.  Maybe you’ve heard mention lately of addiction, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, fibromyalgia, depression, fatigue, decreased sex drive, anxiety, obesity, indigestion, lack of sleep…etc., etc.

All of us are in some state of fight or flight, more often than not, when living in this culture–in this world.  Instead of decreasing the stress and improving adaptability by being taught to eat well, move well, and think well — the health care business — we are carpet bombed by literally dozens of sound bytes and video images per day about “taking” something to “kill” the pain or to trick our bodies out of their pristine, invariably reliable intelligence — the sick care business.

Recently I gave lectures about this well-documented stress response to a local high school human biology department.  I asked the students to close their eyes as I played the audio only, including the side effects disclaimer of one of the drug commercials we hear on television, day in and day out.  The students reported that they did not even listen to or hear the words anymore, that it had become just background noise. The pretty images on television stick and the devastating side effects get reduced to white noise.  Good news for the sick care business, a subliminal auto suggestion marketing vehicle that pays off handsomely.  Repetition is the mother of all invention…

All right, now back to the militant Muslims.  If the human ecosystem is barraged with stress and its correct and healthy response is to develop chronic lifestyle diseases, doesn’t it stand to reason that the collective ecosystems or the culture –any culture — is susceptible to the same reaction after being inundated with sick propaganda–here, there, everywhere!–and certain factions of that culture, like a neoplastic growth in cancer, will react in that deadly, perhaps unpredictable, but inevitable way?  It’s happening.

We have to stop kidding ourselves.  The world is in a chronic state of fight or flight.  THE SICK CARE INDUSTRY IS NOT HELPING. Let’s teach our kids to eat well, to move well, and to think well and decrease our stress while bolstering our immune systems instead of waiting for some magic pill or potion to come along to save us.

Let’s be honest that the preventable, man-made atrocities and insanity all around the world are directly related to how well a culture’s individuals are caring for themselves, how well they are eating, moving, and thinking.

Let’s get out of the sick care business and into the health care business.  The well-being of the world may just depend upon it.  Let’s move from fight or flight to love and light.

(Dr. Herby Bell is owner and director of Recovery Health Care, an integrated approach to addiction treatment in Redwood City, California. For more information please call 650 474 2121 or email:  herbybell@me.com.)