Health Care

And now for something completely different…

This week finds me in sunny San Diego, enjoying a three-week stay in between chemo rounds at the Optimum Health Institute (OHI), a progressive raw foods health spa for some, a full system clean-out for me. The retreat was recommended to me by several friends from different parts of my life. When the same name comes up in different circles, I pay attention. I’ve been searching for a place where I could take a bit of time away from everything and sort through my emotional and spiritual journey. Equally as important is detoxifying my body. Granted, it’s controversial in the middle of chemotherapy. On the one hand, the purpose of chemo is to continually introduce toxic drugs into the body to kill off any rapid growing cancer cells that may still be lingering. On the other hand, the body is not fully equipped to clean out these toxins on its own. In most cases, they just sit there, collecting, eroding the now cancer-free body, making it a welcoming place for further health crises. OHI’s solution is fairly basic: get back to the cleanest food possible. The cleanse consists of a power-juice diet, heavy on the leafy greens, and lots of wheatgrass, an incredibly powerful detoxifying and replenishing substance. It has been difficult for me as the toxins are pulled into my blood stream and flushed out of my body. But after six days (and a return to solid, albeit raw foods) I feel better than I’ve felt in ages.

Accompanying the detoxifying diet are core classes in basic anatomy, digestion, toxic elimination in the body, nutrition and health. It’s a miracle for me, after spending a year becoming more intimately acquainted with my body than I ever anticipated being, to have access to such a wealth of information about caring for it. One of the most memorable lecturers, Dr. Andy, began his lecture by distinguishing between health care and disease care. Our country, he argued, is focused on disease care. We visit a doctor when we are sick. We describe symptoms and, for the most part, are subsequently given the red pill to cure this symptom, the blue pill to cure another, the green for yet another. True health care, he insisted, rests on the shoulders of the individual. It is a daily commitment to understanding the root of good health: diet, physical care, and positive attitude. Health care is proactive, not reactive. His words resonated with me. In essence, my commitment to come here for three weeks is a very personal commitment to my body and myself to begin taking my health into my own hands, rather than relying on a team of doctors to continue doing it for the rest of my life. If vitality is the end goal, health is the daily practice. Optimum diet and well-being becomes the ideal, with a firm knowledge of and respect to how close I am in proximity to that ideal every day. I’m witnessing first-hand what a miraculous self-healing machine the body is. How many things out there do it as perfectly? With this understanding, the question at hand becomes how to give that machine exactly what it needs in order to perform that healing best, both today and for the rest of its miraculous life.