“If you want to stay alive, stay authentic.” This was one of the powerful quotes in this 1 hour talk called When the Body Says No by Dr. Gabor Mate from Vancouver, Canada. He was a physician for 20 years and 7 of those years included being a Medical Care Coordinator of a Palliative Care unit. His years of experience taught him something that he was never taught in medical school. “Who gets sick and who doesn’t is NOT accidental.” He found that there were certain identifiable patterns and personality traits that people had that link to bringing on various diseases.
He talked about telomeres at the end of our DNA and how they shorten as we age. What was interesting was that for people who were care giving for others, their telomeres were of the same length as someone who was 10 years older then themselves. The chronic stress of care giving had aged them by 10 years!
He read an article as well as obituaries of people who died young that truly hit home two things:
- The fact that when we don’t take the time to look after ourselves, we end up putting our own health at risk.
- We and society at large put more value on duty, role, and responsibility than caring for our own well being.
He talked about 3 ways to deal with anger and their health impacts:
- Repression of anger (being NICE) leads to auto immune disease and cancer.
- Blowing up with anger increases your chances of heart disease and strokes.
- Assertiveness which many of us do not know how to do is a healthy way to deal with anger. This dovetails into the recent article I did after watching the video series done by Doreen Virtue on Assertiveness for Earth Angels.
As well, he states that the western medical profession makes 2 major mistakes in diagnosing illness:
- They seperate the mind from the body. Emotions are not seperate from physiology and therefore cannot be seperated. Medications are given based on what is going on in the body, but no questions are ever asked regarding how you are doing emotionally and what life factors may have contributed to the onset of the illness itself.
- They seperate the individual from the environment (One example he gives is that studies have shown that parents who are stressed are much more likely to have children with asthma.)
His experience, stories and sense of humour offer a fascinating insight into what causes illness and disease. I highly recommend watching the full video and would be interested to hear your feedback: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6IL8WVyMMs
Here is to your health!
Susanne