What We Eat

In a health column in a frum publication, written by a "certified Health Coach," Rivka Segal, the author says when she was studying to become a health coach, the school curriculum intentionally taught them conflicting dietary theories.  One week they learned about a carb-free, high protein diet and the next week they'd learn about a high carb diet.  Each course was taught by an expert in the field, often the founder of that diet.

Each time, the presentation was so convincing, that is, until the next class.  She says, "The purpose .. was to teach us that with diet and nutrition, there are no absolutes, and there is no one right way to eat."

It's "eating relativity" in which everyone can be right, and it's whatever works for you.

I find this troubling and I'm not sure it's true.  Granted, there can be differences between people in what they can and should eat and avoid, but aren't there general principles that apply to the majority of people? The Rambam thought so.  He even included his dietary guidelines in his Mishna Torah!

I found this anecdote she related quite interesting.  She spoke with someone whose daughter has Crohn's disease.  The mother said that a top doctor told her daughter not to discuss her condition with anyone.  Why? Not because of secrecy but because every patient's experience with Crohn's is different and what is helpful to one is not to another.  He felt that talking to others about their approach would be confusing and overwhelming and he encouraged her to figure out what works for her body.

She concludes by saying there are some general guidelines like we should avoid sugar, caffeine and processed food, and that we can all benefit from regular exercise, reducing stress, and drinking more water, but what about salt, coffee, eggs, butter, margarine, meat, whole milk and on and on? We read conflicting information on these items.  Are there no definitive answers?

Just Say No

There is a powerful story on aish.com here about a drug addict who quit his habit when confronted with the idea, "You don't have to do drugs."

 

What?! Of course nobody has to do drugs! The point is well stated in the article which you can read; it's that there are things we get involved with and they become our way of doing things and we don't even consider that there could be another way.  This can be applied to all sorts of habits and attitudes we have.

 

Astonishingly though, the former addict still referred to his condition as a dreaded disease.  What a pity to apply a word like disease to something this individual just walked away from.  Can a person with cancer tell himself, "You don't have to have cancer" and not be sick anymore? Can someone blind due to macular degeneration or someone with cerebral palsy tell themselves they don't have to have these conditions and then be cured? Of course not.  So why use a disease model when it is not taken as a mashal but as the literal truth, and it mostly certainly is not a disease?

Volunteer or Patient

Someone in a shiur quoted a hospital volunteer as saying that in heaven it is decreed how much time we will spend in hospitals.  Either we can be in hospitals as a patient or as a visitor.

This is like what it says (Gemara Bava Basra 10):  Rabbi Yehudah b'Rabbi Shalom says, Hashem's judgment on Rosh Hashanah decides losses as well as gains.

The story is told of Raban Yochanan ben Zakai, who dreamt one Motza'ei Rosh Hashanah that his nephews would lose seven hundred Zuz during the coming year. Throughout the year, he persuaded them to keep giving tzedaka (so as to fulfill the dream in the finest possible way). When, on the following Erev Yom-Kipur, they were still seventeen Zuzim short - the king's tax men came and claimed from them seventeen Zuz.

When Raban Yochanan ben Zakai reassured them that they were not destined to lose any more, and told them about his dream, they asked him why he did not inform them about the dream earlier, in which case they would have given all the money of their own free will. He told them he wanted them to give the money purely for the sake of the Mitzvah, and not for the least ulterior motive.

So we see this idea that we have a destiny that will be fulfilled in some form or another and we have a choice of how it will be done.  See this post here for other examples.

Warding Off Disaster

It's no wonder that we read of the high use of anxiety medication in the US and particularly among the frum population.  I say the following without having done any actual research on this; this is just the sense that I have about changing times.

Although there were always sad stories and troubling world events, the frequency of tragedies and how close to home they reach, seems unprecedented in the past 50 years.  For example, when I was a young adult, I probably heard of Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) but that's as far as it went.  At this point, I've been menachem avel someone's whose brother died of it, the rebbetzin of my former shul is suffering from it, my friend's father died of it, and I have heard and read of several more in the frum world.

Another example, up until ten years ago, I don't think I heard of any child (not talking about an infant) dying in their sleep.  Now I can think of three.

The feeling that something can drastically change for the bad, out of the blue, is reasonable since it has been happening with seemingly greater frequency and to people we know or to people close to those we know.  The Twin Towers coming down, the Har Nof shul massacre, the frequent ads from Chai Lifeline and RCCS reinforce the possibility of a disaster about to happen.

What to do about it? One idea - Rabbi David Ashear is quite popular now.  He does a 4 minute daily emuna message which can be heard on the phone: (605) 475-4799 access code 840886# or received by email: Emunadaily@gmail.com

An End to Illness

 

I recently heard a speaker ask: Do you think that if they find a cure for cancer, that we will all be able to breathe a sigh of relief? If it's not cancer, it will be something else! Just as previously, it was tuberculosis and numerous other diseases that killed us. 

I've been thinking about that.  Radical changes have taken place in medicine.  It was once common for parents to lose numerous children to childhood illnesss* and now they don't.  Our life expectancy has gone up.** People in their 40's, 50's and 60's don't look and act old the way they once did.  Is it time to rejoice?

And yet, there is illness all around us.  People we know personally, including children, are or have been seriously sick and some have died.  There are so many ways that doctors can help people today that verge on the miraculous like heart transplants, but overall - are we burying fewer people and at older ages? Maybe this is a question for the chevra kadishas to answer.

If other forms of sickness have overtaken us, then does it make sense to be grateful for immunizations and other medical advances? Or should we not look at it that way and rather, thank G-d for the advances we have made while praying for the eradication of all illness and death with the coming of Moshiach?



* most recently, I read of a woman in the 1930's who lost five children and had five remaining children and this was not unusual

**  59-male, 63-female in 1930 to 75-male, 80 female in 2012 in the US

Statistics Don't Apply to Us

Rabbi Yaakov Yosef (Yaakov Chai ben Margalit), son of the well-known posek, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, is seriously ill.  I read an article about him and his positive attitude about his illness and how he is doing his best to keep up with his daily schedule and fortify his bitachon. 

He says that his doctor explained the slim odds of surviving this disease and how the chances of recovery are between 3 and 5%.  This irreligious doctor then told him a most astonishing thing.  He said, "In the Torah-observant community, the statistics are completely different.  These numbers have no effect on you.  You have your faith and your prayers, and your chances of recovery are different.  We see more miracles in your sector of the population than with any other patients."

May he have a refuah shleima.

Medical Treatment that Kills

Rabbi Moshe Sherer a'h, was chairman of Agudath Israel of America.  There is a 600+ page biography about him out of which I read a few hundred pages.  He was a dynamic, driven person who could have made millions if he ran a company but devoted himself to the welfare of Klal Yisrael. 

How shocked I was to read that he contracted acute leukemia as a result of the chemotherapy he had taken for lymphoma (which happens in 8% of cases)! That medication is accompanied by unpleasant side effects, is one thing; that the medication causes a virulent disease when being applied to cure a virulent disease, is outrageous.  Similar to one of the side effects of antidepressants being suicidal thoughts.  May Hashem spare us such cures and keep us well.

More Tzaros or the Same As Always?

One often hears discussions about whether there are more people dying young today, toddlers, children, teens, young adults, young marrieds, middle-aged marrieds who are diagnosed with cancer and other illnesses, in addition to "accidents" (car, fire, drowning), or not.

I am referring to the constant tzaros we hear and read about, the emails requesting Tehillim. The huge Tehillim lists. The ads and tzedaka requests for families that are suffering from tragedies. 

So first, we have to decide what period of time we're comparing our times to! To life in Europe? To life in America?

1900-1950?
1950-1980?
the past 30 years?

Of course life expectancy has gone up and today we expect all live births to result in live adults when long ago (though not SO long ago), before vaccinations, many babies and children died! It was common for a woman to have many live births, let's say 13, but only have 5 survive childhood!

So I'm not talking about comparing our days to back then.

I'm more interested in knowing whether things have changed since say, the 1950's.  I'm inclined to believe that it's because communications today are so advanced that we hear more than we used to.  When a kalla was in a car accident or became seriously sick years ago, it was just a local issue, but now, people all over the world are hearing about many more tzaros through frum news websites and emails. 

May we soon know of no more sorrow.

Sybil Exposed

I did not read Sybil but I am reading Sybil Exposed.  Sybil was a book published in 1973 that went on to become a bestseller and a movie.  It was presented as the true story of a woman treated for multiple personality disorder who had been so horribly abused by her mother that she became a psychiatric case.  The book described grotesque rated R scenes that had the public enthralled.  Not surprisingly, huge numbers of people were diagnosed as having a multiple personality disorder after the book became a hit (like anorexia became a "fad diagnosis" in Hong Kong after it was marketed there, see my post "Crazy Like Us"  click here to read post

The lives of three women are intertwined: the patient, her doctor, and the author of Sybil.  The author of Sybil Exposed shows how the patient's illness wasn't an illness, how her treatment was a sham, and how the fictional story Sybil came to be written and presented as the truth. 

As much as the book is an expose of the book Sybil, it is an expose of the quackery of the psychiatric profession.  As anybody who has read previous posts (labels: psychiatry and mental illness) on this blog have seen, I am not impressed by the pseudo-medical specialty of psychiatry.  The so-called treatments given by the doctor in this case as well as her colleagues back in the 50's till the present day, are a horror.  Forget about "first do no harm."  That is far from their guiding principle.  When will the public finally figure out that the emperor has no clothes? That the psychiatric/mental health profession in cahoots with the drug companies are making us into a nation of drugged, incompetent, invalids?

We are all "disordered" in one way or another

 

Eating disorders are “a coping mechanism when life feels out of control, overwhelming, disappointing or painful,” says Catherine Steiner-Adair, director of Eating Disorders Education and Prevention at McLean Hospital.

Yet, in 2006, the National Institute of Mental Health confirmed that anorexia and bulimia are biological, brain-based disorders.

Seems to me that to say that eating disorders are a way of coping with distress is vastly different than saying they are illnesses that are biological and brain-based!  

More and more behaviors are being labeled as illnesses or disorders.  ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder) used to be referred to as bad behavior or being a brat.  Now it's a "disorder" which is "evaluated" and "diagnosed".  The cause is "unknown".  G-d forbid that parents would be considered the cause of their child's obnoxious behavior.  That would be judgmental which is a cardinal sin.

If we categorize behaviors according to what makes people feel good and opt for a medical diagnosis rather than finding out what is really bothering the child or young adult, I am afraid that the treatment will be unhelpful.