Health

I was a sickly child. If I wasn’t catching a humble cold, it was something more exotic, like whooping cough or bronchitis.

Focusing on healthy eating while overlooking physical activity is not so much a myth as an uncomfortable truth that many of us prefer to ignore. Yet the rapid rise in sedentary lifestyles and metabolic diseases, with their harmful consequences for both individuals and society, is difficult to ignore.

I am not an expert on the phenomenon of death. But like all of us, I have to live in its shadow, and watch the restlessness and greed it causes. The same gloomy reports that circle the planet also reach me. I feel especially conscious of this as COVID-19 claims its first victims in my country.

In late 2019, an explosive new documentary, Game Changers, was dominating fitness industry headlines. Boasting the approval of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Novak Djokovic and Lewis Hamilton, the documentary claimed that peak athleticism could be attained on a plant-based diet—combatting longstanding assumptions about eating meat for muscle growth.

Fines, military ordinances, police and army patrolling the streets – this is the reality we have suddenly found ourselves living in. It is a tightening reality, a rigid corset-like structure of rules.

Any large-scale phenomenon, such as a pandemic, activates our instinct to preserve our state of being—especially when we feel like we are losing it.

When we are isolated with our family, problems that are sometimes easy to ignore become more acute, and the need to receive and offer forgiveness to those around us becomes increasingly evident.

How should addictions be understood? Addiction is usually regarded as a failure of the will, or as a sickness. Lately, the tendency is for the younger, educated generation to embrace the second answer. The idea that addiction is a failure of the will, a sin, from a Christian perspective, is seen as outdated.

It was 1984 when hospitals in southern China were besieged by young people in a state of extreme agitation. Thousands of people, of both sexes, were suffering from panic attacks accompanied by fear of death because of the overwhelming belief that their sexual organs were retracting and disappearing, or that their nipples were retracting into their breasts.

What is in the COVID-19 vaccines? What remains in our system after each type of vaccine, and for how long?

Millions of people live with food allergies. Chances are, you are either one of them or know someone who is. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, food allergies affect 4–6% of children and about 4% of adults (Cosme-Blanco, Arroyo-Flores, and Ale, 2020).

This coronavirus crisis has, for me, some perplexing parallels with a well-known incident narrated in the Gospel of Matthew (14:22-33). The disciples are confined in a little boat in the middle of a terrible storm, almost as we are confined at home today by the emergency laws of our countries.

The controversy surrounding organic foods is far from being resolved. Some argue it’s merely a marketing tool aimed at emptying consumers’ pockets, while others believe they’ve found the path to better health, provided they can afford the luxury.

Our bodies reap the first benefits of giving up smoking almost immediately after we have ceased the habit. The scientifically proven changes that are visible within the next hours, days, months and even years after we quit smoking reinforce the fact that putting out that last cigarette is one of the best decisions you will ever make for the benefit of personal health.

Our reality isn’t always a calm place. Feelings of safety and peace that are so necessary for our well-being often elude us. What is happening today on a global level only goes to show how fragile our world is, and how easily we can lose control over the things we thought we had mastered.