Loving Health has a Goal:
Change the dynamic of Health Care
by informing and empowering the consumer
You can take control of your health!
What is Loving Health about?
Information on nutrition and health can be confusing. It seems like everyday you hear about someone trying a new diet, supplement, or regimen that fixed this, that, and everything in-between. This is anecdotal evidence, and along with emotional testimonials and advice from a friend, it’s not the greatest source of information to base your health decisions from. While research on therapeutic diet and lifestyle interventions for disease prevention is still growing, studies have been showing since the 1970’s that the disease which takes the most lives in the US can be stopped and reversed: heart disease. Nathan Pritikin, Dr. Dean Ornish, and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn are only some of the pioneers that have paved the way for acceptance of diet-based disease reversal in the scientific community. There are now thousands of articles in prestigious medical journals demonstrating the beneficial effects of diet and lifestyle on overall health and disease.
However, if you’ve taken a statistics class, or have been around long enough to remember when doctors promoted smoking as healthy, you know there are many ways studies can be manipulated and results misrepresented. How do we decipher what is accurate and meaningful information?
Loving Health’s mission is to teach consumers of health information just that. We want to be a resource of knowledge so you, the consumer, can make an informed decision regarding nutrition and healthcare based on your own goals and value system.
There are things to consider when sorting through evidence that most people already know, such as the basics: Is it from a primary source, like a journal? Is it peer reviewed? Is it well referenced? But then there are tools to filter the evidence further, and we want to teach them to you.
Loving Health will offer online health classes so you can learn what the evidence says about diet and lifestyle intervention, and how to apply that information to your own life to optimize your health. We can help you figure out your health goals, develop a plan to execute them, and assist you with any obstacles along the way.
What does it mean to make an informed choice regarding health care?
When you buy a car, you research the best prices, gas mileage, wear and tear if it’s used, etc. You do your homework so you don’t get ripped off, not buy whatever the car salesman tells you to. This is not the approach many take in healthcare, but it should be. Many people follow the directions of their healthcare professionals without fully understanding their personal benefit vs risk profile for undertaking those directions, whether it be a surgery, medication, or treatment. This is not to say that you shouldn’t listen to your doctor or that there aren’t good doctors out there. This is saying that people are making very extreme and sometimes irreversible choices in health care without even fully understanding what they are consenting to.
Loving Health aims to provide evidence for nutrition and healthcare, so consumers understand what their options are for prevention and treatment before making a decision. This includes evidence for allopathic and naturopathic ways of thinking. You cannot truly make an informed choice without all of the available information, and we can be a provider of that information.
What does it mean to make a choice based off your personal goals and value system?
Evidence regarding health should be objective, but decisions on what to do with that information are subjective. The purpose of us reporting on health care information is not to convince you to make a particular choice or tell you what you should do. The purpose is to inform so a consumer can decide for themselves.
For example, say you are buying a home: you look at one that has many trees in the yard with a long driveway and all you can think of is how much of a pain it would be to rake the leaves every fall, or wheel your trashcans all the way down to the street. But another might look at that home and marvel at the trees and love the seclusion of a long entrance way. It is the exact same property, but the right fit for one and not the other because those people are different, and what they want in a home is different.
In terms of medical treatment such as a surgery, one could look at the evidence and see that they have more risk than benefit from the procedure, but still decide that it’s the best option for them upon looking at and understanding other available treatment options.
This is making an informed choice, even if it’s a decision another, including your doctor, would not choose. We all choose to live our lives in different ways, and those who want to take an active role in their health and consider all of their options, while understanding their risks and benefits of those options, should be able to do so.
Are you ready to make a change?
Healthcare in this country is a $3.8 trillion dollar industry, yet the US has one of the lowest life expectancies and highest chronic disease rates compared to other high-income countries. How can we spend so much money on our health only to stay sick?
If you keep doing the same thing you’ve always done, you will continue to get the same results.
Loving Health aims to change the dynamic of nutrition and health care decision making, so you can begin to make a meaningful and significant difference in the trajectory of your health.
Information reported by Loving Health may oppose what you have traditionally learned about health and nutrition.
. . . and that’s okay.
To those who resonate with what Loving Health reports, we welcome you. To those who are skeptical or have a different view, we welcome you. To those who apply some aspects of this information to their lives but not everything, we welcome you as well.
We are all simply trying to do the best we can with the information we have, and Loving Health can help you obtain and decipher that information.
Ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge is power.
Let’s love health together.
