If you have lived very long, perhaps you have noticed how sick everyone seems to be today as compared with the state of people’s health 20, 30, or 40 years ago. With each decade it seems like people have to fight harder to maintain their health. And this is not just because we are getting older. As a 3rd grade school teacher for 20 years, I have seen the health of children, in general, decline during that time period. On any given day I can ask my students, “Who feels really good today?” and less than a third of the class will usually raise their hands. Even my fellow teachers have made comments like, “What is going on?” in reference to all the sickness, and the dramatic increase in asthma and ADHD among our students. For example, when I began teaching 20 years ago, I had one child in the classroom with ADHD and none with asthma. This was the norm for a few years. Then it began to pick up. My 19th year of teaching (in a rural school where kids breathe “fresh” air and get lots of exercise) I had 8 students with ADHD and 8 with asthma. Interestingly enough, all the children with asthma had a person in the home who smoked.
This past December (2008), I decided to do a little analysis on a church prayer list which included 70 names. The ailments of most of these people were listed beside their names. I did a little investigation to find the major health concerns of the others, and here were the results:
2 were on the list because of accidents
9 had heart issues
23 had cancer
26 had other degenerative diseases, especially of the bones and eyes
In the heart of cold and flu season in the Midwest USA, none were on the list for a germ related illness.
We tend to automatically think most illnesses are caused by germs. But could it be there are other factors hastening the degeneration of our bodies?
Until our paths cross again,
PJ J
