Avoiding Unnecessary Surgeries
UNNECESSARY SURGERIES
1. HAVE FAITH
When I was a kid, one of my teachers at school had a wooden leg because he had lost one of his real legs in the Vietnam War, and he told me that he would take his wooden leg off before he went to sleep at night because it was uncomfortable to sleep with it on.
He also swore that one night he had gotten a phone call that woke him up, and that he got out of bed and walked to his kitchen to answer the phone, but as soon as he picked up the phone and said, "Hello", he looked down and realized that he had forgotten to put his wooden leg on. (Which meant that he was not only standing on one leg, but that he had somehow walked across his house with only one leg!)
He said that as soon as he realized he didn't have his leg on and that he was doing something that didn't believe was possible, he immediately lost his balance and fell down.
I see his story as a unique reminder of the power of belief and the disempowerment of disbelief.
We've all heard of the "placebo effect" (when those who believe they will heal are more likely to heal than those who don't believe) and this is a very real phenomenon.
If a doctor tells you that you have 6 months to live, and you believe it, it will basically be a "death sentence" for you, but if you believe that you can heal, that faith could literally save your life.
Sometimes all it takes is knowing that something is possible for people to believe that they can do it, and there are so many people in the world right now that the odds are very good that there are people who have healed naturally from whatever you are wanting to heal from and who are sharing their miraculous stories online.
2. GET A SECOND OPINION
A lot of people have had the experience of taking their car to a repair shop because it was making a strange sound, and being told by the mechanic that there were several things wrong with the car and that it was going to cost them a fortune to fix.
Most people in this situation will feel too intimidated to question the advice of an expert mechanic, so they will simply agree to whatever repair work they are told is necessary.
But some will feel skeptical enough to get a second opinion from someone else (perhaps a relative who is knowledgeable about cars) and they may then be told that the problem is nowhere near as serious as the first mechanic had told them it was, and that it be fixed for far less money as well.
Like auto mechanics, there are some good and honest doctors out there, but the odds are that if go to see a doctor, you are going to be viewed as a "customer", and their goal will be to find "something" wrong with you so that you will become a "regular customer".
And even if they can't find anything wrong with you and you are incredibly healthy, they will likely try to pressure you to sign up for regular health screenings for serious health problems like diabetes, or even try to get you to start taking preventative drugs like cholesterol lowering drugs "just to be safe" even if the odds of you needing these things are ridiculously low.
And the more "gullible" and less knowledgeable that you appear to be about your car or your health, the more likely that an unethical auto mechanic or doctor will try to talk you into having unnecessary work done. (Like getting an oil change even though it isn't necessary, or getting your wisdom teeth removed even though it isn't necessary.)
3. TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOUR TEETH
"Oral surgery" is something that almost 100% of us will have at least once in our lifetime, and that some will end up having dozens of times, so it is important to take good care of our teeth if we want to avoid this kind of surgery in the future.
We all start off with "baby teeth" which eventually fall out and are then replaced with "permanent teeth", and the reason they are called "permanent teeth" is because they will last a lifetime if we take good care of them.
Eating a healthy diet is of course an important part of good teeth health, but even if you are eating the best diet in the world, you can still run into serious dental problems if you aren't careful...
WARNING If food get stuck in your teeth, it will be a source of food for bacteria, which means that bacteria will grow and multiply in your mouth, and after this bacteria eats and digests the food that is stuck in your teeth, it will then excrete it back out as waste that is highly acidic and that can burn holes in your teeth, so please make sure that you aren't leaving any "leftovers" in your mouth for harmful bacteria.
WARNING Fruit is good for you, but unripe fruit can be acidic and can burn holes in your teeth, so if you are eating an unripe orange that tastes sour instead of sweet, or if you are eating an unripe pineapple that is literally causing your mouth to burn, please stop eating it and make sure that you only eat good tasting ripe fruits.
WARNING Many of the tools that people use to clean their teeth can actually cause tooth decay! Most of the toothbrushes on the market are hard-bristled and abrasive enough that they can scrape away your tooth enamel, and toxic ingredients can be found in many brands of toothpaste, mouthwash, and even dental floss!
As far as what tools to use, I like using a soft bristle brush, a tongue scraper, and plain floss. I'm also fanatic about rinsing my mouth with water after eating. (Even if I'm at a store and I eat one grape just to see if the grapes are sweet or not, I will still rinse my mouth out with water as soon as possible just to avoid leaving sticky grape juice on my teeth.)
If you want strong teeth, you should be give your teeth regular "workouts", and I like to eat big vegetable salads that are full of leafy greens and hard and crunchy vegetables like cucumbers, carrots, and celery, and I also like to take the time to chew each bite of the salad until the vegetables have been completely liquified or "juiced" in my mouth.
Making sure that the food you eat is thoroughly broken down is good for keeping your teeth strong, and it is also crucial for nutrient absorption. (If you swallow a peanut whole without chewing it, it will come back out of you whole and with all of its internal nutrients still inside of it.)
4. ADDRESS THE ROOT CAUSE
We have been led to believe that there are 10,000 different health problems and that they all require their own special treatments.
But if a teenage boy gets a pimple on his forehead after eating some greasy foods, and an old man gets a heart attack after a lifetime of eating greasy foods, it seems to me like they are both suffering from the same problem, and that the only reason their problems seem so different is because the problem is in different phases of progression.
In the same way that pouring grease down a sink can clog up the piping, consuming a lot of greasy foods can clog up our internal piping, and can ultimately lead to our #1 cause of death ("heart disease") as well as a lot of other seemingly unrelated problems that are actually the early stages of "heart disease".
Labels can be limiting, and if we put 10,000 different names on our health problems, we can make things more complicated than they have to be, but if we start to realize that many health problems are related, and if we we are willing to admit when something is harming us, then we can potentially fix a lot of health problems simultaneously by addressing the root cause.
There are definitely times when surgery can be helpful and even lifesaving (like if you are in a serious car accident) but even if you break a bone and a surgeon puts the broken bone back together for you, that surgeon isn't actually "healing" you, but rather, they are putting the pieces of the broken bone back into the proper position so that the bone can heal on its own over the next several weeks while you rest it, and the role of any good health practitioner should be to put their patients in a position where healing can take place on its own.
And even if a surgeon can successfully remove something harmful from your body (like a tumor) it will almost certainly return in the future if you don't address what caused it to show up the first time.
5. LOVE YOURSELF
Because "elective surgeries" that aren't necessary for our health such as cosmetic surgeries that are purely for aesthetic purposes are quickly becoming one of the most common forms of surgery, I want to remind people of what the famous painter/sculptor "Michelangelo" said when someone asked him how he was able to take an ordinary stone and carve it into something as beautiful and magnificent as the "Statue of David".
"Michelangelo" said that "David" was already in the stone, and that all he had to do was chip away the excess that was covering him up.
I believe that our bodies have the potential to heal themselves of virtually anything (from a simple shaving cut to cancer) and the reason that so many people aren't living up to this potential is because their potential is buried under all the excess.
A greater version of yourself will come out naturally when you remove the negative excess in your life. (The unhealthy foods and drinks that are making you unhealthy, the limiting beliefs that are limiting your actions, and the unnecessary material things that are costing you your money, your time, and your freedom.)
Even the seemingly small choices that we make on a daily basis (like what we eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner) will slowly add up over the days, weeks, months, years, and decades to become some of the biggest and most important choices that we made in our life.
So start making more loving choices for yourself and you will start to love the person you are becoming because of it.
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