What's wrong with us all?

After my little rant on the UK riots last month I have decided to try & write something now & again with a little more thought & insight than my usual posts about where we have been with my photographs attached. I might not always get to post them up straight away due to not being near the internet but now we have a solar panel & lesuire battery in the van I can write them up on the laptop & post them up when we do get online.

Lots of diseases have been eradicated over the last century & there are now vacinations against some others that once could have killed us. People are living longer & yet are we really a healthier society? Many people older than me are always saying that they do not remember so many people having cancer years ago. Is this because we didn't always identify it years ago or has it really increased? There certainly seems to be more children with asthma & alergies than when I was at school in the 1970's. Has there really been that much of change in 30-40 years? There are certainly a few things that have changed dramatically in that time that I think have had a detrimental effect on our health.

Firstly the shear amount of fast food outlets that are in every town & city of the UK. I remember when you were lucky if there was a Wimpy in your town. Now there are McDonalds, Burger Kings, KFCs, Subways & no doubt a few I have forgotton or don't know about springing up everywhere. There is no or very little nutritional value in the food sold in these outlets & it seems like visiting them now are an everyday thing. When I was a child we got a Wimpy maybe twice a year when we went to the nearest big town for new shoes & clothes. Alot of my friends didn't even get that, we were lucky to be what was seen as middle class. Many of my friends from working class families didn't get the luxury of a burger when out shopping! Now a lot of kids go at least once a week, quite often more.

Coupled with that is the crap food sold in supermarkets like ready meals. There is now hormones & antibiotics in meat & mercury in fish, none of this can be good for us. There are also some very suspect ingredients found in lots of food in the shops. Particually frightening are Aspartame, Corn Syrup, Sodium, Sodium Nitrate, Yeast Extract, Propylene Glycol, Phosphoric Acid, Food Colours & GMOs. Please take the time to look these up if you are unaware of them particually if you have children to feed. The food industry's A to Z of toxic ingredients to avoid on www.wakeup-world.com is a good place to start. Unfortunatly if you are not buying totally organic you will probably have some of these nasties in your diet.

Now busy parents can stick a different meal in the microwave a few days a week & go out to a fast food outlet a couple of times a week. This easy way out might have devastating effects on health in the future. It seems like we have a nation of parents that like to take the easy way out whether it be going to McDonalds for dinner or sticking little Jonny in front of the TV to keep him quiet. Why is this? Perhaps because we are all so busy, having to work long hours to pay our mortgages. We (meaning those of us aged 35+ish) were certainly not brought up this way. But we were brought up in the Thatcher years when it was drummed into people that owning your own home was 'the' thing to do & it made you a sucessful member of society.

Then there is also the pollution of our country, traffic & industrial pollution, the spraying of pestisides in fields, the dumping of rubbish in land fill & the general way in which we seem quite happy to poison our green & pleasant land. Some of these issues may be being addressed but it seems like too litle too late to me.

I am also concerned that we may be being poisoned by the trails left by airplanes every day. Look up to he skies & watch the unmarked aircraft that leave trails accross the sky. But these are vapor trails I hear you cry, vapor trails vanish at between a few seconds & a couple of minutes after being left by the plane. The trails being left by certain planes last for hours dispersing accross the sky into wispy looking clouds often making a clear blue sky overcast. There is lots of videos on YouTube showing the planes leaving these trails (or chemical trails) turning back on themselves & leaving more trails. Have all these pilots bad memories & left their wallets at the airport? If you are over 25 think back to your childhood, do you remember these trails then? There is no documentation on these trails before 1995. Are the governments poisoning us, protecting us or what?

Another thing I see a lot is mental illness, mostly depression & drug or alcohol addiction. Many people are disillusioned with the world & their lives & turn to substance abuse to shut this out. Many other people push themselves in jobs they hate as they feel it is how we 'should' live or because they have to pay the mortgage & bills but end up exahusted & depressed after a few years. Life has always been a struggle for human beings but just look at some of the poorist (financially) people on this earth, they are sometimes the happiest. They might have to struggle every day to find food but they have a great feeling of community, they live with their whole family, they share stories & wisdom. It is also worth noting that psychological studies have shown that an hour watching TV can bring on the same kind of emotions as mild depression!

It seems to me that we have eradicated or overcome some diseases but we have made a society that is still struggling with illness on a massive scale. The difference is that this time the illnesses have been man made or made worse by mans intervention. It is time to protect & nurture ourselves & our planet, time to relearn the wisdom our ancestors had about how to use plants to help us but to use modern science & medicine to compliment that. It is time to cherish the food we eat & be wise about what we put into our bodies & it is time to bring a balance to our lives where our minds are not in turmoil all the time. It is time to rediscover ourselves as the loving human beings we are.

Thanks for reading :) Comments most welcome :) xoxox

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