Wednesday, November 11, 2009

The health consequences of computer use may be shortening the lifespan of today's youth and their hard working parents

A few days ago I attended a health seminar where one of the speakers informed us that the life span of younger people is shorter than that of older people due to environmental issues and the effect of technology specifically computer use. The speaker said that a lot of cases this speaker was seeing of health issues presented by patients were not what was seen years ago.


That is why I am writing this blog today. Here is the problem - we have been programmed over time to become careless with our health and that making responsible lifestyle choices was become unimportant as we can just pop in a pill and all will be well. We are all learning that that is not necessarily the case and that modern medicine may in some case not be as effective as grandma’s old herbal and healthy food and lifestyle choices disease prevention medicine. That is because grandma’s methods are based on the natural ways our bodies were created to operate

Many people are disappointed because they can no longer live carelessly and expect to pop a pill and be well when the consequences of their action kick in.

Look at the bright side the old saying” prevention is better than cure” may actually be true and cheaper, a good reason to be happy at the fact that we can actually reduce our health care bills in these tough times by being proactive. Let us try and understand what is going on by putting ourselves in the academic mode and trying to understand the seriousness of our dilemma.

Why do we have to be proactive? Why can the body not fix itself? The answer is very simple. I will put it this way; the human body is like an extraordinary computer system that has many computer systems in it. Think of the human machine (body) as a gigantic company that has about 10 million departments and that employs about 100 trillion people each with their own individualized computer system operating 100 million software programs each. Imagine that this company is connected to 10 billion other companies to form one huge global corporate system and this system is connected to several billion other systems (the whole universe as one interconnected company) with the same kind of complexity. Also imagine that some of the individual worker’s systems operate across company lines, some computers belong to more that one company, some of the software used for business decisions are across company line, some along department wide across the whole system. In addition while some connectivity is limited to 1 company some are limited to several group of companies. You can imagine the complexity of the kind of script or code that would have to be written to handle this system and what it would take to run it. It is humanly impossible to comprehend.

This is how the human system in which we operate and live works. I am now going to apply this corporate structure analogy to explain the complexity of the human body.

In fact each cell in our body is like an ERP system (e.g. Oracle, Peoplesoft etc.) with 100 million software programs. Each system (human body cell) is connected to other ERP systems with their own 100 million software programs. The body is like having a Gigantic Computer system that has trillions of ERP systems (it is estimated that our bodies contain about 5 trillion cells) in it with each cell system having 100 million software programs running in it. Some software run along the whole structure, some within some structures within the group and some only in each system. Some of the systems are visible to human eyes some are not and can only be guessed at by reading the electrical currents running through the whole system while some are invisible and undetectable and no human equipment can read. Some are neither visible nor can be guessed at. Some of these currents seem to be electromagnetic fields unknown to man but from the body’s activities we know there must be something electrical operating.

Fortunately for us, we do not have to figure these systems out, as we cannot. We have enough problems figuring out one ERP system. Anyone involved with for example Oracle knows that no one not even the manufacturer knows everything about the system and you have some issues that the company cannot effectively fix when you call up for support and you have to rely on the user group to find out if anyone else has been through that particular incident and what they did and where there are no precedents in some cases you just continue using the system with the problem. That is because it is not humanly possible to guess at all possible things that may occur in a system when it comes into actual production under all possible scenarios during the manufacturing stage because life evolves, businesses run into unforeseen circumstances etc. that bring about forced changes.

Now with the human body it is not a stand alone system, every human is connected. There is connection within the family there is connection with peers, neighbors, colleagues etc. What you do affects others. The whole human system is also connected to everything here on earth, the animals, plants etc. Also to the environment, the air, the ground. The earthly system is also connected to the celestial i.e. sun, moon stars etc. So it is impossible to humanly fix our body system by ourselves

Fortunately for us as humans we do not have to worry, our creator has made everything to self repair all we have to do is give any part of the system that hurts what it need to self repair and we watch it do so. If we do not, it becomes destroyed or limps along.

That is what the doctor does. Doctors are like step I support systems. They help us identify what is needed for the self repair e.g. medication, surgery, replacement therapies, IVF etc. When for example you have a kidney transplant, we wait for it to begin to bond with the particular system into which it is put. The hard ware and software have to read each other and determine that it is right for the system and begin a slow upgrade to fit in the new system. It goes through the trial period and then full roll out. The roll out is in stages. If the trial period fails you find immediate rejection. If not you have it accepted and medication given for some time until the production roll out is fully operational.

That is why sometimes doctors may make a misdiagnosis because they are not the creator and you can only go as far as yourself and others have guessed things. That is why sometimes the doctors tells you to pray for a miracle and sometimes only miracles can even diagnose what is wrong in some cases. In others, both diagnosis and identifying the repair kit and even getting the right kind and version of repair fix or patch needs a miracle. Sometimes everything is identified but loading needs a miracle.

With the above analysis, I hope I have been able to get you to get off the couch of no action and to begin to take the burden from off your doctor and take responsibility for your health. We will all need to do this if we want to maintain the increase in life span that we have achieved so far.

The advent of the computer and its indispensable nature to our way of life means we are now violating some of the basic principles that keep us alive and in good health. Afew of these violations are:

  •  We look directly at a source of light the computer monitor contrary to our natural way of not looking directly at the sun our natural source of light
  • Computers when operating reduce the negative ionization of the air around us contrary to the high negative ionization level natural for our existence and maintenance of good health
  • We work in offices that have closed windows that do not allow fresh air in. Consequently the air around is depleted of good fresh Oxygen and has more than enough abundance of carbon which when we breathe in is not very good for our health
  • The operation of computers dries up the air around us
  • The light from the computer screen because it is not recognized as light by our brain does not activate the blink system that enables our eyes remain moisturized. In addition, the stress control that the split second blink time provides our brain is missing. There is research that shows we blink 66% less when on the computer.
  • When on the computer we have limited body part movement contrary to our natural way of moving all parts of our bodies when carrying out any function.
All the above and the other violations that occur from the computer use environment result in the overburdening of the body’s stress management system. If we do not take responsibility for our health by taking some lifestyle, exercise, dietary etc. measures to enable the body enhance its stress management system, over time, the continuous and cumulative depletion in neurotransmitters and minerals and other nutrients will take its toll resulting in health problems that are hard to resolve and sometimes resulting in a career loss if not loss of life.

It is for this reason I continue to warn about the health issues involved in computer use.

Parents it is time to take your children for that eye exam. Some of their behavioral problems may have to do with vision issues. Some of those behavioral problem may also be due to depletions of neurotransmitters and nutrients as a result of computer use. Monitor their computer use, make them take breaks, follow ergonomic rules and most importantly, get a hold of my book – Lessons I Learned the Hard Way for more information on this topic and to learn how to identify, minimize, manage and treat computer related health conditions in consultation with your doctor. Also learn some easy things you can do. Visit my websites http://www.computeragehealthrisk.com and http://www.foodsthathealdaily.com. The computer is only a tool and we should not allow it to ruin or control our well being.

Bye for now and watch out for my next blog.