Healthy and meaningful life
IHAD a motorcrash recently triggered by my sudden highblood attack with vertigo while driving my motorcycle on my way home. Fortunately, I was on a minor speed, so that when I crashed, the impact was not much damaging. I just had minor bruises.
The next morning, I had to go to a hospital for admission because of my persistent vertigo. After initial checkup, I was told I had high blood pressure, quite high that I had to be given hypertensive medicines to level it down immediately.
Further laboratories showed I have high cholesterol, among others, that go with high blood, all due to my unsatiable taste for oily and salty food and frequent beer intakes.
From the inputs of the doctors and my discussions with hospital attendants, I realized that I was already hypertensive with occasional vertigos few years back. I did not know it or I stubbornly ignored some signs because I haven’t had a comprehensive and regular medical check up for years and also because I thought that I had an athletic body because of my high endurance and energy with my regular martial arts exercises.
In this era of fastfood and fast lane where many are dependent on their basic needs from the fastfood, malls, convenience stores, drug stores, TV and social media, the quality and healthy ones are blurred by too much consumerism and commercialism.
Multinational commercial propaganda on alcohol and toxic food have been so effective that they altered fundamental values of both the rich and the poor. Alcohol beverages have become daily vitamins for most poor and middle class persons. Some surveys even claimed that there are more women and teens now drinking beer compared 15 to 20 years ago.
Values and happiness of friendship and camaraderie have likewise been changed by alcoholic beverages. Unlike in the 60s and 70s, where most good gatherings and meetings were measured by sharings of ideas and experiences, pursuit of truth in political or sociological hypotheses, or happenings in families and clans, now most revolved around how much alcohol one drinks or petty and sexist talks shared together.
Indeed, TV commercials, social media and lack of quality political and social education in our communities and sectoral groupings have changed a lot of our concepts of friendship, camaraderie, happiness and existence.