We’ve all heard it. Many of us have probably said it, at one time or another. In the wake of the latest report that links an aspect of our lifestyle to disease, sweaty hands grip the steering wheel, cheeks are puffed – blowfish style – and the oft-lamented conviction that “everything bloody gives you cancer, these days” is spat across the dashboard.
Allow me to take issue with this phrase, bit by bit. In the first instance, nothing gives us cancer. Diseases aren’t consigned to us in such a linear and straightforward manner. To take cancer as an example, our risk of developing the disease depends on a combination of genes, environment and lifestyle choices, many of which we can actually control. According to Cancer Research UK, four in 10 cancer cases could be prevented. But if we don’t invest in this explanation, we conceive of ourselves as mere passive recipients, with no reason to get a handle on our own future.
If we continue to complain that everything we do incurs illness – “they’re always saying this”; “there’s nothing we can do” – we engage again and again with this escapist paradigm that permits complacency, negates action and perpetuates a “why bother?” stance on our health.
True, if we have fashioned a healthy lifestyle for ourselves based on informed choices – whether centred on daily jogs, low GI foods, no dairy or otherwise – it can feel disheartening to learn of new science suggesting they may not work. Indeed, the dissonance that new knowledge creates can induce feelings of hopelessness. But resorting to words like everything, always and never allows us to adopt a fatalistic view and do nothing, instead of taking reasonable steps to improve our chances of avoiding disease.
Oversimplified headlines do not help. We’re often told that a certain food group, diet or form of exercise is “good” or “bad” for us. While most of us have the nous to deconstruct such vague terms, do further reading and dig deeper into which facet of our health may actually be improved or hampered, the dominant narrative will still have us divide our wellbeing into rather crude groups. But we are far too biologically complex to be affected entirely by one aspect of our lifestyle, so instead of buying into the notion that “red wine is good for us”, for example, we have to consider how, which part of our bodies, to what degree, and how it might also still be harmful.
Some people have a bizarre sense of entitlement that manifests itself at the mention of a new potentially harmful food group. Reports have highlighted the carcinogenic properties of processed meats, for example, but assertions like “I’m not cutting down on processed meat because I need my bacon at the weekend” are wheeled out as defences. Common use of the possessive when talking about food – “my bacon” – points to a warped perception that it it somehow not only constantly available, but also automatically ours. As a result, it is then considered exempt from any omission process that a lifestyle change may demand.
Whether language is an indicator of attitudes, or vice versa, when it comes to our health we need to forgo oversimplification in favour of a much keener eye for detail, and overcome any dissonance wrought by conflicting information in order to take as good care of ourselves as possible. Wealth, a dream job, success in exams, are not foregone conclusions: they are a product of hard work, life choices and genetics. It’s time we thought of our health in the same way.
@RosieDriffill
http://www.rosiedlanguages.com