Dr Ross Walker - 5 Stages of Health

About the book

How many of us have constant niggles, maybe a chronic complaint, cant lose weight, feel persistently tired, often stressed? Tick any of these boxes and there is something for you in Five Stages of Health .

Over the past 20 to 30 years we have seen the emergence of the wellness industry offering wellness in many forms. Wellness centres, health magazines, internet sites and a variety of products promise cures for everything from wrinkles to Alzheimers disease and even haemorrhoids. Throughout the world people are spending millions of hard-earned dollars each day on these products and services, hoping to look younger, feel younger and live longer. But does any of this stuff work or is it just a sham?

In Five Stages of Health Dr Ross Walker debunks the myths and hype of modern health and gives you the facts you need. You get the truth about what are the real modern killers, what you can really do to slow the ageing process, what vitamins and supplements can make a difference and what you need to be healthy in each decade of your life.

Dr Walker brings over 30 years medical experience to this must have health resource for men and women of all ages.

Dr Ross Walker is an eminent practising cardiologist with a passion for people and health. He is regarded as one of the worlds best keynote speakers and is a best-selling author.

He can be heard on radio 2UE, 3AW and 4BC, and is a regular on The Today Show and A Current Affair , as well as the Channel 9 series Excess Baggage .

Do you ever stop during a typical, busy day and ask yourself, What am I doing this for? If youre reading this in Australia, you may recall the briefest political career in history, when the rugby league legend Mal Meninga decided to throw his hat into the political ring. During the first few questions of the press conference announcing his candidature, however, he exclaimed, I cant do this!

He stood up, apologised and walked out, back to the world where he felt comfortable and in control, i.e. rugby league.

How many of you reading this feel trapped in your life? How many have constant niggles, maybe a chronic complaint, cant lose weight, feel persistently tired and often stressed?

If you ticked the box to any of these, there is something in this book for you. I am confident the vast majority of you often ask, What do I want out of life? How can I lead a longer, happier, more fulfilling life?

What is wrong with our modern society that promotes this chronic state of angst and lack of wellbeing?

Over the past 20 to 30 years, we have witnessed the emergence of the wellness industry, offering you guessed it wellness in its many forms.

We have seen the explosion of wellness centres, day spas, health periodicals, internet sites and a variety of products promising cures from wrinkles to Alzheimers disease and even haemorrhoids. The medical profession is happy to support the benefits of lifestyle modification but falls short of condoning the less accepted processes such as detoxification and certainly warns against the more bizarre, such as colonic washouts!

Throughout the modern world, the more affluent are spending thousands of hard-earned dollars each day on nutriceutical products, cosmetics and cosmetic procedures, hoping to look younger, feel younger, age less and live longer.

So, does any of this stuff work or is it just a sham? Should we abandon this quest for external youth and purely accept the conservative, orthodox medical view telling us all to follow a healthy lifestyle and accept your medical lot when it happens; in other words, shut up and take your pills!

I must say, during my 30 years of practising medicine Ive only come across a small minority of people who are truly happy, healthy and contented with their life.

Thus, the norm for our modern world is lack of wellness, fatigue, poor health and, most importantly, discontentment. One of the key elements here that I see is that we are living against our physiology.

We occasionally hear the story of a person who nurtures a lion or a tiger as a pet from birth. When the animal has matured into a fully grown beast, if something goes wrong the animal may turn against its owner and violently rip them to shreds. As tragic as this is, it certainly comes as no surprise.

Lions and tigers were not physiologically designed to be brought up living in symbiosis with human beings. Ripping another animal to shreds humans included is part of the job description for these big cats. Strangely, if they are hungry, cornered or angry theyll behave like a lion or tiger. Now bring in modern man. Our basic physiology hasnt really changed that much over the past 10,000 to 50,000 years. Evolution is not that rapid. We humans were designed for the following circumstances:

1. A totally natural world with exposure only to natural substances;

2. Feast and famine;

3. Constant movement;

4. The acute stress of the constant threat of attack from other humans or animals;

5. A short lifespan (average 30 years), because of the harshness of the environment.

Like it or not, this is the nature of our physiology. And with our knowledge and experience of the modern world, lets face it, living as a hunter-gatherer in a very unforgiving environment for, on average, around 30 years, would suck!

Who wants to spend their days wandering through a jungle searching for food, only to have their life cut short by an attack from a sabre-tooth tiger or some nasty infection, unresponsive to the antibiotics that werent available anyway during that prehistoric era?

Now lets look at our modern world. We live in an environment where we are exposed to:

1. A variety of at times rather toxic, synthetic chemicals;

2. A number of different sources of electromagnetic and other forms of radiation;

3. Chronic stresses of living in the modern world;

4. A very sedentary lifestyle;

5. A longer lifespan and therefore longer exposure to all of the above.

Thus, in many ways, modern humans are living as if we were polar bears transported to the desert. So rather than being polar bears overheating under the Saharan sun, we are humans overeating under the golden arches.

But to understand why we now suffer the vast array of modern diseases, firstly we need to have a basic understanding of how the body works. There is a wonderful saying, As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm.

Each cell is a unit and the basic principles here also relate to the basic principles of how each individual organ, the entire body, a community, the earth, and even the universe function as a whole.

All the environmental exposures Ive mentioned above lead to derangements in our body at a cellular level. The combination of a variety of environmental toxins in an individuals particular genetics typically leads to a specific disease.

But its not just about diseases; its also about living longer and living well. There is no doubt that were all living longer. The most recent figures from the Bureau of Statistics tell us that the number of people in Australia over the age of 65 has increased from 11 per cent to 13.3 per cent in the last 20 years. In raw numbers, thats an increase of about one million people. And the number of people over the age of 85 is now over 380,000.