Hollywood Health: Functional or Fake?
By: Dr. William Wong, ND, PhD.

I'm old enough to remember the old "Physical Culture" magazines. No, not the nudist rags but the magazines on health and its relation to fitness that were popular in the early to mid part of the last century. (Boy that sure makes me sound old)! Bob Hoffmans' old "Health and Strength" and Perry Raiders original "Iron Man" were my favorites. In those magazines, experts on the relation between exercise and true health doled out their philosophy on exercise, eating, sex, health, longevity, nature, and you name it if it related at all some-how-some- way to life and living it long and strong these old teachers expounded on it! Bob Hoffman, Earl E. Leaderman, Mr. Everything John Grimic, Dr. Samuel Homla and the amazing Dr. Paul Bragg. All of those splendid teachers telling us how we could not only look good but be healthy, mentally sharp and free of disease. While some of their ideas were physiologically mistaken or the long way around the barn, they still upheld the goal that the body should look good because it glowed with vigorous health!

Then came the 70's. The Weider generation came to the Iron Game (weight training). This was the beginning of the end for true "Physical Culture". Looks became paramount. Like a hollow Hollywood set you were supposed to be beautifully built on the outside while not having anything at all on the inside! Who cared what you did to your insides while accomplishing buffing up your outsides! Southern Californians led the way in creating fake beauty. Bloated useless muscles from anabolics filled the exercise magazines. While they may have looked strong, those muscles were good only for posing and not for anything else on earth. Ads for supplements whose only purpose was to build big biceps, not necessarily strong biceps or biceps useable in some true human endeavor -no- just big biceps. As the decades have gone by fake muscle have also led the way for fake boobs, fake lips, fake chins, entirely fake faces, Electroluxing fat instead of working it off all with the goal of looking great without any intention of any of it actually being real.

And when the days passed, champion bodybuilders disappeared from the scene. Kidney damage, liver cancer, skin cancer, testicular atrophy and impotence, unsightly breasts (not pecs) on men led the list of plagues that befell the fake. The women bodybuilders came down with these diseases earlier in their careers than the men did. Plus to add insult to injury, their use of male drugs, overdoing exercise and extreme diets had aged them tremendously. So much for beauty! Their followers fell by the wayside after them. No one noticed that they were gone. Now also the facelifts have fallen, the collagen lips have gone flaccid, the silicone jobs have caused disease, and the scar tissue from the vacuum job restricts the skin and may cause lord knows what sorry things in the times to come. And yet, no one sees the folly of priming up the outside while mucking up the inside. These are the days when form flys over function. When the truth can be "spun" to mean anything a manipulator wants it to mean. Looking good and being healthy is too difficult a thing to do, so folks opt just to look good.

Think about this point when you examine an exercise program advertised on TV, read about the latest film stars exercise video or look into the latest diet pronouncement from the look good gurus. Is it just meant to make you look good, or is it made to make you healthy and by so doing make you look good?

Find out what real high level wellness is supposed to be. It is not just the absence of a fever, of a runny nose and having low cholesterol! Find out what vigorous good health is. Follow after that goal, and while so doing exercise and eat to suit your body. Design your life to uplift; be happy in mind and soul. Minimize your weaknesses and overcome them with your strengths.

Be well and God bless.