7. THE ILLUSION OF YOUTH HEALTH

The young begin with robust vitality and resiliency and ride high on the torrent of growth and sex hormones coursing through their vessels. Their digestive capacity rivals a garbage
 
disposal, the immune system is well armed and alert, and any
 
injury is repaired with remarkable speed. This trove of healing riches invites a lot of squandering.
 
However, youth health is a dangerous illusion. A young body is incredibly adaptable, but wrong living is like writing checks against a health account. Health potential is deposited at conception and is never added to. Every violation of healthy living draws down on the balance. It begins with infants sucking on a latex nipple on the other end of which is the granddaddy of all junk foods—baby formula. Then there is weaning to a smorgasbord of nutrient-impoverished processed foods cloyed with sugars and starches, decorated with every manner of additive to make food 'fun,' and lubricated with hydrogenated oils to create just the right 'mouth feel.' Kids in America drink oceans of soda, eat herds of burgers, vats of breaded and deep-fried whatever, and enough pizza dough to stretch to the moon and back several times. Once puberty kicks in they keep ungodly hours and exercise little other than tapping buttons on a remote control or a keyboard. In general, they are totally oblivious to healthy living. Nevertheless, deductions from their health account silently continue.¹
 
In spite of all this abuse, kids apparently remain healthy. Not just a little, but a lot. They have tons of energy, sleep like logs, can excel in school, and win state sports championships. What's the deal? Adults can't live like that. We'd get sick or kill ourselves trying to keep pace with their antics. If I ate in just one day what I used to eat back when I was immortal and had a stomach of cast iron, I would explode.
 
Youth seems to excuse a lot. But all is not well. Autopsies of young Korean and Vietnam War casualties revealed an extremely high incidence of atherosclerosis, the underlying pathology of heart attacks. Yet there were no detectable symptoms of heart disease in these soldiers as they went through rigorous basic training and fought in demanding wars. Problems lurked hidden within, growing like a slow cancer. If these soldiers had lived out their lives, their wrong choices would have eventually manifested in middle or later years as heart disease or a heart attack.²
 
A 1999 study of autopsies performed on almost 3000 men and women from various races between the ages of 15 and 34 showed the same results. Atherosclerotic lesions (the plaques that plug vessels and cause heart attacks and strokes) in the aortas and most of the right coronary arteries (feeding the heart muscle itself) were observed in the youngest age groups and increased in prevalence with age.³ As a result of such findings, the American Heart Association released its recommendation that everyone over the age of 20 should be checked routinely for signs of potential heart trouble. (That, however, is not a solution. It is too little, too late.)
 
Heart disease is by and large a lifestyle and nutritional disease. (No, it's not from butter or cholesterol.⁴) So, too, are most other chronic, degenerative, adult-onset diseases. Their root cause is the dramatic departure we have taken from our genetic roots, and the glut of refined carbohydrates and contaminated nutrient-stripped processed foods that now make up the mainstay diet.
 
It is a cruel irony that the lifestyle we enjoy while young will create such havoc in adult years. We assume if we felt well and were healthy lollygagging around the house eating junk food as kids, that as adults we should be able to continue to treat food like toys, our body as if it needed no care, and any malfunction as if it were a problem for a doctor to fix. If we engage our minds, however, failed health in the adult years should cause reflection on what we have done wrong. The solution, therefore, is not a quick fix from a doctor, but an adjustment in life choices.
 
So, all is not well just because the young seem to do fine on Mountain Dew, Ding Dongs, and Cocoa Puffs. One of the greatest gifts parents can give kids is intelligent health direction. Children have no idea what's going on; they think food is cotton candy and Kool-Aid, and life is a new video game. Their robust and forgiving bodies should not fool us. Real love is not about being 'nice' by giving kids what they want, or doing what is convenient for us—like getting them out of our hair by sitting them in front of the television with a bag of corn curls.
 
Our job as parents is to save them from themselves and an adult life crippled with degenerative disease. We can do that by breaking away from the crowd and getting their bodies back in touch with their genetic roots.