Demons crowd in to fill gap in excercising

My daily bike riding has been far from daily over the last two or three weeks. Family visits and other discombobulating events have interfered. Uncooperative relatives visiting from out of town refuse to be transported around on the back of a bicycle, and local family members live far enough apart to require bicycling for hours each day if I were to stick to my no-car plan. In short, most of my daily routine went to hell in a hand basket, with my body following right behind it.

For the 100th time I have to conclude that I’m just barely held together by exercise, because whenever I stop, the array of ailments that sally forth astounds me. One thing hurts, this other part is making creaking noises, this other thing doesn’t work, joints threaten to roll out of their sockets, I’m compelled to nap, I feel lousy, etc etc, -- none of which utter a peep when my daily transportation around town adds up to a minimum of sixty minutes of bicycling.

I read somewhere that “ninety percent of the time, the body heals itself.” I wish I knew who I was quoting, but I do believe we’re each just a big walking immune system, hacking through the jungle of attacking illnesses as we go about our day. The minute you stand still, they win. Got to keep the machete honed so you can keep hacking away.

You know what I’ve noticed? On the few occasions when I’ve indulged in going to the doctor about some vague thing, they rarely ask how much exercise I'm getting. Nor do they ask how much sleep I'm getting or how much water I'm drinking. Not even what kind of food I eat. They just start with a symptom and try to fix that – but it could have any of a thousand causes, and they really don’t know. So they start trying this and that to see if something alleviates the symptom, and you become a human laboratory until something works. But you could be on a diet of Coke and Fritos with four hours of sleep a night and no water and there are some doctors who wouldn't figure that out.

You might argue that the mechanic doesn't ask you if you pour Koolaid into your gas tank. But people are smarter about cars than they are about their bodies. Besides, there are no ads that tell you it's ok to put other stuff in your gas tank, whereas there are zillions of ads that tell you it's ok to put all kinds of weird things into your body. There 's a lot of perfectly legal misinformation about what's ok for your body.

I think western medicine is good for when you’re already way into the problem – like when your ____ needs to be replaced. Now that your ______ has completely ceased to function, they can see that. Or when you’ve been in an accident and you need to be actually put back together, as in Humpty Dumpty.

Aren’t I horrible? I know there are a lot of good doctors in the world. But I’m going to do everything I can to stay away from them, all the same. The thought of a doctor visit is all it takes to motivate me.