The HLS Concept (CH 1)
The fundamental concept of Human Life Styling (HLS), developed by Dr. John C. McCamy, is to change your life style in order to attain an optimal level of health. The program provides a practical methodology to accomplish this goal. “Your life style is you. You are what you eat, drink, breathe, think and do. Therefore, what you become tomorrow depends upon what you do today. You are the only person in the world who can do what is necessary to make you happy and healthy.”
The principals of the program can be thought of as preventative health care. As it is common knowledge that almost every degenerative disease is fully preventable in its first decade of development. This program focuses on prevention of diseases before they develop, not treatment once they are established. Having said that, even those with established patterns of disease can benefit by changing their lifestyle in accordance with the program and effectively changing the outcome of their lives.
As Dr. McCamy began to investigate his patients health habits he noticed patterns in life style and behaviors that tended to result in similar symptoms for illnesses common to the group of patients. Over time he developed lists of what to do and not to do for each illness pattern. After the lists were consolidated there were about forty things a person would have to do every day. This was too many for most patients to remember, let alone do on a regular basis. Dr. McCamy continued to boil the lists down to a simple, streamlined, practical system that would cover the major areas that a person could concentrate their effort on to prevent nearly all illnesses.
About the same time he was developing this system, Dr. McCamy sought to meet many of the leaders of preventative medicine as he could. Out of years of study and understanding what it means to live a truly natural life style for a normal person at this stage of human evolution.
We can see from data collected over time, that the trends of degenerating health that Dr. McCamy was aware of have only continued to progress along lines of declining health.
Health Data Links: Adults | Children
The most fundamental principle of HLS is, “Disease is Predictable. Disease is Preventable.” all else is developed from this source principle. With that in mind, the following are the three keys to success of the HLS program.
1. “There is a difference between ‘normal’ and ‘average’.”
In the HLS program these words are not synonymous. A normal person should be totally healthy without any symptoms of disease or degeneration. But modern health care does not evaluate health based on normal, but average.
It is important to recognize that in HLS, ‘Normal‘ means there are no symptoms, while ‘Average‘ means that symptoms increase with age and health declines over time. The goal of the HLS program is to bring you to a state of normal health, and not to the average state of health for your age, gender, race, etc. Average should not be what we strive for, because as the collective health of our society declines, so does the expected healthy condition. In HLS, the normal person is one who lives his or her entire life without a symptom.
2. “Disease takes a long time to develop.”
This means that symptoms appear a long time before a clinical disease is manifested into an acute clinical abnormality. In fact, disease may be progressing even without noticeable symptoms. Humans tend to only change behavior when something forces change. In many cases the decline in health is gradual, and may not have a serious enough symptom to motivate change until a critical event occurs, such as heart attack or stroke.
The HLS program strives to inspire change prior to disease or degeneration develops, and to reverse this decline if it is already established.
3. “Susceptibility factors increase the likelihood of disease. Resistance factors lower the possibility of disease.”
The techniques of HLS all revolve around this concept: ‘how you can learn to build up your resistance factors and thereby lower your susceptibility to illness.’ Resistance is not just a single thing that you can change directly, it is a collection of factors that must be present in order for you to stay well. If any of them is missing, then your resistance is lowered.
Resistance factors are positive, things you can do to improve your health and well-being. Susceptibility factors are negative, things you want to avoid to keep from degenerating. In HLS you accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.
Here is a snapshot of a ‘normal’ person: Very low number of susceptibility factors, such as; smoking, ingestion of refined foods, saturated fats, lack of exercise and over response to stress. At the same time a very high number of resistance factors; regular exercise, eats whole unrefined food, balanced nutrition and enjoys a low stress response to the environment.
To sum up, the goal of Human Life Styling is to help you achieve ‘normal’ health, arresting disease in early stages before enough time has passed to fully develop, while diminishing or eliminating your susceptibility factors and increasing your resistance factors. To accomplish this, a five part program has been formulated, which include the following areas:
- Ecology
- Nutrition
- Exercise
- Stress Reduction
- Balance (biochemistry and energy flow)
These areas are summed up symbolically in the logo for this website.
Human Life Styling Logo
The whole human body, is complete when the 5 elements of HLS are present and interconnected. The Head is colored Yellow, which is the element of Balancing Energy and Biochemistry. The Left Hand is Red and symbolizes the element of Physical Activity or Exercise. The Left Foot is Blue, symbolizing Stress Reduction or Relaxation. The Right Foot is Green, symbolizing Ecology and the Environment which you surrounds you. Finally the Right Hand is Orange, symbolizing Nutrition, what you put in your body to nourish and sustain its proper function. A special thank you to my friend Carina Franz for developing this elegant logo for the HLS site and community.
The 5 elements are synergistic and improving one improves the others. At the same time, to improve any one particular area, you must also improve the others. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Ultimately the goal is to improve the whole human being and not just prevent or reverse the process of a particular disease.
As you get into the program, you will probably conclude that Human Life Styling is just good common sense. It methodically helps you to do what you already know, down deep, that you ought to do.
I hope that by bringing this incredible program to the Internet, many people will find a simple straight forward way to improve their life and the lives of those who they know and love.