Our Gemara on Amud Aleph tells us an interesting vignette about when Rabbi Yirmiyahu was unwell and a doctor came to visit him. when the doctor saw that he had a particular kind of food believed to intensify the illness, the doctor, exasperated, declared, ”The angel of death is in this house, and you were expecting me to try to cure him?”
It is worth focusing on the common challenging human behavior pattern of self-destructive refusal to follow medical recommendations. Even easy things such as taking medicine on time is hard for some people to do, let alone the famous exercise and lose 50 pounds so that your blood pressure and cholesterol will go down. The pharmaceutical industry supplies dozens of profitable medications to try to make up for the human foible of simply not wanting to eat in a healthy fashion or to exercise in a healthy fashion. There’s been so much medical gaslighting in the light of the Covid pandemic that it is difficult to sort out fact from fiction, or to what extent various treatments work. What is clear though is that basic risk factors such as being overweight and not doing exercise, are hardly mentioned by the press who instead constantly panic-monger and propose expensive treatments as a solution to various medical ailments. I don’t think that is a surprise because there’s not much money in people losing weight and taking vitamin D pills that cost about two cents. So which advertisers would sponsor those kinds of articles and announcements, and which companies would invest millions of dollars in academic studies to prove or refute their effectiveness? It is far more profitable to invest money in a new treatment and prove that it works through an academic study than to discover that a two-cent vitamin or losing weight is equally effective, or more effective.
Why do so many people ignore basic health maintenance concerns that are the true “safe and highly effective“ treatments? I think there are three issues at play. The obvious one is that it requires tremendous delay of gratification and רואה את הנולד to turn down an extra portion now, that will only yield a long term benefit after hundreds of such healthy eating decisions. Secondarily, even when it comes to taking pills, it is uncomfortable to admit our lack of control and our mortality. It is frustrating to our sense of independence to understand that we might be dependent on little chemicals and pills. For some however, I believe there are deeper matters at play as well. There could be unconscious passive suicidal thoughts coming from depression or hopelessness, feeling life and well-being is not worth investing in. In order to take care of your health there needs to be a certain amount of appropriate narcissism. You’ll have to love yourself enough to care enough about how you look and how you feel. Sometimes, it’s just easier to order another serving of fries. I know, I’ve done it many times.
Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation 
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