#CheckEngineLight #BodyAwareness

by SHAWN TRAUTMAN

You can bet there’d be trouble right now if we had one of these for our bodies.

Didn’t drink enough water today, check engine light comes on and everyone around you sees it. Haven’t gone to the bathroom in three days, check engine light comes on. Haven’t been eating a wide variety of vegetables and you’re now low on Vitamins E, C, or K, yep, check engine light comes on.

Drink something toxic and it’s not mixing well with your gut microbiome, immediate check engine light. Haven’t had much exercise and you have a toxic buildup of lactic acid that’s affecting your performance and energy, check engine light. Over exerted yourself and your back is out of alignment, which affects your bowels and is making you cross-eyed, you guessed it, check engine light.

Understand, this would both be for you and for those around you. Turns out, most people don’t realize the importance of nutrition or in taking care of their bodies whatsoever. And, this is certainly not just limited to food, so I’ll continue…

You’ve been exposed to a hazardous chemical by accident but you were unaware – immediate check engine light. You’ve had a drug of some type slipped into your drink and your body is just starting to process it – ding, ding… check engine light.

You’ve exceeded the safe levels of sun exposure and you’re now burning as a result – check engine light comes on. Your white blood cells drop way below the safe level due to an antibiotic you just took and you can be assured your check engine light starts flashing people like it’s in downtown New Orleans at Mardi Gras.

There’s more.

You’ve been exposed to a new bacteria, virus or pathogen your body has never seen before and your system starts fighting it – you can bet your check engine light would come on. You’ve contracted a STD or had a foreign substance enter your bloodstream in some fashion – bingo, check engine light.

You’ve ingested a drug or consumed too much alcohol that’s shut down or taxing certain pathways or organs. Undoubtedly, your check engine light would come on. You’ve consumed enough meat over time to result in dangerously high cholesterol levels, check engine light starts flashing. Anxiety starts getting the best of you and your blood pressure jumps to a never-before-seen level, know that your check engine light would shine bright for everyone.

As humans, we have incredible abilities to see, hear, feel, smell and taste things around us, but we also miss an incredible amount. We’re nowhere near as good with our eyes as a hawk or as good with our noses as a bloodhound. We don’t have the ears of an owl nor the taste buds of a catfish.

We’re only human.

This means we have to rely on our surroundings, our environment, our bosses, friends, our favorite products (ingredients), our air quality, our water, and our trusted officials and we regularly don’t have any good way to check if our own “check engine light” is on.

The more we expose ourselves to things we’re unfamiliar with – food, drinks, drugs, medicine, chemicals, people, etc – the more we have to be aware of our own limits and check points. If you’re not in touch with what feels right and you have varying levels of acceptance as to what feels normal on any given day, you’re likely to not even know when your check engine light is on.

Friends. We don’t have check engine lights. We have bodies that try to tell us things all the time but can’t. We have brains. We must learn to treat our bodies with respect and react and adjust when our internal gauges start dinging.

Now, imagine we actually did have check engine lights. It’d be cool, right? Maybe. My take is that it would have everything to do with who sets the limits, thresholds, acceptable levels, and gauges. Who gets access to those things and who can manipulate them?

AI is heading in this direction and, while there are major advantages, there are seemingly endless disadvantages relating to taking the ‘humanness’ out of being human. When we regulate everything, we all become a rather homogenous version of a species and it wouldn’t take long before we’re all wiped out.
Best if we all just learn how our bodies work, how foods work, how to take care of things naturally and be aware of everything going in and out.

Now, your thoughts. Would you rather have an on-body-version of the check engine light that’s monitored externally (think large database) or figure it out as you go?

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