My Story

by Chet Day

Me in a photo shoot taken on March 31, 2003, at age 55.

What I'm doing here and why
My name is Chet Day. In April of 1992 I awoke one morning with the awful feeling that at the age of 44 my physical body would soon fall apart. I suffered from indigestion, constipation, hemorrhoids, fatigue, depression, incredible gas and bloating, and a variety of other middle-aged American symptoms.

At the time, I lugged close to 200 pounds on my 5'7" frame. I spent most of my time sitting on my big butt while my thick hands and fingers danced on a keyboard. I drank gallons of coffee and cases of soft drinks to maintain a mental edge while I worked at my computer. And I wolfed candy bars and corn chips like the local supermarket would stop carrying them in the morning.

When I did force myself away from my computers to get some shuteye, I spent more time tossing, turning, and belching than I did sleeping. Simply put, I looked like warmed over waffles and felt even worse. But I ignored all this and kept up my hectic work style and ignorant lifestyle.

For a while, I mean.

Then my world threatened to collapse
One morning a few weeks later the shoulder of my right arm felt like it would explode when I tried to type. I could barely lift that arm to keyboard height, and punching keys sent shooting pains up and down my arm. I was also getting pains in my fingers that sounded suspiciously like the arthritis that ran in my family.

"This is a problem," I thought, and I didn't know what to do.

You see, I don't trust doctors and the medical profession in general because I've watched surgical and allopathic interventions destroy the health and peace of mind of my parents and, to a slightly lesser degree, my wife. I could tell you horror stories about what my mother and father and spouse have been through that would make you sick to your stomach. I bet you have some of these same stories in your family. Unfortunately, most of us do.

But, back in 1992, I found myself desperate. Putting aside my qualms, I decided it wouldn't hurt to at least have a consultation regarding my physical problems.

Get used to feeling sick, pal
A talk to an orthopedic specialist resulted in two comments:

• an offer to inject my shoulder with a drug that he described as being "better than cortisone that'll cover up the pain for a month or two and maybe it'll even go away while you're not noticing it";
  
  
• a sympathetic, "Well, you are past forty, so you may as well start getting used to having physical problems." He also offered to prescribe some pills for my fingers, adding that I might have to take them "for the rest of your life."
  

The heck with that, I said
Being the stubborn sort who rarely believes anything on first look and being particularly skeptical when it comes to doctors and their pronouncements, I rejected this MD's advice to shoot myself up with dope and pop myself down with pills and reconcile my mind to failing health for the second part of my life. Instead, I quit my part-time job as a sysop on a telecommunications network, unplugged my computers and modems, and spent the next three months worth of evenings reading everything I could find about alternative approaches to health.

As a result of my reading and experimentation, within six months I had learned how to take care of myself and how to provide my body with the various factors it needed so it could work the way it was designed to function.

At the end of that six month period, I weighed 145 pounds. My body, once I started treating it properly, corrected the problems with my shoulder and fingers, and all my other middle-age health issues resolved as well.

The body truly can heal itself when given a chance.

Most importantly for me, however, because of my workaholic ways, I regained the energy of my teens.

So I started writing about what I'd learned
Shortly afterwards in May of 1993, I started a monthly printed newsletter devoted to the principles of Natural Hygiene, the lifestyle that I'd discovered that allowed me to improve my health and energy. (Although that newsletter is defunct, you can still read the 49 issues that I published during its four-year run. If you want information on the half million words that document my health journey and ongoing research between 1993 and 1997, click here.)

And during 1996, though it got off to a rocky start as a result of my zealotry, I also started sending out Chet's Health Tip, a free email newsletter devoted to "how-to" built your health by all natural means. You can get this publication, now called Health & Beyond Weekly every Wednesday by clicking here.)

So, as you can guess, Health & Beyond Online exists to share what I've learned (and continue to learn) about natural ways of improving health and longevity.

What am I learning now? Well, quite a lot actually. You see, these days I sit here in my home office in suburbia in rural North Carolina and write and research health a good eight to ten hours seven days a week. And the more I read and write and learn, the more I realize I really don't know much at all about the marvels of our amazing bodies.

Although I pretty much eat and live by the H&B Living to the Max model and encourage you to give that program a try in your life, you'll also find many other points of view within the pages of my website.

Personally, I'm constantly experimenting with my own program, especially since I've had a hard time the past several years maintaining my ideal weight. As a workaholic writer who all too often these days chooses to hammer the keyboard with my fingers rather than to pound the asphalt in my jogging shoes and lift and curl the iron out in the garage, I pay the piper with flab around the middle.

With that said, I continue to feel great and have tremendous energy on my current predominantly plant-based diet that also contains eggs, wild Alaskan salmon, raw milk cheese, yogurt, and grass-fed beef, but I'm not the lean, mean jogging machine I was during the first few years of my health adventure.

So, probably like you, I'm always looking for new answers in this interesting search for an ideal diet and life style that allows a person to enjoy food and life while also maintaining superior health.

In short, I like health information and theories that challenge and test my assumptions, and I hope you do too. If you don't, you've come to the wrong place. If you do, come in and look around. Perhaps you'll accept some of this information; perhaps you'll reject some of it. Perhaps some of it will change your life for the better as it did mine.

I doubt that you'll find too many of the ideas at this site boring.

Come in. Explore. Learn. Challenge. Enjoy.

Chet Day
Editor, Health & Beyond Weekly

April 21, 2005

P.S. If you're the sort of person who cares about credentials, you can learn about mine by clicking here.