Happy 30th anniversary – World Wide Web! Oh how our wellness world has wandered.

by | Mar 12, 2019

Let me count the ways (or some of them) for how the world wide web (WWW) has changed our wellness and fitness.

Way #1 – Too much information (TMI) which isn’t credible, reliable, authoritative, or recent for us mortals to decipher and use or discard.

No doubt the WWW has offered you a tantalizing deal like:

  1. the miracle natural pill to help a sicty-something male to pee like a bull,
  2. drinking the reverse-aging serum which Noah uses to live to 950 ?!
  3. a detox smoothie to ensure that you lose 40 pounds of fat in forty days effortlessly…

Kudos to Tim Berners-Lee for his uber-changing invention of the World Wide Web in March 1989.  I suppose I could extend my tip of the wellness cap to ARPANet originators like Vinton Cerf for their digital mail system.

Hercules, Samson, the patron saint of fitness (Saint Sebastian), innovator Jack Lalanne, and early Olympic champions seemed to do well without the WWW and internet.

For younger readers, here is a reminder of Mr. LaLanne’s bellwether efforts for fitness in the 20th century.

jack_lalanne_quote EXERCISE and Nutrition_King and Queen in Kingdom

Here’s hope that unknown-unknowns and irrational exuberances which the WWW may generate don’t cause folks to lose their personal Buyer Beware safety shields or credit ratings!

caveat emptor - merriam webster

This feline didn’t remember caveat emptor (image credit to https://goo.gl/images/tVUK7X ).

I hope that you do remember that latin phrase before your hit that little yellow PAY button on a WWW page for a magic pill or elixir.

After all, something that sounds too good to be true is likely to be untrue – right?  Please do your homework and be an educated buyer of wellness good and services. PT Barnum , whether he coined the “sucker” phrase or not was right about our innate interest in hoaxes and sideshows.

I’ll continue to keep my eyes and ears tuned for a fountain of youth, do-nothing svelteness, or instant abs.  You’ll be the first folks to hear of these findings.  Until then, please consider my own boomer assertion that good things can be done naturally in due time. And enjoy the journey in the Big Show, not a PT Barnum sideshow!

Yours in wellness,

df

 

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