You control your health. It is your responsibility!

Nutrition and lifestyle can make a bigger difference on our health than any medication and a relatively few number of people are actually taking advantage of this avenue for health. Heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are not just a fact of getting older and the causes are primarily not genetic. It's time the public was informed that they have real control over their health. Getting one of the diseases that plague our society today is not arbitrary! It is in direct relation to how we live our lives. We own the responsibility of caring for ourselves and we can not rely on the miracles of modern medicine to keep us healthy. Modern medicine can not keep us healthy! It can keep us from death for an extended period of time but it can not keep us healthy. Most of us are born with health. We have all we need to live a long healthy life but we do not care for our health and nurture it.  So how do we care for our health?

1) Engage in physical activity- A minimum of 30 minutes a day 7 days a week at a medium to rapid pace. Start a walking group, take a dance class, buy a bicycle, learn tennis, anything that keeps us moving. Remember, what is in motion stays in motion. It doesn't have to be hard exercise, it could be two 15 minute walks.

2) Eat Healthy - Nutritional information seems to be all over the map depending on who you ask but since our health is directly linked to our survival and our quality of life, I would encourage everyone to make an effort to seek out the truth about what to eat. Should we seek the truth from RJR-Nabisco or Phillip Morris-Kraft? They would have no reason to bias any information, right? Even the USDA advice should be looked upon critically since their primary roll is to support big meat, big dairy, and big grain processes. I encourage everyone to seek information from sources that are not supported or funded by anyone with something to sell. Seek the evidence of pure research or speak with people who have done the research and you will find that we need to:

• remove complex carbohydrates in the form of processed food (no cookies, crackers, bread, bagels, waffles, candy, ice cream, soda, etc.) from our diet
• remove trans-fats from the diet (and yes that means goodbye fried food)
• include three servings of whole grains a day (brown rice, quinoa, spelt, oats, barley, wheat berries)
• eat as many raw fruits and vegetables as you want
• include 3 servings of lean protein a day
• use good oils (olive oil, canola oil, soybean oil, avocado oil)
• eat nuts
• eat fish
• restrict dairy to one serving a day or less
• limit red meat to 2 servings a week.
• Take fish oil and a multivitamin

  3) Think Spiritually - What is it that we value? What do we want to embody? What we eat contributes to the essence of who we are and what we value. Do we value a disease free body, fit capable body, or a pure body and then we must think about the choices we make and do the correspond with what we value.

4)  Go Green - There are many environmental factors that impact our health such as chemicals in our; food, body products, plastic containers, and air. We should seek to remove as many of these chemicals from our lives as possible so they are not endocrine disruptors. Get back to products that are natural, good for the earth, and good for us. There is wisdom in how our ancestors lived and what they shared with us.

5) Stress is another BIG environmental factor in our health that we should seek to limit. Continuing to release stress hormones causes vitamin and mineral deficiencies and wears our body down. Many times stress is a value system problem.  We may be stressed because we are being asked to act in a way that is in conflict with what we value. Meditation can be a great way of relieving stress or simply setting aside 15 minutes a day to sit alone quietly and breath deeply.