Health Care

WELLNESS IS A CHOICE

Think about it for a moment... When you get sick, it is not your doctor or the health care company, not your father or mother, not your wife or husband, who is responsible for your health. Nobody but you are responsible for your own health. You alone have the power to choose wellness for yourself. You alone have the power to choose between staying healthy and getting hospitalized for heart disease, diabetes or other illness.

Most of the time, staying healthy boils down to making simple choices, particularly on our daily diet. Will you have tuna or pork for lunch? White rice or brown rice? White bread or wheat bread? White sugar or coco sugar? Coffee or green tea? Diet soda or fresh fruit juice? Cake or fresh pineapple? Cooked vegetables or raw veggies? Fast foods or home-cooked foods? Will I continue to smoke or quit now? Drugs or nutritional supplements?

If we are responsible for our own health, our mom has an even bigger responsibility—for herself and for the whole family, simply because every mother is a “kitchen manager”. In her hand lies the health of the entire family. The choices she makes when buying foodstuff in the groceries and her decision on how to prepare them spell the difference between a healthy and not-so-healthy family.

ABC OF WELLNESS

To stay healthy and put more years into our lives, observe the ABC of Wellness:

Avoid—unhealthy foods, tobacco and too much alcohol.

Be active. Exercise regularly. Be stress-free.

Choose a healthy diet. Choose nutrition and wellness.

PRO-INFLAMMATORY FOODS

Experts have classified unhealthy foods as pro-inflammatory foods even as they recommend anti-inflammatory diet to stay well and free from sickness. Medical experts agree that one major cause of degenerative diseases is chronic inflammation, triggered by pro-inflammatory fast food and processed food diet.

Inflammation is part of the body’s immune system to protect and heal itself. Normally, the body initiates biochemical reactions to send white blood cells and body chemicals to fight off any injurious invaders like toxins and bacteria. The “battlefield” becomes inflamed until the intruders are subdued. The injured area subsequently heals.

However, when the body malfunctions, over-reacts, or fights off an underlying long-term infection, inflammation may persist and become chronic. The common inflammatory symptoms of redness, swelling, heat and pain may or may not be visible until there is loss of function of the organ affected. Cancers, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and a host of lifestyle diseases today are linked to chronic inflammation.

AVOID PRO-INFLAMMATORY FOODS

1.Transfats – Margarine, biscuits, cookies and most bakery products contain transfats or hydrogenated oil. They are liquid oil converted to semi-hard fat for the purpose of increasing the product’s shelf life but actually “decreasing our own shelf life”. Transfats are toxic to the body. They lower good cholesterol, increase bad cholesterol, clog the arteries and increase insulin resistance.

2.Fried foods – like French fries, hamburgers, when fried in cooking oil used 5 to 10 times over. Cooking at high temperature trigger production of carcinogenic and pro-inflammatory substances.

3.Soda and juice drinks – contain white sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. A diet high in white sugar and white flour increases inflammatory markers. Worse if you take in artificial sweetener, which after ingested, produces three chemicals in the body: methanol converted to formalin, phenylalanine which causes depression/memory loss, and aspartic acid which adversely affects brain cells.

4.Processed meat – laden with preservatives, nitrates and other chemicals. Animals are fed with hormones and antibiotics which we take into our bodies and trigger inflammatory response.

ANTI-INFLAMMATORY FOODS

Researchers found out the balance between pro-inflammatory foods and anti-inflammatory foods in our modern diet is 25:1, far from the recommended ratio of 4:1. That’s why we should eat more vegetables, fish, nuts, avocado, olive oil and other foods or food supplements that are high in anti-inflammatory Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids.

BE ACTIVE AND HAVE A BETTER LIFESTYLE

1.Exercise regularly. The benefits of regular exercise greatly support the benefits of an anti-inflammatory diet.

2.Find healthy outlets for stress. If you live in a rat race, your stress hormones are always high. Cholesterol level increases. Blood glucose shoots up. Inflammatory chemicals are released. This condition promotes low-grade systemic inflammation, and eventually pain.

3.Quit smoking. Smoking cigarettes hardens arteries and promotes inflammation.

4.Get Vitamin D from early morning sun. Sunlight increases the body’s natural anti-inflammatory cytokines. Expose about 40% of skin. But do not get burned!

5.Keep a slim waistline. Studies reveal higher diabetes and cardiovascular risk in apple-shaped people than in pear-shaped individuals. Researchers say healthy waistline range from 34 to 39 inches in men; 29 to 33 inches in women. International Diabetes Federation says normal waistline for women is less than 32 inches and less than 38 inches in men.

6.Control blood sugar. American Diabetes Association recommends 8-hour fasting blood sugar at =100 mg/dl. Two hours after meals, sugar must be kept at =140mg/dl. Insulin spikes due to high glycemic foods. This irritates the inner lining of the blood vessels. This triggers inflammation that eventually leads to arterial plaque.

7.More fresh vegetables and fruits, less fruit juices from supermarket shelves. Whole fresh fruits and vegetables are rich in fiber, vitamins, minerals, enzymes and beneficial phytonutrients and antioxidants. Processing depletes the heat-sensitive anti-inflammatory nutrients.

8.Supplement with anti-inflammatory nutrients. Because the fast-paced daily grind today makes eating the right foods at all times nearly impossible, it will impact so beneficially to supplement the daily pro-inflammatory diet with natural anti-inflammatory nutrients of Omega-3, Omega-9 and Omega-5 fatty acids.

CHOOSE NUTRITION AND WELLNESS

Given the vast amount of information available in the Internet, we now have the power to learn more about prescription drugs like acetaminophen, aspirin, ibuprofen, NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) as well as chemicals stated in the labels of liniments, shampoo, lotion, etc. which are said to have adverse effects to our health.

Prescription drugs, for example, are like double-edged sword, as the patients have to recover twice, first from the illness and then from the harmful effects of the drugs. These medicines produce dietary deficiencies as they destroy the body's natural nutrients. Worse, they produce even more toxicity at a time when the body is least capable of handling such toxins.

Given this bit of information, would you not try to learn more and seek out better and safer alternative?

Wellness is a choice. We have to decide to be well for ourselves and for our family. We must decide to know more about healthy living by reading, researching or participating in health-oriented (local or online) communities. We must learn more about nutrition and wellness.

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” said Hippocrates, father of modern medicine. He also said that “If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health”.