DIY Health Guide

Introduction With this guide I want to encourage you to take a large part of your health care into your own hands. I do not intend to make your life a misery, quite the opposite. I will show you how much of your health and happiness is your own making. There are many factors influencing your state of health and in this guide I list the most important ones. Some factors are out of your hands and I will let you know how to handle these. It is my belief that if you implement the measures discussed below your health should improve. For this it does not matter what state of health you are in at present; whether you are in almost perfect health, whether you have some minor ailments, or whether you are seriously ill. If there is only one idea to remember from this guide it must be this: The more life-style measures you implement, the less you will need to use some form of medicine to help you with your symptoms. Your Health Bank Account I would like to start with this simple concept: Your body works like a bank account. Just as with money, you can pay in and you can take out. The way to stay in credit is to pay in more than you take out. We are born with a certain fixed level of health; this is our credit. Many people call this “constitution”. This was given to us at conception. From then on we try to keep the account in credit. This is not easy when our constitutional health is continuously eroded by the onslaughts of pollution, infection, and emotional stress. The good news is that we can protect ourselves. We can even improve on our constitutional health by using lifestyle and medical measures prudently and judiciously. In other words, it is within our power to build on our constitution and keep our health bank account strong and thriving. Please be aware that some of the factors involved are not under our control. But in effect this just means that we need to make an extra effort with the ones we have control over. The concept of a health bank account simplifies our daily lives enormously. Without becoming obsessed, we can keep an eye on our habits and attitudes and make sure we engage more in positive than negative ones. This way, we should at least maintain our constitutional health. Why can one person smoke and drink and still remain healthy whereas another dies of lung cancer 20 years after having had a couple of cigarettes? The explanation is to be found in their health bank accounts. Overall, the first person must have paid in more than he took out and so remained healthy. The second person stopped smoking, but the rest of his lifestyle was probably majorly health eroding. What exactly are those things that we call “health eroding”? There is so much debate and controversy, who can we believe? Advice changes every few years, too. My answer is: use your common sense. Read on and see for yourself whether you think I make sense to you. I am going to discuss the main areas that influence our health and I will let you know the conclusions I have come to. When I speak about health I mean our emotional, mental and physical health. I will also touch on spiritual health and give you my opinion on this controversial subject. I will simplify my approach by stating that there are a number of basic building blocks that open the possibility of a disease-free life. Whether your life will in fact be disease-free or not depends on your original bank account balance and how much you pay in and take out. Please be aware that some of the building blocks are not under your control. To prevent your account from slipping towards chronic disease, you must therefore ensure that you do as much as you can in those areas that are under your control. For example: To protect against air pollution, you could make sure your diet contains an extraordinary amount of antioxidants to ward off damage caused by air pollution. Or you could use certain disciplines of alternative medicine (I will discuss these later) that have the power to stimulate your defences to provide protection. Building Block No 1: Nutrition This is probably one of the most controversial and confusing topics. I therefore ask you to do nothing but use your common sense. Please keep an open mind and follow through my explanations. Human beings are different from other animals. They can override their natural instinctive appetite and arrive at all sorts of strange convolutions when it comes to food. Some people are guided by their cravings and claim their body must need it if they crave it. Some are guided by their sense of ethics and claim certain foods are unhealthy when in fact they feel morally guilty when eating them. Some people are routine driven and/or addicted and cannot possibly imagine changing their food choices. Some people are supporters of the whole food movement and eat what looks like bird food to others. Where are you in this?