Good Health Week

Mark Twain once said, “The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not”.

This being my first edition of Good Health article, let us start defining what constitutes good health. We all know this in some form. It has four important components – nutrition, physical exercise, good sleep, and meditation. To make this easy to incorporate in our daily routine, concepts of cooking, sports and prayers were evolved. Unfortunately, we have digressed in each of these areas. Cooking food has lost the knowledge of nutrition, sports in our country have still not been embraced at all age/gender, and we have lost the meaning of prayers.

We live in such a fast paced world that we sometimes forget that our health is something that we need to be concerned about. We get so busy with family, friends, our jobs, our fun that we even forget to eat, or we eat on the run.

Do you feel tired or run down? Do you just pass it off as loss of sleep? When you are young maybe you can get away with that excuse, but eventually it will catch up with you. The quality of your life begins early, and is set in motion by what you do as a young child.
Certainly you have heard that you need to build a house on a solid foundation, but have you ever thought about that with what you eat or drink, or generally do to have good health, and to feel well.
Your life can be improved by doing a few simple things. Our body is composed mainly of water, so the easiest way to improve your wellness is by drinking lots of water. With so much pollution, clean water is harder to come by, but you can still find pure sources of water.

One reason that we need water is because of the oxygen content. Our body needs oxygen to live, and it has even been discovered that cancer cells cannot live in oxygen, so maybe the easiest way to prevent cancer is to drink lots of clean water.
It also helps to live where the air is cleaner, and has a higher level of oxygen. If you cannot, then you need to have a lot of green plants, because the chlorophyll takes the carbon dioxide in the air and turns it into oxygen. Therefore, if you want more energy and feel better, drink more water.

Try having a glass of water every hour, and see if your energy levels do not jump. Your stress and anxiety levels should also go down. Sounds like a pretty easy solution for better health and wellness.
Another quick way to better health is to eat your vegetables. How many times have you heard that? But have you ever been told how good chlorophyll is for you. That is why you need to eat your green veggies.

You probably were never told to eat green vegetables, because chlorophyll has more than a hundred minerals that the body needs. Being deficient in a necessary mineral can make the body sick. If you do not like eating vegetables, an easy way to get them is through juicing.

Owning a good juicer is an easy way to provide for good health, but you have to use it. You can experiment with the vegetables, and fruits to get a juice that you like the taste.
Your health will improve with the better nutrition you are getting in the juice, and also with the bad drink that you no longer need to have. Get your vitamins and minerals through fresh juice.

Another simple way to better health and wellness is through exercise, a dirty word to a lot of people. There are lots of ways to get exercise. The easiest, and maybe the best, is just to go walking. You can start at a comfortable pace, and distance, and increase either at your own choice.

The important thing is that you start, and that you keep doing it consistently. Once you get into the habit of doing it, you will miss it when you are not able to do it. Good habits are as hard to break as bad habits.

One of those things that people do not think about is that sweating allows poison to come out of your body. Getting rid of the poisons in your body is always a good thing. You do not need to go to a gym to get your exercise, but sometimes it is easier to get on an exercise program when you sign up for a class with friends who are also motivated to better health.

You can do yoga, pilates, aerobics, dance-ercise, water aerobics, or numerous other choices. There is some exercise that will fit you. As long as you remember that the end result of your exercise is better health, and a longer quality life, then it should be easy to stick to your program.
Look at all of the elderly people you know who would live their lives differently if they could.

The World Health Organization defines health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Eating right, exercising, and sleeping well play an equal role in the prevention of infections and diseases. However, a good sense of self, a loving support network, and the potential for continued personal growth is also important to our overall wellbeing.

Many of us are not in control of the factors that cause us to become ill whether they be genetic, environmental, or something else entirely. There are many avenues we can take to improving our health, which include the use of traditional and modern medicines when we are ill.

However, most people cannot access or afford proper health care such as healthy sanitation and hygiene, which is necessary to prevent the spread of disease.

Moreover, a large proportion of the global population are disenfranchised because of poverty, geographic location, disability, or social stigma against those who are ill. In addition, sexual health continues to be a highly contentious issue around the world particularly with concern to the method of transmission of some of the world’s deadliest diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, one of the most pressing issues in terms of health and wellness is the education, prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. The Millennium Development Goals seek to address this issue specifically in Goal 5: Improve maternal health and Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases.

While people of all ages should maintain good health, young people face special challenges as they transition from childhood to adulthood. With the onset of puberty, the body changes to accommodate physical and emotional growth, but it also marks one of the most vulnerable stages in a young person’s life. During this time, females tend to struggle more than males with body image and self-esteem issues which can lead to dangerous eating disorders and even death. On the other hand substance abuse, depression, self-mutilation and suicide have higher incident rates in males than females and if left untreated these health concerns may lead to permanent mental and physical damage.

Given that everyone’s body and medical history is different, it is important to be aware of what makes you sick and even what makes you feel better on a personal level.

There is extensive international research documenting the ways in which the health status of individuals or groups is significantly determined by social and economic conditions as well as by therapeutic care or personal health behaviours. Social determinants of health (SDOH) are social and economic conditions that influence the health of individuals and communities. A wealth

of research on SDOH provides evidence that: health follows a social gradient; stress damages health; the health impacts of early development and education lasts a lifetime; poverty and social exclusion cost lives; stress in the workplace increases the risk of disease; job security improves health;

unemployment causes illness and premature death; social supports and supportive networks improve health; alcohol, drug and tobacco use are influenced by the social setting; healthy food is a political issue; and healthy transport means walking and cycling and good public transport. Other basic determinants of health, such as genetics, interact with SDOH to present a broad overview of why

some individuals and communities are healthy while others are not.

The basic foundation for a healthy individual starts from his foetal stage with proper and healthy nutrition derived from his or her mother. Hence, a pregnant woman’s diet stands atop all diets.

Your food shall be your medicine. Ayurveda has postulated the role of food and especially nutritive foods for maintaining health as well as cure of diseases. Nutrients are necessary for the proper functioning of mental, physical, metabolic, chemical and hormonal activities. The body is like a machine that will repair and rebuild itself if proper nutrition is provided by way of food.

Sumptous nutrition is available in fruits and vegetables. Fruits have the capacity to give all that a body needs. How to consume? What to consume? Which fruit helps in which way? The answers to these questions can be found in our Nutrition and Healthy Diet Section

The World Health Organization defines health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Eating right, exercising, and sleeping well play an equal role in the prevention of infections and diseases. However, a good sense of self, a loving support network, and the potential for continued personal growth is also important to our overall wellbeing.

Many of us are not in control of the factors that cause us to become ill whether they be genetic, environmental, or something else entirely. There are many avenues we can take to improving our health, which include the use of traditional and modern medicines when we are ill.

However, most people cannot access or afford proper health care such as healthy sanitation and hygiene, which is necessary to prevent the spread of disease.

Moreover, a large proportion of the global population are disenfranchised because of poverty, geographic location, disability, or social stigma against those who are ill. In addition, sexual health continues to be a highly contentious issue around the world particularly with concern to the method of transmission of some of the world’s deadliest diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, one of the most pressing issues in terms of health and wellness is the education, prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. The Millennium Development Goals seek to address this issue specifically in Goal 5: Improve maternal health and Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases.

While people of all ages should maintain good health, young people face special challenges as they transition from childhood to adulthood. With the onset of puberty, the body changes to accommodate physical and emotional growth, but it also marks one of the most vulnerable stages in a young person’s life. During this time, females tend to struggle more than males with body image and self-esteem issues which can lead to dangerous eating disorders and even death. On the other hand substance abuse, depression, self-mutilation and suicide have higher incident rates in males than females and if left untreated these health concerns may lead to permanent mental and physical damage.

Given that everyone’s body and medical history is different, it is important to be aware of what makes you sick and even what makes you feel better on a personal level.

There is extensive international research documenting the ways in which the health status of individuals or groups is significantly determined by social and economic conditions as well as by therapeutic care or personal health behaviours. Social determinants of health (SDOH) are social and economic conditions that influence the health of individuals and communities. A wealth

of research on SDOH provides evidence that: health follows a social gradient; stress damages health; the health impacts of early development and education lasts a lifetime; poverty and social exclusion cost lives; stress in the workplace increases the risk of disease; job security improves health;

unemployment causes illness and premature death; social supports and supportive networks improve health; alcohol, drug and tobacco use are influenced by the social setting; healthy food is a political issue; and healthy transport means walking and cycling and good public transport. Other basic determinants of health, such as genetics, interact with SDOH to present a broad overview of why

some individuals and communities are healthy while others are not.