In this blog, I’m going to explain what the six pillars of health care that you need to focus on to have a healthy life and reduce your risk for chronic illness and disease.
We are living in a society that believes that if you can put it in your mouth and eat it, its food. However just because you can ingest it doesn’t mean you can digest it or that it is good for you and your health. More and more we are learning the importance of optimal nutrition and how that relates to your health. We have seen a war wage over the sugar vs. fat camps as to regards to health and heart disease, a war that was won at great cost to humanity by the sugar industry. However the tide is turning, and the low carb healthy fat living ideology is finding a voice and bringing amazing results to health.
Yet we find that the health authorities globally are trying to silence Doctors from promoting this way of eating that takes us back to common sense as nature intended nutrition.
Problems with obesity and lifestyle disease are out of control two-thirds of the global population is overweight.
There is an increased risk of developing the lifestyle-related disease if you are overweight. You are more likely if you are overweight to develop health problems especially diabetes and its complications.
Low Carb High Fat Eating
Low carb living and eating real food means that these health issues are avoidable. Instead, we see increasing misinformation regarding our diet and lifestyle and increasing ill health for conditions that are both preventable and avoidable
Excess blood glucose from food gets into areas of the body and causes damage, if we eat in a way that we do not consume excess sugar then we do not end up yet another case on the rising rates of diabetes scale.
The Six Pillars of Health
General health essentially has 6 pillars – things that if you do will improve your outcome for living a long and healthy life.
These pillars are
Nutrition – right fuel equals healthy body just like your car, not processed food and chemicals Exercise Sleep Stress management Relationships and Communication Genetics Genetics Genetics is what you have however it doesn’t mean you will have the disease even if predisposed to it. You have to switch those genes on. Those genes get switched on by how we live – this is called epigenetics – your lifestyle choices trigger genes. So you may come from a family with a history of heart disease for example but if you chose a healthy lifestyle you will be less likely to develop the condition because you are not switching the gene on.
Relationships
Relationships – we are social creatures we are meant to collaborate and live in a community. It has been proven that isolation or even a feeling of isolation makes you more prone to disease. Social media actually can make you feel good if you have positive interactions. We draw strength from our relationships personal and family, local community and further wide-reaching. We like a sense of belonging and unity and oneness that is natural to our way of being. World consciousness and information is no longer controlled by church, politics and media/news. We are our own global community. But having said that we also need physical touch and care so we cannot live our lives entirely in a virtual world of the Internet and technology. In our relationships I would also include here a relationship with God or a higher being – a sense of there being something more than this and that life has purpose and meaning as being beneficial to health.
Stress
Stress – emotional and physical stressors. The worries of life, dealing with work and how we relate to the world by our reactions determine whether and how much stress we experience. Cortisol – stress hormone, too much cortisol leads us to struggle with health and weight so need to address stress. What is the solution to stress, don’t take it all on, we need to seek support and have the ability to be prepared and able to recognise stress and not just manage it but live in a way where the impact of life does not affect you so readily.
Take one day at a time and find things that help you to get things into perspective.
Sleep
Sleep – quality sleep not about the number of hours you sleep, winding down before bed and supporting your body to be ready to sleep. Take a nap if and when you need it. Early to bed and early to rise is actually the most supportive sleep rhythm for your body.
Exercise
Exercise – what is right for your body, how much exercise do we need. We used to do lots of manual labour and walking but now we work at desks, sit a lot and take our cars everywhere. So we do not get incidental activity during our day any more. Exercising to lose weight doesn’t really work. Exercise gently without straining your body. Be active to keep your mind healthy. Get out for a walk, go swimming and do some weights to keep your muscle mass up – light weights with lots of reps
Nutrition
Nutrition – you have the ultimate control over this and can change it right now. Get the right fuel in your tank consistently to invest in your health now and for the future. Avoid junk and processed foods as these will not give you optimal nutrition.
For the last 40 years we have been talking about low-fat diets and ended up eating too much sugar and it hasn’t worked obesity has gone through the roof and so has heart disease, diabetes and cancer. We followed bad advice and now we are paying the price of that with our health. A lot of this was due to the sugar industry funding science to not show that sugar was to blame for a lot of our chronic health issues.
The Mixed Messages About Sugar
Advice for babies is no added sugar so why do we not adopt this for ourselves, as sugar has been deemed harmful to the development of babies. So why do we suddenly shift this as our child or we get older? We see how kids go off when they have too much sugar. Sugar is ultimately a poison to our body.
Fat guidelines – do not limit fat for babies as critical for their brain and body development same for elderly and infirm. So why are we saying low fat and eat sugar when the guidelines make no sense.
We know sugar increases the risk of tooth decay so if sugar can rot the hardest thing in our body what is it doing internally. Sugar is also highly addictive and has the same effect on our brains as cocaine. So once we get a hit of it we want more and need more to have the same high that it creates.
Why are we feeding sugar to people when they have an inability to control their blood sugar? There are so much confusion and mixed messages around nutrition and what is right for our body. People genuinely believe you need carbs and sugar for energy when in fact we do not. We have essential fats and essential amino acids (the building blocks for proteins) Essential means without them we will get sick or die, as we can’t make them ourselves. Yet there are zero essential sugars. That to me is very telling about what our body does or doesn’t need to function and be healthy.
Eat Real Food
The simple message is just to eat REAL food – fresh, local and seasonal. Vegetables, fruit, meat and fish. Fresh fruit is sugar that turns into fat and we have a mechanism that sets us up to store sugar as fat. By all means, eat fruit but one or two pieces a day of what is seasonal.
A diet that is low in carbohydrate, no added sugar, and oils as they occur in nature not processed polyunsaturated oils.
The main key is to live the way nature intended for us and to care for our body now so our health does not suffer in the future. You have the power to choose how to live and how you treat your body. If you listen to your body and its needs you won’t go far wrong and you will be able to prevent or avoid any of our modern day health conditions.
Rachel is the founder and principal dentist at Evolve Dental Healing with over 30 years experience, practising holistically since 2001. Not your typical dentist, Rachel is a passionate opinion leader, challenging convention to empower people to make better dental and health choices, helping thousands to have healthy natural smiles. A respected writer and presenter on holistic dentistry, health and wellness it is Rachel’s mission to revolutionise the way people look at their dental health.