January 16, 2012

 
Recent renewed interest in health and wellness issues have prompted me to renew this column. Please feel free to write to me if you have questions or suggestions for articles.

Looking For Health will include information of interest gleaned from my extensive reading, with my personal and professional experience added to help readers understand and use this information to build better health and wellness for themselves and their families. I'm not a doctor or researcher; I'm just a nurse who knows that some people don't have time to search the Internet for the health information they need, and who often don't really understand much of what they do find.

So, where to start?

It would probably be most helpful if I outlined my personal philosophy for health and wellness first.

Health and wellness: Health is not just the absence of disease. A person can have almost perfect functioning of all the major body systems and still not enjoy true health. On the other hand, a person can suffer from one or more physical problems and yet enjoy a robust health. How does that work? It is a process called "wellness", which is why I use the two words together most of the time.

Wellness is a state that makes optimal use of both body and mind to achieve relative health and happiness - fulfillment. Physical perfection is not really possible, though the healthy newborn baby comes the closest. Everyone has something or many things that can or do stand between them and their optimal level of functioning and enjoyment of life. The real purpose of health care should be to assist us to find the right combination of diet, activity and medication (chemical or natural), where necessary, to reach our fullest potential for good functional status and enjoyment of life.

The mind/spirit and physical body are parts of the whole being. They cannot be truly separated, and the attempt to do so has been one of the worst things to happen in modern Western (allopathic) medicine. In many respects, some practitioners are beginning to see this and work toward changing their methods and outlook, but it will take a very long time before it makes serious headway in mainstream medicine. While we wait for that to happen, there are a lot of good things going on right now, and we can take advantage of many of them if we are careful. Don't make the mistake of throwing out everything Western medicine has achieved just because some of it is bad or has been used wrongly.

Just as with individual liberty, it is really up to YOU to find and nurture that balance. If you wait for the doctors and insurance companies to discover and implement this philosophy, you may well survive, but you may never find true health and wellness either. You must take full responsibility for your life, health and happiness and find what works for you each day. Nobody can do it for you, any more than someone else can make you free.

Wellness is also an ongoing process, not a destination. I learn new things every day, both from the outside world and from inside myself. I learn a little of what others have learned, determine if it is something that might be useful for me to try, and then work to apply it to my own life and situation.

There is no one right answer for everyone in every instance. There are thousands of foods, herbs, medications, meditations and so much more that have helped people in the past with one or many physical or mind/spirit problems. It is not possible to know about all of them, and it is not possible or practical to implement all of them. Yet among them, somewhere, there is probably an answer for your particular problem. It is certainly possible to make mistakes, and one must be careful, but you are really no more apt to make mistakes than a doctor would. Learn as much as you can first. Experiment carefully, and give things plenty of time before you decide it is "not working."

Many people have a very unfortunate idea that anything that is "natural" is also automatically safe. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Arsenic is a substance found in nature, relatively common, and certainly poison. Castor beans are beautiful and look much like any other bean, but in its "natural" state it is a dangerous poison, both bean and other plant parts. The poison is, however, in the dose. Almost anything can be dangerous if you eat or drink enough of it, even plain water. Many things that are useful in small amounts are dangerous or deadly in larger doses, so it is vital that you learn as much about each thing as possible so that you can have the best chance of finding something that will be helpful rather than harmful.

There is no such thing as guaranteed safety, and the pursuit of this myth has all but destroyed our entire culture and medicine itself. Each breath we take carries some risk, and we all must accept and deal with a certain amount of risk in everything we do or we become paralyzed and psychotic. Think of what would happen if a person was afraid of absolutely everything. How long would they live? Would they find any joy in life at all?

So, learn about what is available. Find out how other people have used it and their results. There are not a lot of clinical trials and research for many of the herbs and "foods as medicine", but find it if it exists. Think about your own particular subculture and the things your ancestors did and used for health. You will find a wealth of things to try, I'm sure.

The definition of "good nutrition" is highly controversial, especially in the last few years. Many people are discovering that the government approved and promoted diet information of the last 20 years or so is completely false, and even deliberately misleading. More recently, the blizzard of fad diets, pills and potions for weight loss we used to see on TV and in magazine ads has been replaced with a wide variety of web pages touting one or another whole life and nutrition philosophies, such as the "paleo" diet. Reading that will be a serious shock to anyone who has ever even contemplated a vegetarian, let alone a strict vegan diet. Talk about opposite poles! Yet they both claim serious scientific backing for their theories.

Do your own research, and learn as much as you can about the various claims before you make up your mind, and don't worry if you settle for something somewhere between one and another. Human beings are omnivorous, and can survive an amazing variety of diet, conditions and lifestyles. And, luckily, if you learn something new you can always adopt that along with or instead of anything else if it seems better to you. YOU are in control, which is as it should be.

We have the richest and most varied foods available to us in America, but far too many people are either unaware of the real needs of their bodies or have chosen to ignore them. The statistics for heart disease, diabetes and cancer are loud testimonies to the foolishness all around us. In a country overflowing with good food, most people are overfed and malnourished!

There are thousands of diet books available, but - as far as I'm concerned - there is one sure and easy measure that anyone can begin to apply to their own life immediately and begin their journey toward health and wellness. Look for and eat, as much as possible, things in their original condition. It goes far beyond the hackneyed phrase of all natural.

Buy and eat real fruit, not processed or "fruit flavored" things. Buy and eat at least some real vegetables each day, fresh and whole as much as possible. (And yes, potatoes are vegetables... just in a special category.) Buy fresh cheese, meat and fish, and learn to cook them. You might want to learn to make your own bread, or even pasta. Make home made yogurt and learn to use it too. You will save money, and you will be surprised at how little time it actually takes to provide this healthful food - as well as the incredible joy of providing yourself and your family with something truly healthy to eat.

Stop buying instant and pre-prepared foods as much as possible. These things are simply loaded down with unnecessary salt, sugar, fat and chemicals. Use bread and cereals made from whole grains as much as possible. Look at the most recent scientific material available for the use of sea salt, fats, and fiber foods. Forget about counting calories as the whole answer to weight management. The calories mean nothing if there is no decent nutrition involved. You can lose weight eating sawdust, but you won't be healthy.

Read the labels. If you see a long list of chemical names you cannot pronounce, it might be an indication that this isn't something you want to put into your body. Learn all of the different names for sugar. Ingredients are listed by weight, but if the various sugars have different names, you might not notice that the largest component of that jar is actually sugar, even if the fruit is listed first!

Preventing health problems is of far more value than finding a cure after the fact, but the good news is that our bodies are most remarkable. They are almost miraculously able to heal and rebuild after long abuse if we can just find and discipline ourselves to use the right nutrition, activity and healthy mind set. Health professionals can help you find the tools with which to do this, but only you can implement them in your daily life. It takes determination, hard work sometimes, and the belief that you actually can do it.

Discover and eliminate, as much as possible, things and PEOPLE in your life that cause you pain or emotional distress and rob you of joy and fulfillment. Learn to deal with stress as it comes, and learn to let it go when it is over. That alone can make all the difference between ill health and true wellness. See my story here. I came from almost certain death to vibrant live, simply by learning how to love and accept myself - and throw away the things that were dragging me down.

No matter what your obligations are, or who you feel responsible for, you cannot give anything to anyone at all if you don't take care of yourself. No matter your motives or fears, the well will go dry one day if you don't replenish your own water of life daily. Seek joy and wellness, and you will never go wrong.

I'm happy to help you find the tools, and I look forward to the challenge. Your feedback will be very important because I will take your questions and comments as my guide to what you need, then research and write about it in ways most people should be able to understand. I am not qualified or equipped to diagnose diseases or make specific recommendations for medical treatment, but please feel free to write to me and ask questions about natural medications, nutrition, exercise, or anything to do with health and wellness. Together we'll look for the answer that works for you.

Look for the current article and list of archives here.

Please send me your comments and questions too! Working together, we can be the "wave of the future" toward better health for all of us. Susan Callaway, RN

(See my own personal story of health and healing with EFT