Health Practices

There are many different health practices. The most important are exercise, nutrition, relaxation, and sleep.

 

Effective Exercise

Oh, my!  Don't start me again on this.  I am not born to exercise.  You have to have special kind of genes for that and I obviously luck them.

Well, anytime I start exercising I am perfectly fine... for a day or two.  Sometimes even for a week.  I feel great, energetic, and proud of myself.  And then something happens and like a switch goes "off". I begin to feel bored, tired, angree, lonely, ... you name it.  There comes the "stop".

In a month or two looking back in the mirror and seeing there ugly fat body the switch goes "on" again just to repeat the cycle.

Sounds familiar? To be continued...

 

Healthy Nutrition

“Did you ever see the customers in health-food stores? They are pale, skinny people who look half dead. In a steak house, you see robust, ruddy people. They're dying, of course, but they look terrific.” – Bill Cosby

What should we eat to be healthy?  Should we eat organic?  Should we take vitamins and mineral supplements?  How about being vegetarian or vegan?

Years ago I attended a lecture by a professor of medicine from Vienna.  He talked about refined sugar in our diet and its effect on health.  Refined sugar originally was a luxury.  Think of the effort needed to chew on sugar beet or cane. Compare it to the effort to stir a few spoonfuls of sugar in cup of tea.  There is a big difference.  After the lecture I began to enjoy my coffee and tea sugar free.  I find it tastes better now too.

We are often concern about our food.  What we eat indeed is very important for our health.  We try to buy 'better' food.  But what is better?  We may be looking for solutions in all the wrong places.  As the result we may lose money (making someone very rich along the way) and most importantly we may lose our health.

To understand food we must understand human history.  When 10,000 years ago humans learned agriculture and animal husbandry, it helped tremendously with the growth of the civilization.  By having more food people were able to allocate more resources to science and arts that helped our progress.  But on the other hand, because there was not enough time for our genes to adapt (and believe it or not 10,000 years is very recently on an evolutionary time scale) we suffer today some serious health consequences.

In this short article I can only name the main factors of healthy food that many modern scientists agree on today.  Food storing and processing fundamentally altered seven crucial nutritional characteristics of the diet of our ancestors: 1) glycemic load (too much), 2) fatty acid composition (too much), 3) macronutrient composition (misbalanced), 4) micronutrient density (not enough), 5) acid-base balance (altered), 6) sodium-potassium ratio (too much), and 7) fiber content (not enough).  So, to improve nutritious qulaity of our food all we have to do is to think in 'reverse'.

This misbalance between our ancient genetics and biology and the new nutritional, cultural, and activity patterns lead to appearance of so-called diseases of civilization.  In order to be healthy we have to address each of the seven characteristics named above.  Addressing only one part of the equation will not work.  For example, adding vitamins and minerals to our diet (while very effective in some specific cases), will not have a profound effect on general health.  A general advice is to eat a balanced diet with lots of vegetables and to avoid refined and processed foods as much as possible.

In conclusion I want to ask everyone a question. How come so many people today are dying from hunger, while many others people (even in the same countries or even cities) are dying from overeating?  I am sure that food banks are a great start.  But do you have any other thoughts on how to find a meaningful solution?

 

Good Sleep

“Not being able to sleep is terrible. You have the misery of having partied all night... without the satisfaction.” – Lynn Johnston

Many things in life work well if we know what to do and have good ingredients.  Sleep is one area where good knowledge makes difference.  Growing avocado trees is another.

When I started growing avocado trees, it took some time learning how to do it properly.  The trees would start great, but then leaves would turn brown and dry.  Naturally, I rushed with water.  But instead of improving, the trees dried even more and eventually the plant would not survive.

The problem was, as I learned from books, too much water.  Avocado trees have very delicate root system.  It rots easily with even a tiny excess of water.  To grow avocados one has to use light soil and minimum of water.  The plants ‘tell’ when they need more water by lowering leaves.  Now that I know what to look for and what to do my beautiful avocado tree is just fine.

The same applies to healthy sleep.  We know that healthy sleep is very important.  But because we think that sleep is just ‘natural’, we rely on ‘common sense’ which can be wrong.  And because we do not rest well, we miss on our lives in all dimensions: family, friends, fun, and work.  As I learned, a hint of good information can help a long way with sleeping well.

This is a picture (below) what a normal sleep looks like.  We fall asleep starting from stage 1 that is a very superficial sleep.  Our eyes can still be open, we can still hear things, but we are slowly dozing off (like at a boring meeting).  In stage 2 we sleep lightly, and if someone knocks on the bedroom door we wake up right away.

To feel rested we need a lot of deep sleep (stage 3 and 4) and also REM sleep (dreaming sleep).  As a rule 25% must be in combined stage 3 and 4 sleep and another 25% in REM sleep.

Deep sleep is paramount.  As soon as we go into deep sleep there is a spike in growth hormone level.  That helps us heal, prevents premature aging, and strengthens immune and other body systems.  Also in deep sleep and REM sleep our memory and attention is restored.

Even 4-6 hours spent in deep sleep can be very restoring.  On the other hand one can sleep 12-18 hours in superficial sleep and still feel tired.  It’s the same as with water and avocados – more sleep is not necessarily better.

The best indicator of having enough deep sleep is feeling rested in the morning.  If one does not feel fresh waking up – they missed on deep sleep.  Sometimes the reasons of not sleeping well are obvious.  In difficult cases a sleep study (recording of multiple physiological functions during sleep) is needed to assess someone’s sleep.

The first four channels in the picture are brain waves (EEG).  They allow seeing stages of sleep at each moment of time.  There are many things that might prevent people from sleeping in deep stages of sleep (excessive worry, breathing problems, limbs kicking and twitching, and many others).  EEG and other channels help to uncover the underlying causes of insomnia.

If the sleep problem persists, it might be a good idea to see a sleep medicine specialist.  However, most of sleep problems can be very effectively resolved by family doctors.  Behavioural sleep techniques, such as sleep consolidation and stimulus control, are very effective (as effective as medication) in the long term.  The trick is to do them right.  There are some links at the sleep category on WellnessAid that you might want to have a look at as a start.

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