Your Health

Your Health looks at general aspects of health such as -

• Control your weight
• Combat high blood pressure
• Prevent or reverse diabetes
• Quit smoking
• Boost your immune system
• Relieve pain
• Achieve optimum nutrition

Our other health sections deal with health related to being a certain age or sex (Family Health) or health related to parts of your body (Body Health).

Those who do not find some time every day for health must sacrifice a lot of time one day for illness. – Father Sebastian Kneipp

Your health

Most people have excuses for their poor health. "I just love my food too much", "I know I'm overweight, but I've tried to diet and it didn't work", "I don't have time to exercise", "Healthy food is boring", "I don't believe in vitamins", "I've given up smoking several times, but I just start up again", "I wish I could cut down how much I drink, but I just don't seem to be able". These are just excuses we make to ourselves, and the looser is ... us! We can show you how to break through these barriers and have success in doing whatever you want.

Health can't be left to your doctor to look after. Your doctor doesn't look after your health. Your doctor only looks after your illnesses. When your doctor says you are 'healthy', all this means is that things have not got so bad that your doctor can find actual disease symptoms. Most people in this state are still far from 'well', and their health can be improved dramatically. They are just the walking unwell.

Your health is in your own hands, and you are the only one who is responsible for it. You should look after such a precious thing very well. Yet so many people don't think about health as a daily routine.

The little things you do every day really do add up to either a healthy or an unhealthy life. We can show you how to make the most of your health in such a way that it is a joy and a pleasure.

You owe it to yourself to be healthy, so dip into this section on health and find out what you need to do, and just as important, find out how to motivate yourself to achieve the health you want.

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young. - Fred Astaire

Real health

Health isn't just an absence of disease but also an abundance of vitality. Real health gives you peak performance, both physically and mentally. You have a high level of energy, emotional balance and a sharp mind. Your body has the ability to fight off disease and illness, you don't get colds, and you don't suffer from the preventable diseases such as heart disease and cancer that rob the health of so many people. Your healthy body allows you to enjoy a long and healthy life span, and achieve your full potential, rather than the shorter life span ending in many years of pain, disability and ill health that are now common. Most people do not have real health, or have not experienced it for a long time.

Take responsibility for your own health

You are responsible for your own health, because if you don't look after it then nobody else will - not your mother - your doctor - your wife - or your husband! Most people go through life without taking full responsibility for their own health, they drift along until something goes wrong, and then go to the doctor to get it fixed. This isn't taking responsibility. Most people take much more care of their car than their body. They have it serviced regularly so that it doesn't break down. Think of your doctor as being the breakdown service for your body, then taking responsibility for your health is your day to day maintenance.

Health is important and we all take it for granted until we find ourselves out of health. The knowledge about health is vastly increasing every year, and the National Health Service has enabled people to live longer, and to treat more illnesses. Yet we have produced a generation where the children and now unhealthier than their parents, and in some cases will die before their parents do. So what is going wrong?

So what is your doctor doing? Well quite a lot actually! While your doctor has been trained in diagnosing and treating disease with medicines and surgery, there is now an increased emphasis within the NHS on preventative health and health screening. However this can only go so far. Most diseases are caused by the lifestyle choices we make every day. The trouble is it is much easier to put off actually doing things until tomorrow, and for many tomorrow never comes.

So what are you doing? You should be taking all the health messages to heart, and if they are not all part of your life now, you should gradually introduce them into your everyday routine, so that they become a natural part of your life. The truth is that your health is down to you and the choices you make every day.

Take good care of your body. It's the only place you have to live. - Jim Rohn

Be empowered. Realise that the idea that health is free is not true; it has been confused in the UK with the concept that the NHS is free, and the NHS was only designed to fix you when you are ill. To be truly healthy you need to be responsible for your own health. Learn more about health and take action every day to be healthy.

How to be healthy

Being healthy is a combination of two things -

1. The genes you were born with, which can influence your tendency to get certain health problems, which you can't do anything about. This has a minor effect on your health.
2. How you treat your body on a daily basis throughout your life, which you can do a lot about. It is your lifestyle which has the greatest effect on your health, both the positive things you do to actively improve your health, and also the negative things that make your health worse. Such things as regular exercise, stop smoking, control alcohol and good nutrition all play their part.

Smoking is the worst thing you can do for your health as it not only knocks years off your life expectancy, but greatly increases the problems of poor health throughout your life. However, the good news about smoking is that the health problems it causes can be largely be reversed when you stop smoking.

Your weight is the next most important thing to look after. Your weight is determined by the amount of body fat you store, as well as the amount of muscle you have. Being overweight effect the way your body actually works, and has many negative effects on your health.

Nutrition is very important for good health, and poor nutrition is responsible for many health problems that are avoidable. Look after your health by healthy eating and good nutrition. Get this right and your weight will look after itself.

Exercise is important, but this doesn't mean going to the gym. It's the way you use your muscles for everyday regular exercise that matters most, as everything counts. So walking, housework and gardening are all great. Just do some exercise regularly to get you a bit hot and a bit out of puff.

Alcohol is widely abused, and it then becomes a health problem, and this starts at levels of alcohol consumption that are now socially acceptable. You don't need to be a drunk to suffer from alcohol so control alcohol in your life.

Health information

Health information is constantly changing, so don't use out of date health information; but where do you find up to date, reliable information which presents a practical and simple guide to health, in a way which builds up into a whole picture of health, rather than becoming confused with all the latest news stories about health, which just seem to contradict themselves every week? Well, that's what we are trying to do with this health section and our free monthly newsletter. These are all written by the Pharmacy team and edited by a pharmacist.

There is so much new health information coming out that I, as a pharmacist, find it difficult just to keep up to date. I get my health information from health journals, newsletters and books. I then try to fit this new information into the framework of information I already have. Some new information changes the emphasis on older information, some clarifies it, and some contradicts it. I then try to make sense of it and fit it in to the bigger picture.

Most people are confused about the bigger picture of health, and who can blame them. You will not get the bigger picture from watching most TV, listening to most radio, or reading most newspapers and magazines. These are entertainment media, not information media. Health topics are usually presented in a condensed way, often leaving out important detail. Few ‘good news’ health topics are presented, because ‘good news’ is no news at all, but lots of ‘bad news’ topics are covered. We seem to be more entertained by what has been found to be bad for us, that what has been found to be good for us. So we tend to hear about the one study that says vitamins are bad for you, while there is no coverage of the thousands of studies which show they are beneficial. No wonder people get confused about health messages and give up, with the idea that because everything is bad for you they will go on eating just like they did before.

Some people don't do well simply because they don't feel well. - Jim Rohn

SuperLiving Pharmacy's concept of health is very broad, and our aim is to link together all aspects of health, and give you the best of both worlds, both conventional healthcare, and complementary healthcare, and to present them both as choices for each topic.

Treat your body like a temple, not a woodshed. The mind and body work together. Your body needs to be a good support system for the mind and spirit. If you take good care of it, your body can take you wherever you want to go, with the power and strength and energy and vitality you will need to get there. - Jim Rohn

Health is the one thing you can’t buy back once you’ve lost it. - Denis Waitley