What Is Health?
Today, everywhere you look are health clubs, health food, 'healthy snacks', health care, health institutes, health retreats, community health centers, etc. So, ....

.... it really begs the question, what is health? 

• Health, in its simplest definition, is optimal cell function.

• Health is normal; disease is abnormal. 

• Disease is not a part of healthy or normal aging.

• Health is the default for our body's cells, tissues, and organs.

• Health is genetically programmed into all of our cells.

• Health is not the absence of disease - it's the opposite: disease is the absence of health.

When we provide, through our lifestyle choices, the genetically required natural nutrients that our bodies need, the cells of our bodies will be healthy - they will function the way they're genetically programmed to do, which is to be healthy, and we will experience health.

A great illustration of how our cells are programmed to be healthy is when a person stops smoking - immediately the cells within the lungs move toward health by beginning the process of healing and repair.

You Choose - Health or Disease Lifestyle
People often look at me and because I'm skinny and because I'm a chiropractor they'll say, 'Oh, you must be into health food and all that stuff'. The sarcastic side of me wants to respond, 'So, does that mean you're into disease food and all that stuff?'

But truthfully, I believe everyone deep down wishes to be healthy - it's the one thing we all value above all else. After all, no one wants to be unhealthy, to get cancer or diabetes, or end up in a convalescent home wearing a diaper unable to recognize our own family for the last five or ten years of our life. The problem is that not many people want to face up to the fact that it's our lifestyle choices, not our genes or bad luck, that will determine our health, now and in the future.

What Makes Us Healthy?
Our lifestyle choices are what determine whether we are healthy. It is not our genes or hereditary traits that determine our health. The science is irrefutable on this subject - it is our lifestyle behaviors that will determine if we get cancer, have a heart attack, develop diabetes, become obese, experience senile dementia, etc.

The two main factors that will determine whether a person will die prematurely of or develop a preventable disease such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes or obesity-related diseases are:

1. Diet
2. Exercise

The research is irrefutable in these two areas of lifestyle behaviors and their affect on our health.

"Clearly, there is overwhelming evidence linking most chronic diseases seen in the world today to physical inactivity and inappropriate diet consumption. Recent data estimate that physical inactivity and poor diet caused 400,000 deaths in 2000, and that it is likely that inactivity and diet will soon rank as the leading cause of death in the United States."   Roberts CK, Barnard RJ Effects of exercise and diet on chronic disease. J Appl Physiol 2005; 98:3-30. [view article]

"Diet is one of the most important lifestyle factors and has been estimated to account for up to 80% of cancers of the large bowel, breast, and prostate." Cummings JH, et al. Diet and the prevention of cancer. British Medical Journal 1998; 317:1636-1640. [view article]

"Physical activity is associated with lower risks of cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease, and dementia of any type. With greater amounts of physical activity caused increased protection." Laurin D, et al. Physical Activity and Risk of Cognitive Impairment and Dementia in Elderly Persons. Archives of Neurology 2001; 58:498-504.  [view article]

"Our data suggest that greater physical activity level is associated with substantial reduction in risk of type 2 diabetes, including physical activity of moderate intensity and duration." Hu FB, et al. Walking compared with Vigorous Physical Activity and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in Women. Journal of the American Medical Assoc. 1999; 282:1433-1439. [view article]

"Significant trends of increasing risk with higher body-mass-index values were observed for death from cancers of the stomach and prostate in men and for death from cancers of the breast, uterus, cervix, and ovary in women." Calle EE, et al. Overweight, Obesity, and Mortality from Cancer in a Prospectively Studied Cohort of U.S. Adults. New Eng J Med 2003; 348:1625-1638. [view article]

CHRONIC STRESS: 'STEROIDS' FOR THE DISEASE PROCESS
There is a third factor that shouldn't be overlooked as a direct causal agent in creating poor health - chronic stress. The physiologic effect that stress has on the body is similar to what tilling amendments, fertilizer and mulch into soil has on plant growth - stress enhances the disease process on every level; literally every system within the body (immune, cardiovascular, hormonal, insulin/glucose management. production, reproductive, mental function, etc.) is adversely and powerfully affected by chronic stress. Whereas poor dietary nutrition and a sedentary lifestyle create disease on every level, adding chronic stress amplifies that disease development process exponentially.

These three areas of lifestyle habits - diet, exercise and chronic stress - and their direct association with health and disease, are equally important and must be achieved (or managed in the case of chronic stress) at the same time for a sustained period of time - the rest of your life - to create health. There's no getting around this fact. Eating perfect doesn't replace the need for exercise and vice versa - exercising will not offset bad dietary choices. For example, those obsessive athletes who think that they can get away with eating donuts because they workout all the time? They're wrong!

COMMON HEALTH MYTHS  ... READ