How to be healthier than you are right now





THE CHIROPRACTIC HEALTH CENTRE IS RUNNING A MASSAGE SPECIAL!





For the month of October 2017, all you have to do is print this article and present it at your next massage treatment to get R150 off!

How to be healthier than you are right now? 

The question of the hour….

And answering it is not easy – we still don’t have all the answers. Many different things impact your health and these things affect us all differently.

How can we reach our peak? Where do we start?

A good place that we can start would be the variables that are not optimal (or at least within the ‘normal’ range). E.g. If a parent suffered from diabetes and you have raised fasting glucose levels, your focus should be on preventing diabetes. But a word of caution: fixating on one factor or one possible disease can become counterproductive. And one of the nice things about health is that changes you make to one area of your life e.g. eating more vegetables, will have beneficial effects on MANY if not ALL other factors and disease risk e.g. reduced risk of heart disease, obesity, cancer, diabetes, etc, etc.

Health can be complicated, but we do have some general answers. The funny thing is that most of the best recommendations regarding the improvement of health are surprisingly well known. A recently published research study looked at all the factors that will improve health and extend life. Millions of dollars and thousands of hours spent on it. The result? The top four factors:
  1. Eat better 
  2. Exercise 
  3. Don’t smoke 
  4. Drink alcohol minimally 
That’s it. The basis of a healthy life. It’s stuff your parents taught you (I hope). Of course it becomes slightly more complicated in the details e.g.

What makes eating ‘better’?
What exercise for how long? 

What about second-hand smoke?

But this study is not about giving us all the answers: this gives us a place to start – on which to build our health and our lives.

People love to overcomplicate things.

It is a combination of human curiosity, obsession and, unfortunately, the desire to make money that contribute to the quagmire of medical minutiae:

“Only eat this fruit – the others are bad.”

“Only do this exercise – the others will hurt you.”

“If you don’t sleep exactly 8hrs, you will spontaneously combust.”

All the teeny, tiny ‘tips’ and ‘tricks’ and even some of the ‘rules’ and ‘systems’ are based on some sort of logical reasoning process, and even some evidence (to varying degrees). But most of these are what’s known as “majoring in the minors”. So try not to worry too much about whether or not you’re eating this “superfood” (I mean, does it have a cape and tights?) or taking that “nutriceutical supplement” – just stick to the basics day in and day out and good things will happen.

Our next post will focus on more of the specifics – the meat & potatoes (a dirty word these days) of being healthier: Eating Better.

Thank you for reading. For more lifestyle advice on how to achieve optimal health, visit The Chiropractic Health Centre for a check up

Chat to one of our friendly receptionists to make a booking or follow the link to learn more about our services: www.chiropractor.co.za/our-services

Phone: 021 683 2996 (Claremont) or 021 439 8898 (Sea Point)

Email: claremont@chiropractor.co.za