Health Products Review

The Essential Foundations Underpinning Good Health

The Essential Foundations Underpinning Good Health

A diverse number of factors contribute to optimum health and wellness. Here are the elements that I consider to be perhaps the most critical.

“Good” health begins with the right attitude and mindset.

Someone who is resigned to the notion that life is tough and they must always swim against the current will, in all likelihood never experience the boundless joy and profound happiness that true health brings.

In fact, this person will probably have no real idea what it is that even makes them happy.

For this reason they will have no sense of purpose… and consequently no real motivation to make the sustained effort required to embrace healthy habits and lead a healthy lifestyle.

Their continued lack of fulfillment will only serve to bolster their belief that life is an interminable slog and poor health is inevitable. Every second of every day, negative thinking will subtly erode their happiness and profoundly shape their reality.

Important though it may be, it is not enough to simply feed the mind with the good, the pure and the positive. Our bodies also require essential sustenance in the form of both fuel and nutrients.

Human beings are designed to flourish on a diet of fresh, raw, whole plants that have been grown in healthy, living soils without chemical intervention.

Only in the last 10,000 years or so have we been cooking our foods and cultivating cereal crops. Both have had an under-estimated and devastating impact on our health for reasons outside the scope of this article.

And in the last few decades we have accelerated our demise by relying way too heavily on technology to manufacture “food”. These unnatural processes have burdened our bodies further with altered fats, artificial additives and toxic substances that have few redeeming qualities beyond perhaps taste and extended shelf life.

Cooking has allowed us to indulge our omnivorous capabilities and consume excessive animal products and salt, both of which will inevitably undermine health.

The metabolic havoc that has resulted from a high calorie/low nutrient diet, combined with our sedentary, high stress lifestyles ensures that most people in developed countries will die from chronic, preventable disease.

They will also spend a great proportion of their lives dependent on medications that are, in themselves, toxic and health-destroying.

This is the stark truth.

Technology and an irrational fetish for convenience conspire to make us far less active than we were just a few short decades ago.

By simply making the effort to stand up, go outside and walk around in the sunshine and fresh air… we would make a huge difference to our health. Activity is an essential component of a healthy lifestyle and most of us do not get enough.

The result is stagnation.

Our circulatory systems become compromised and as a consequence our cells are starved of oxygen and nutrients and saturated with metabolic waste.

This leads to a host of ailments that include excess body fat, poor skin and other discomforts.

As we start feeling sub-par, we become less productive, less happy and more anxious. And this affects the way we sleep.

Quality sleep is essential to optimum health.

This is how our bodies detoxify and heal. Without sufficient recuperation, we get further out of sorts.

Eventually, we show symptoms of sustained imbalance.

Ultimately, if the underlying cause is ignored and we simply seek to mitigate the immediate suffering, disease will develop.

Other factors form part of this equation and include proper hydration, the cessation of destructive habits like smoking and the importance of regular interaction with other people, other creatures and nature herself.

It is impossible to do justice to such a complex subject, but hopefully you will now have a keener appreciation of the importance of each and the significance of their balanced integration.

Don Andrew is a certified personal trainer, movement specialist and health consultant.

He has a passion for nutrition & exercise and updates 3 insightful blogs.

Don’s latest online book will help you reclaim your health and feel good about yourself again.