Nearly Cured - Prevention

As I walk around I see people putting their health at risk all the time and I feel sorry for them.  I see young people smoking and I wonder what health problems they are storing up for themselves in the future.  Some people who can hardly walk or waddle along as they are so overweight and you just know that Diabetes and heart problems are just waiting in the wings.

Steve in the US has written a number of extremely interesting blogs about lifestyle and the latest 2 here and here have really made me sit up and think.  

One of the major things I did was to cut down on sugar and I changed my lifestyle.  I was a bit binary at the begining causing myself all sorts of trouble.  I wanted things fixed in a few days and in reality changes take a little longer than a few days do do.  I also overdid most things.  SImple diet changes include increased fruit and vegetable intake and what I thought was a good idea to reduce my sugar intake, cut right back on salt and also cut back on processed items as much as possible.  

Invariably you cannot cut everything out but you can take many steps to do so.  As my Doctor told me "Don't live like a Hermit".   However the shock is around the changes I made in sugar as I moved away from sugar and in doing so cut down caffeine.  I used sweeteners to replace the sugar.  It appears that these may have adverse affects on my bladder.  Sugar, as you can see from Steve's research, and Cancers tend to go hand in hand.   So I am now looking at cutting these down too.  I am sure I cannot just give them up but I will phase them out.  It is going to make my occasional Espresso taste different but then maybe I'll allow myself the odd one every now and then.  

There are a number of things you can do to gradually change your lifestyle and reducing salt, sugar and saturated fats are some of them.  I can't be arsed to go to extremes on this though.   We all know that a balanced meal using fresh ingredients, plenty of fruit and vegetables and ensuring that your fibre intake is correct etc. all lead to better health and that together with moderate exercise also help.  Balance Diet - those two words say it all.  Don't live like a Hermit, don't become obsessed and faddy with food.  If you happen to be tempted by a huge Jam Doughnut today, grab some fruit later or tomorrow.  After all you can treat yourself once in a while can't you?