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FURTHER INFO The following are all sites packed with information about food and - most importantly - healthy recipes.
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In a world where plastic surgery and heart disease have hit record levels, just what is healthy living? Helen Barron trawls through the conflicting advice and latest fads to give you the low-down on feeling high
An apple a day?
Some say smoking reduces the risks of Alzheimers, and others say lettuce
can give you cancer. Regular exercise is meant to keep you in tip top
condition and yet running can damage your knees, give you shin splints
and even a heart attack if you overdo it.
So just what is healthy living? There are so many things that go towards
making one’s lifestyle healthy or unhealthy and only a certain amount
of them are in our control – worrying about the ones that aren’t
certainly isn’t healthy!
Air pollution isn’t healthy, bombarding women with images of ‘perfect
womanhood’ as size 6 isn’t healthy, eating saturated fats for
breakfast, lunch and dinner isn’t healthy, road rage isn’t healthy,
fast-food school dinners aren’t healthy, being obsessed with being
healthy isn’t healthy!
Individually, we can’t control all these things – but those
we can we should.
So where to start? Experts say there are three simple areas we should
focus on to improve our overall wellbeing whatever our age, responsibilities
or job: food, exercise and stress.
Your diet
In the 1950s, researchers began to wonder about the link between diet
and heart disease. The ‘Seven Countries Study’ found that Mediterranean
men had lower mortality rates, particularly from heart disease, than Northern
European and American men. The study also confirmed the connection between
saturated fat and heart disease.
Although Mediterranean diets have adapted over the years, the traditional
diet is still popular: high in fruits, vegetables, nuts and whole grains;
moderate in fish and poultry; low in red meat.
One of the most important aspects of this diet is that most of the fat
comes from olive oil. No evil saturated fats here – and thus no tiresome
cholesterol issues.
Nuts and seeds contain mono and polyunsaturated fats as well as being
rich in protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals. Try sunflower, pumpkin
and sesame seeds; linseed and hemp seeds; almonds; brazil nuts; cashew
nuts; walnuts; peanuts.
Other fatty oily stuff that is good for you – FISH! Experts say
we should have two portions a week – and one should be of the most
oily, delicious sort – full of omega 3 fatty acid.
As for the fresh fruit and vegetables - surely we all know we are meant
to have five portions a day by now? The problem in the UK is that good,
plump, tasty fruit and veg has traditionally been expensive and hard to
come by.
More than that, it is laced with pesticides and fertilisers from intensive
farming. Unless it’s organic – but then it’s even more
expensive, isn’t it?
There is another way to buy pesticide-free, good healthy food without
breaking the bank – either go to a nearby street market or, better
still, check out your local farmers’ market.
Despite the name, farmers’ markets are not only to be found at the
local country fair – many urban community car parks, playing fields,
sports centres and market places open themselves up once or twice a week
to allow local growers and producers to sell their own produce direct
to the public.
Everything on sale has been grown, reared, caught, brewed, pickled, baked,
smoked or processed by the stallholder.
They are not necessarily more expensive than supermarkets because there
is no middle man. Much of the food will be organic but even that which
isn’t is unlikely to have been intensively farmed and will therefore
have fewer pesticides.
In general though, it is not as hard as you might think to consume more
fruit and veg. Even a glass of juice in the morning helps – or if
you can afford it try a kiwi (very high in vitamin c) or half a grapefruit.
Why not keep a stash of carrots and celery in the fridge? They can always
be dipped in humous or low fat cream cheese to make them a little more
enticing.
When it comes to kids and dinner time, remember some fruit and veg is
naturally very sweet – kids love carrots and peas so give big tea-time
servings and stop trying to force brussel sprouts down their necks.
Get active
So – we’ve sorted food. Now for the next step towards healthy
living: exercise. A little common sense and a little dynamism works wonders.
If you want a new fitness regime, go to the gym and sign up with a (qualified)
instructor, if you think you may be clinically obese go to your doctor,
and if you want to shift some cellulite start saving for plastic surgery.
But if you just want to be a bit less lethargic and a bit healthier,
all you need is 30 minutes of exercise a day. This can of course be a
jog or a class or a swim, but it can also be brisk walking.
Wherever possible, walk. Get off the bus or train a stop early, volunteer
to take the dog out, pick up your kids from school on foot. Whatever you
usually do by car ask yourself if you can walk it, and whatever you usually
do on foot, do it quicker – build up a bit of a sweat.
Regular physical activity not only helps achieve a healthy body weight
but also helps reduce our risk of developing numerous diseases –
such as heart disease, obesity, type ii diabetes, osteoporosis, and cancers
of the colon, breast and endometriosis.
Perhaps most importantly of all, exercise increases mental wellbeing
– it make us feel better about ourselves, banishes lethargy, increases
energy and reduces stress, anxiety and depression.
All stressed out?
Talking of which… The final point on our checklist – stress.
Too much worry can lead to psychological symptoms such as tiredness,
poor concentration, irritability and insomnia, as well as physical symptoms
such as palpitations, dry mouth, sweating, muscle tension, dizziness,
indigestion, nausea, diarrhoea and stomach pains. Prolonged worry can
also reduce immunity, making you more prone to minor ailments such as
colds.
It is impossible to remove all sources of worry from life, but it is
possible to put them in perspective, learn to take a balanced view of
risk and – most importantly – let go of those you can’t
control. There is nothing you can do, for example, about the fact Arnold
Schwarzenegger is running California. Get over it.
For day-to-day worries such as money, time, getting kids to school, looking
after relatives, keeping the family safe, ‘will the supermarket have
shut before I get there’, you can use a few tricks (see box on right).
If you take one thing from this whistle-stop tour through healthy living,
let it be – balance. And perspective. Don’t get hung up on the
media circus and the latest craze and the newest diet and the time saving
devices and the new running shoes your kids – or you – want,
and the…
Live, walk, breathe, eat. Relax. Life’s not so bad – after all, lettuce probably doesn’t give you cancer. Although I’m afraid Arnold Schwarzenegger really is governor of California.
Contact the article's author
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| STRESS BUSTING Take slow, deep breaths. Focus on something else – it’s hard to be anxious when you’re occupied elsewhere. Yoga is the classic example of this where you train your mind to relax through concentrating on parts of the body (see information box for contact details) but putting up shelves, fixing the car or weeding the flower bed will do as well. Exercise – it helps the brain release endorphins, which make us feel happier. Talk it over – sharing your worries with a friend or relative may put them in perspective, or shed new light on them. Write it down – whenever you worry, write down exactly what you are thinking. This can help put worries in perspective and reveal them as the repetitive thoughts they are. Think positive – changing the way you think can make worries seem less threatening. Cognitive therapy encourages patients to use positive thinking to help view situations in a more realistic way, and prevent ideas and attitudes undermining their confidence.
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LOTS MORE FEATURESIncluding stress in the workplace, getting out of debt and the pensions crisis more... |
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