Healthy Nutrition For A Happy Life

Welcome to my Hub page. I am on a mission to help the world learn about the affects of nutrition on a happy life. My mother always said that your health was more important than money and now that I am almost 50 I know what she means. Without health you really don't have anything.

In the US we really have health care backwards. We wait until something is wrong and then spend tens of thousands of dollars fixing it. This is like taking our finger out of the dike, letting the dike fail, and then rebuilding it instead of just plugging the little finger hole. Nurtition is like our finger in the dike of health. Often times we can make a few little changes in our eating habits to have profound affects down the road with our health.

In some ancient cultures the role of the doctor was to keep people healthy. The people of the village paid him every month if they were still healthy. If a villager got sick then the family would stop paying until the patient recovered. With this method the doctor had a strong incentive to keep his fellows healthy which is completley opposite of how we view health care in this country, Here, the money is not made until we acquire an illness so the incentive is really for the doctor to let us get sick in oreder to get paid. This is much less effective than the ancient method.

If you are more interested in staying healthy than treating a problem after it appears you need to concentrate on your nutrition. There are literally hundreds of small changes you can make to imporve your health and stay happy. Believe me nothing is more miserable than being sick.

It is really hard to have a very good quality of life if you are suffering from migraine headaches.  I know because I have experienced the exruciationg pain that comes from migraines.  Every sound and every beam of light seems to infuse your body with waves of pain.  It seems like even the slightest movement will cause your head to explode like an over ripe melon.

The absolute cause of migraines is unknown but it seems to be a disorder of the serotonigenic control system in your brain.  Symptoms of migraines include nausea, vomiting, increased sensitivity to light, and increased sensitivity to noise.  More women suffer from migraines than do men.  There is also some evidence that hormonal changes may trigger these types of headaches as women who suffer from migraines generally do not experience them during pregnancy.

If you suffer from these types of headaches you know how terrible life can be.  In the last few years there have been great strides made toward dealing with and ultimately eliminating migraine headaches.  The problem is where do you go for good, honest information.  You can get good information and a hope for treatment at migraine headaches.  You do not have to fight this extremely painful condition alone.  If you are in need of help get it today.  I did and it has completely changed my life.

One of the most pressing health concerns in the US is the number of people who are developing Type 2 Diabetes.  Historically, this disease affected middle aged and older people who had spent a life time overstressing their pancreas with sugary junk food.  Recently though it has been realized that teenagers are being diagnosed with this disease at an alarming rate.

What is the cause of this change in who gets diabetes type 2.  It can be directly realted to the change in our diet and the lack of physical exercise.  Children are being fed a diet stuffed full of simple carbohydrates and are doing any physical activities to burn those calories off. 

The simple carbohydrates cause a spike in blood sugar because they are so easily digested.  The body recognizes this massive load and triggers the pancreas to pump insulin into the blood stream to deal with the blood sugar.  This is how the bodys mechanisms for dealing with blood sugar work but the problem is it has to happen at a speed that we are not designed to maintain.  For eons human ate a diet that contained complex carbohydrates and meat.  These complex carbs were harder to digest and so the blood sugar increases happened slowly.  This allowed the pancreas time to ramp up production of insulin and brind everything back into balance.  With simple carbs it is like throwing gas on a fire instead of a few pieces of firewood.  The blood sugar spikes up which taxes the pancreas and eventually wears it out.  Also, our bodies start to get resistant to insulin because we have such a massive load all the time.  Eventually our natural mechanisms for dealing with blood sugar no longer work as well and we develop type 2 diabetes and are forced to take manufactured insulin.

Are we ever going to be able to deal with our obesity epidemic in this country?  Over 60% of adults are overwieght or obese and the percentage for children and young adults is close to that level.  Why are we choosing to just keep eating until it affects our health?

I think food addiction is a very real phenomenom that is not being taken seriously.  Telling someone with a food addiction that they need to just eat less is like telling an alcoholic to jsut don't drink.  There are a lot more factors at play here than just eating.

One of the big problems is that people have come to view food as a mood changer instead of a source for fuel for our bodies.  The advertisers have done a great job of getting us trained to believe that certain foods or restaurants are the key to happiness.  Because of this people eat and eat and eat when they are not hungry because they are trying to fill an emotional void with food.  Just like drink does not fill the void for the alcoholic, food can not fill the void for the food addict.

If we are going to stop this obesity trend, we have got to get away from the idea that food is an entertainment item and back to only eating when we are hungry and eating nutritional food instead of junk food.