Take Control of Your Health and Fitness

Health and fitness is your business and taking personal responsibility for one's own health is the key. Your health and fitness is in your power, and activity is a fundamental element of keeping healthy and fit. Because of its impact on wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, and husbands, health is truly a family issue. Health care and fitness is in our hands and can ultimately influence every aspect of life.

In its most general meaning, physical fitness is a general state of good physical health. Discover healthy tips on exercise, eating right and personal care. Choose physical activities that fit in with your daily routine, or choose recreational or structured exercise programs, or both. Exercise offers extra benefits for health compared to calorie restriction but prior to participating in any exercise program or activity, you should seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health professional. Exercise is one of the best things you can do for your health. 60 percent of American adults do not get enough exercise to improve their health but exercise physiology is rapidly becoming increasingly important in the delivery of health care.

The Surgeon General's Report on Physical Activity recommends getting 30 minutes of exercise on most days of the week. So just why should you get active and how little exercise can you get away with? A single session of exercise improves lipids and vascular function so even a single session of exercise will improve your health. Research confirms how important exercise and physical activity are to maintaining health and independence for older adults, and those on a traditional cardio exercise program saw their health improve more than twice as much as those on a walking regimen. There is some evidence that links exercise to better prostate health, and vigorous exercise helps to reduce abdominal fat. Walking is a popular form of exercise, but may not be enough to experience significant health benefits, a University of Alberta study shows. Remember that how well you eat and how much or little you exercise now affects not only your present state of health but also later life. Vigorous exercise involves minimal health risks for persons in good health or those following a doctor's advice.

Everyone knows that regular exercise improves your health and helps you feel good. With exercise, elders can improve weakened physical abilities and should do weight-bearing exercise (such as walking) regularly. To burn more calories it is better to exercise for a longer time. Fortunately, exercise can be free (not counting what you choose to spend on health-club memberships, workout clothes and bottled water).

Diet and lifestyle choices affect health and well-being, as do food safety policies and practices. Diet is a big contributor to health, but the science is complex and constantly evolving. A balanced diet and regular physical activity, along with restraining from smoking, are important factors in the promotion and maintenance of good health. There's far more research on diet and health available now than there was 30 years ago, and cholesterol continues as the focus of diet and health advice. By eating a well-balanced diet and exercising regularly, you are paving a path of good health. A good diet is central to overall good health, and many women health and fitness related problems can be avoided if careful attention is given to diet, specific nutrients and exercise.

Human nutrition is enormously complex and a healthy diet may vary widely according to an individual's genetic makeup, environment, and health. People diet for two primary reasons, to lose weight, to fix health or both, but not every diet will work for you. Crash diets and diet pills can compromise growth and are not recommended by many health care professionals. Choose a diet that is low in saturated fat and cholesterol and moderate in total fat, and a detailed diet plan that states what, how, and when a person will eat and drink. Fruits and vegetables are key parts of your daily diet.

Ken Asselin is webmaster for the Selections Guide series of information websites. http://www.health-fitness.selectionsguide.com

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Taking Control of Your Health & Well-Being

Do you ever wonder why, in spite of all your good intentions, you just cannot seem to take control over your health and wellness the way you really want to? The answer to that question can be found in the words of Albert Einstein, who reminded us "you cannot correct a problem with the same thinking that created it". In other words, you cannot change old behaviors without new information.

The Institute of Medicine recently published a study that indicates ninety million Americans are "health illiterate", which means we do not know how to interpret or use health information to control or improve our health, or prevent chronic disease. Data compiled previously identified, "lack of information as the number one root cause of death". Understanding that there exists a cause and effect relationship between what we know and how we behave, we need a model of integrating this important information to change the behaviors that lead to chronic disease. According to a 7-year, 1996, Harvard Medical School study, approximately 70% of all cancers are preventable through lifestyle changes. Furthermore, our diseases and conditions are primarily a result of stress, food, environment, attitude, emotions or beliefs that keep us in behaviors that lead to illness. Which invites the question, are we consciously choosing to be unhealthy, or do we just not understand sufficiently the relationship between what we think, how we behave, what we put into our bodies and how we keep ourselves well or make ourselves sick?

In a world exploding with health information, especially on the internet, we are caught in the dilemma of having abundant amounts of information, without a context through which we can understand and utilize this information in a way that is appropriate for our own unique personal health needs. There is, however, good news - making its way into the mainstream of health care is an integrated model of health information and education that provides a "whole picture of health" perspective, allowing each of us to discern and create our own unique approach to taking charge of our health and well-being. Whole Health Education, developed over the past 28 years, in cooperation with Boston physicians, nurses and educators, is an approach to understanding the cause and effect our behaviors and choices have on our state of health. Demystifying the five major factors that influence how sick or well we become, Whole Health Education provides a perspective on human anatomy and physiology, bio-chemistry, psycho-social, environmental and spiritual aspects which allows for an authentic understanding of what we need know to resolve chronic health problems or to stay healthy. Integrating evidence-based information with the wisdom of various spiritual teachings and a whole-person overview of behavioral options, Whole Health Education offers each of us a tool for personal health management by providing personalized health information that explains the physical, emotional, nutritional, environmental and spiritual aspects of a health concern.

For example, Mature Onset Diabetes affects approximately 18.2 million Americans and is the leading health concern in our culture today. As all chronic conditions are, Mature Onset Diabetes is a multi-dimensional disease state and the unique Whole Health perspective, can facilitate the restoration of health for those with chronic diseases such as diabetes.

Physical/Structural

What happens on a physical and structural level with Mature Onset Diabetes? The specialized beta cells of the pancreas, which produce insulin, become incapable of producing adequate amounts of the critically necessary secretion. This happens over a period of years and can begin in our bodies, over time, by eating large amounts of insulin-provoking foods. These insulin provocateurs, which are sugars and starches in the form of complex carbohydrates, require the pancreas to produce more insulin so that the sugars can be carried over the cell membranes to all parts of the body. Serious disturbances occur when we do not have enough insulin to carry the sugar over the cell membranes. Insulin hooks onto the sugar molecule and acts like a lock and key mechanism to bring that sugar into the cell which is then used in the energy cycle of cell metabolism. The nervous system, brain and the lungs cannot function without the proper metabolism of sugars.

Emotional/Social

Just as diabetes is a lack of nourishment on a chemical/nutritional level, so is it a lack of emotional nourishment on an emotional/mental level. It relates to the "feel good" nourishment component of your body. What do we know about carbohydrates and serotonin? Carbohydrates provoke the production of serotonin. Serotonin is a neuro-transmitter that produces a feeling of well-being. There is a direct relationship between what our body is doing chemically and how we feel emotionally. When we crave or build our diet around carbohydrates, this can be a way of "self-medicating" our emotional needs by eating carbohydrates to provoke insulin production.

Sugar problems can affect us emotionally. Let's say you have a pancreas that is not working properly. What can happen somatic/psychically from the pancreas to the brain? If we are feeling the ups and downs of hypoglycemia, and its biochemical/neurological symptoms, it may undermine our sense of security, self esteem, and produce anxiety and fear.

What is the emotional component of diabetes and the pancreas? Often, it can be a poor sense of self-esteem and a fear of not being "good enough" or not belonging. These feelings, medicated by the serotonin foods, can lead us to not look deeply enough into what is causing our health concerns and allow the feeling/feeding cycle to continue.

Chemical/Nutritional

On the nutritional side, the treatment for people with Mature Onset Diabetes is to decrease the stress on the pancreas by making changes in their diet -- decrease starches and sugars and decrease calories. Eat less, eat right. What kind of a diet would be best for preventing Mature Onset Diabetes? Vegetables, vegetables, and vegetables combined with lean proteins such as fish, chicken, water, a little fruit and a little fat. In a hypoglycemic situation, it is wise not to eat grain or sugar, but sprouted grain bread, and other substitutes can be healthy and satisfying.

Because hormones are chemicals, diabetes and hypoglycemia are both hormonal-based problems. What we know about the hormone system is that it works as a balanced interdependent system. Diabetes is an endocrine-related, systemic problem. With a systemic problem like diabetes, you have a body system problem--you do not just have a condition by itself. It is known that the pancreas is related, through hormone interaction, to the adrenals, and the adrenals are in turn related to the reproductive system. It is known that these glands are related through hormone interactions to the pituitary and the pituitary is related to the thyroid gland, the thyroid is related to the thymus, and the thymus is related to the immune system.

Environmental/Internal & External

The environment that we work in, live in, walk through, live near -- how does that environment have an impact on the way that we feel and the way we feel about ourselves?

How do we learn to trust in the order of the universe? By behaviors that come from trusting the order inside ourselves. We do this by setting boundaries -- codes of conduct of how we are going to behave, eat, work exercise and live. If we don't violate our own boundaries, we are less likely to let anybody else violate our boundaries. We have to start with ourselves. Our experience of victimization can begin with our own self-victimizing behavior.

Spiritual/World View

A Hindu Vendata truth is that "the whole world is one family". It is said that there is only one disease, the disease of separateness, separating oneself from the awareness that we are one living organism. Competition creates isolation. The spiritual challenge presented by hypoglycemia and diabetes appears to be involved with over- or under-valuing the self: judgment of self and then others. Where are we in the process of getting to the truth that we are all equally important? The drama created by a one-up or one-down dynamic that we may allow to be part of our experience can lead to psychophysiology and the behavioral issues which can contribute to and create Mature Onset Diabetes.

Whole Health Education can transform our experience of taking care of ourselves. It can provide an understanding of our health concerns and conditions from this multi-dimensional perspective that makes sense in a way we can utilize the information directly and in a meaningful way. In addition, having the information provided in a mindful, respectful way that invites each of us to discern what we know about our health and condition, how to choose to resolve the problem and what kind of care we choose to have, allows each of us to experience whole-person health care through whole health information. Then, WE become the center of our health and healing process, rather than the doctors or practitioners we go to for guidance.

A Socialized Health Care System Requires Population Control and Impeccable Registries

In a nationalized health care system, you need to know who is who - otherwise the system could never be able determine who is entitled. The structure depends on how the system is created and designed, but with a nationalized health care system you will be tracked by the state where you reside and how you move in a manner that is unseen in America. The nationalized health care system becomes a vehicle for population control.

If you leave the United States and are no longer a resident of the state, even if you are a citizen and might maintain a driving license, you will have to report immediately if you want to avoid the 13% health care tax. I use the number 13% as it is in Sweden to exemplify the actual tax pressure that is laid upon you for the nationalized health care.

Let's say you moved and you do not want to pay the 13% tax for services you do not receive, can receive, or want to taken out from the tax roll. The mammoth entity has no interest to let you go so easy. You will end up having to reveal your private life - partner, dwellings, travel, money, and job to prove your case that you have the right to leave the public health care system and do not need to pay the tax. If you have to seek an appeal, your information could be a part of administrative court documents that are open and public documents. As soon as you return to the United States, you will be automatically enrolled again and the taxes start to pile up.

Public universal health care has no interest in protecting your privacy. They want their tax money and, to fight for your rights, you will have to prove that you meet the requirements to not be taxable. In that process, your private life is up for display.

The national ID-card and national population registry that includes your medical information is a foundation of the nationalized health care system. You can see where this is going - population control and ability to use the law and health care access to map your whole private life in public searchable databases owned and operated by the government.

By operating an impeccable population registry that tracks where you live, who you live with, when you move and your citizen status including residency the Swedes can separate who can receive universal health care from those not entitled. The Swedish authorities will know if you have a Swedish social security number, with the tap of the keyboard, more information about yourself than you can remember. The Swedish government has taken sharing of information between agencies to a new level. The reason is very simple - to collect health care tax and suppress any tax evasion.

It is heavily centralized and only the central administration can change the registered information in the data. So if you want to change your name, even the slightest change, you have to file an application at a national agency that processes your paperwork. This centralized population registry makes it possible to determine who is who under all circumstances and it is necessary for the national health care system. Otherwise, any person could claim to be entitled.

To implement that in the United States requires a completely new doctrine for population registry and control. In an American context that would require that every existing driving license had to be voided and reapplied under stricter identification rules that would match not only data from Internal Revenue Service, state government, municipal government, Social Security Administration, and Department of Homeland Security but almost any agency that provides services to the general public. The reason why a new population registry would be needed in the United States is the fact that lax rules dating back to the 1940s up until the War on Terrorism, and stricter identification criteria following 9/11, has made a significant percentage of personal information about individuals questionable.

If America instead neglects maintaining secure records, determining eligibility for public health care would not be possible and the floodgates for fraud would open and rampant misuse of the system would prevail. This would eventually bring down the system.

It is financially impossible to create a universal health care system without clearly knowing who is entitled and not. The system needs to have limits of its entitlement. A social security number would not be enough as these numbers have been handed out through decades to temporary residents that might not even live in the United States or might today be out of status as illegal immigrants.

The Congress has investigated the cost of many of the "public options", but still we have no clear picture of the actual realm of the group that would be entitled and under which conditions. The risk is political. It is very easy for political reasons to extend the entitlement. Politicians would have a hard time being firm on illegal immigrants' entitlement, as that would put the politicians on a collision course with mainly the Hispanic community as they represent a significant part of the illegal immigrants. So the easy sell is then that everyone that is a legal resident alien or citizen can join according to one fee plan and then the illegal immigrants can join according to a different fee structure. That assumes that they actually pay the fee which is a wild guess as they are likely to be able to get access to service without having to state that they are illegal immigrants.

It would work politically - but again - without an impeccable population registry and control over who is who on a national level, this is unlikely to succeed. The system would be predestined to fail because of lack of funds. If you design a system to provide the health care needs for a population and then increase that population without any additional funds - then naturally it would lead to a lower level of service, declined quality, and waiting lists for complex procedures. In real terms, American health care goes from being a first world system to a third world system.

Thousands, if not a million, American residents live as any other American citizen but they are still not in good standing with their immigration even if they have been here for ten or fifteen years. A universal health care system will raise issues about who is entitled and who is not.

The alternative is for an American universal health care system to surrender to the fact that there is no order in the population registry and just provide health care for everyone who shows up. If that is done, costs will dramatically increase at some level depending on who will pick up the bill - the state government, the federal government, or the public health care system.

Illegal immigrants that have arrived within the last years and make up a significant population would create an enormous pressure on a universal health care, if implemented, in states like Texas and California. If they are given universal health care, it would be a pure loss for the system as they mostly work for cash. They will never be payees into the universal health care system as it is based on salary taxes, and they do not file taxes.

The difference is that Sweden has almost no illegal immigrants compared to the United States. The Swedes do not provide health care services for illegal immigrants and the illegal immigrants can be arrested and deported if they require public service without good legal standing.

This firm and uniform standpoint towards illegal immigration is necessary to avoid a universal health care system from crumbling down and to maintain a sustainable ratio between those who pay into the system and those who benefit from it.

The working middle class that would be the backbone to pay into the system would not only face that their existing health care is halved in its service value - but most likely face higher cost of health care as they will be the ones to pick up the bill.

The universal health care system would have maybe 60 million to 70 million "free riders" if based on wage taxes, and maybe half if based on fees, that will not pay anything into the system. We already know that approximately 60 million Americans pay no taxes as adults add to that the estimated 10-15 million illegal immigrants.

There is no way that a universal health care system can be viably implemented unless America creates a population registry that can identify the entitlements for each individual and that would have to be designed from scratch to a high degree as we can not rely on driver's license data as the quality would be too low - too many errors.

Many illegal immigrants have both social security numbers and driver's licenses as these were issued without rigorous control of status before 9/11. The alternative is that you had to show a US passport or a valid foreign passport with a green card to be able to register.

Another problematic task is the number of points of registration. If the registration is done by hospitals - and not a federal agency - then it is highly likely that registration fraud would be rampant. It would be very easy to trespass the control of eligibility if it is registered and determined by a hospital clerk. This supports that the eligibility has to be determined by a central administration that has a vast access to data and information about our lives, income, and medical history. If one single registration at a health care provider or hospital would guarantee you free health care for life and there is no rigorous and audited process - then it is a given that corruption, bribery, and fraud would be synonymous with the system.

This requires a significant level of political strength to confront and set the limits for who is entitled - and here comes the real problem - selling out health care to get the votes of the free riders. It is apparent that the political power of the "free" health care promise is extremely high.

A promise that can not alienate anyone as a tighter population registry would upset the Hispanic population, as many of the illegal immigrants are Hispanics - and many Hispanics might be citizens by birth but their elderly parents are not. Would the voting power of the younger Hispanics act to put pressure to extend health care to elderly that are not citizens? Yes, naturally, as every group tries to maximize its own self-interest.

The risk is, even with an enhanced population registry, that the group of entitled would expand and put additional burden on the system beyond what it was designed for. That could come though political wheeling and dealing, sheer inability from an administrative standpoint to identify groups, or systematic fraud within the system itself.

We can speculate about the outcome but the challenges are clear. This also represents a new threat to the privacy and respect for the private sphere of the citizenry as an increased population registration and control empowers the government with more accurate information about our lives and the way we live our lives. Historically, has any government when given the opportunity to get power taken that opportunity and given that power back to the people after the initial objective was reached? Governments like to stick to power.

To ensure the universal health care system is designed to function as intended it, would require procedures that would limit fraud, amass a significant amount of personal information, have access to all your medical data, and also determine who you are beyond any doubt. Just to be able to determine if you are entitled or not and, track the expenditures you generate.

The aggregation of these data could also open the floodgates for any data mining within these data under the pure excuse that it would help the universal health care system to better "serve you" and lower the costs.

To lower the costs also means to identify which procedures should not be done on which type of patients as it is not viable based on the government's interest to optimize your productivity under your life cycle. The collection of data has a tendency to look inviting and good when we start to collect it but aggregated data and personal information creates a deep intrusion in our privacy.

Jon Kallberg is a Ph.D. Candidate in Public Affairs and has his private political blog http://kallberg.blogs.com/kallberg/ and has written the book "How Socialized Health Care Will Radically Change America" [http://kallberg.blogs.com/kallberg/2010/02/how-socialized-health-care-will-radically-change-america-why-universal-health-care-will-create-a-pol-1.html].