ON THE HUNT FOR HEALTH
The world of health and medicine is a minefield of preventions, cures and old wives' tales - but is there more we could be doing to safeguard ourselves?
There's a fine line to be crossed when it comes to being sussed and savvy about one's health.
One minute you're simply looking out for yourself, being aware of the dangers and making mental notes of the preventions while simultaneously hoping you'll never need the cure; the next you're manically typing dreamt-up symptoms into the internet while diagnosing yourself with one debilitating disease or another and preparing yourself for the worst. Yes, in an age where infinite information is at our finger tips and horrific health stories make the headlines, hypochondria is definitely on the rise.
We've become accustomed to things being easy. Wouldn't it be nice if we could simply pop into the doctor's office on our lunch break and have him or her laser us with some swanky piece of machinery and send us on our merry way with a swing in our step and a guaranteed clean bill of health?
Naturally there are tests, tests for just about every part of your body and every ailment out there, but unfortunately none of them can give us the complete peace of mind we're searching for as there will always be something even modern medicine might have missed.
The alternative is to stop coveting the easy road and start thinking of the bigger picture: complete well-being.
The triad of health
It's a bit of a cliché that all good things come in threes, and staying healthy is no different. Being healthy is not simply "not being ill"; it goes far beyond that and in order to be truly well your body's well-being must be threefold: physical, emotional and chemical.
A lack of pain or nasty symptoms could very easily be misleading us because, unfortunately, a great number of early warning signs get brushed under the carpet simply because they aren't making us feel sick. We are programmed to think that if it isn't broken we don't need to fix it.
But the intricacies of our central nervous system - the machine wherefrom all the cogs that keep us ticking get their orders - are a tad more complicated than that. Just 10 per cent of that system is concerned with telling us how we feel - whether we are hot, cold or in pain for example. On the other hand, a whopping 90 per cent of the nervous system is concentrated on getting everything from our digestion to our breathing done correctly and that part often isn't bothered by whether you're feeling ill or not. Therefore, if communication between the two sides breaks down you could be waiting to feel a symptom that's never going to rear its head.
So, some experts argue, the alternative is to become aware of this triad of health which coordinates towards our overall well-being.
20070519-lifestyle--cover1.jpgPhysical well-being
The physical component of well-being encompasses all of our body parts and their functions. To be healthy we need all of our tissues, organs and cells to be in tip-top condition so that they can function at 100 per cent, and also communicate successfully between our many systems.
For us to achieve physical health, every system within our body must be working towards the same goal.
Our body has an inner ability to work out how things should be and innately knows how to ward off certain infections or heal a wound. As humans we are self-healing, but if anything interferes with the nervous system our ability to heal ourselves is significantly decreased.
Chemical well-being
This aspect of our bodies can be influenced by everything from the water we drink to the food we eat and the chemicals found in the detergents we use.
Our body uses all that we come into contact with to help build everything from our hair and nails to our new muscle cells, and the chemicals that come into contact with our bodies during this time can have a great impact on how we function and can effect us positively or negatively.
In order for successful chemical well-being to occur our body needs to be able to ingest chemicals and use the nutrients within them to form our tissues and body cells, however on the flip side we can also ingest toxins in this way as any substance that enters your body will be utilised in some way.
The negative chemicals available out there are numerous and avoiding them all - whether they are in toiletries, foods or simply the air we breathe - would be impossible. So to combat the harmful things we ingest it is important to consume a lot of good too. Antioxidants are nutrients which can be found in many of the foods we eat in varying quantities and it is vital that we increase them to find a healthy balance and combat any damage done to our cells. These nutrients can be found in the foods we eat especially carrots, tomatoes, leafy green vegetables and berries and while it would be impossible to strive for a perfect diet, concentrating on eating the good nutrients we desperately need, will help us combat the negative effects of poisonous toxins.
Emotional well-being
The final part of the triad finds us searching for emotional balance so as not to offset negative implications on our chemical and physical make-up. Emotion is very much the key player in ensuring that everything works together as it can easily be the first stepping stone to positive or negative goings-on within our bodies.
If we have emotional wellness then we can be fully aware of how we think, behave and feel, meaning that we will be more able to notice changes in our body as well as changes to our external environment. It's hard to feel an emotion without there being some kind of physical or chemical reaction to it. For example, if you are scared a knot forms in the pit of your stomach or if you are shy, blood rushes to your face making you blush. Science has found that every emotion comes with a chemical response and a physiological retort.
The answer?
Today we can't help but find ourselves overrun with recommendations for medicine, therapy and treatments that can cure our various ills whether they're tiny or life-threatening - and thanks to the ongoing advancements in modern medicine there's always a glimmer of hope.
But drugs and medicines aren't always the answer. Thanks to our individual chemical make-ups, we never quite know how well or disastrously we're going to react to any substance we inject which has in turn led to an increasing number of people questioning their prescriptions and sourcing other methods for their cures.
Therefore "alternative therapies" have become lucrative and popular, and now make up a massive share of the private (and public) medical market.
One of these therapies, chiropractic adjustments, is steadily gaining supporters and increasing in popularity as followers believe that using this method can improve your overall well-being immensely and could offer the "prevention versus cure" option that many of us seem to be leaning towards.
Its results have been astounding, and even in Malta many of the "miracle" recoveries and findings cannot be ignored.
• Next week Weekender delves deeper into the practices, findings and teachings of chiropractic adjustments to discover whether it really does offer answers to painful problems, or whether it's simply another one of the options out there to stop you falling into the hypochondriac trap.
One minute you're simply looking out for yourself, being aware of the dangers and making mental notes of the preventions while simultaneously hoping you'll never need the cure; the next you're manically typing dreamt-up symptoms into the internet while diagnosing yourself with one debilitating disease or another and preparing yourself for the worst. Yes, in an age where infinite information is at our finger tips and horrific health stories make the headlines, hypochondria is definitely on the rise.
We've become accustomed to things being easy. Wouldn't it be nice if we could simply pop into the doctor's office on our lunch break and have him or her laser us with some swanky piece of machinery and send us on our merry way with a swing in our step and a guaranteed clean bill of health?
Naturally there are tests, tests for just about every part of your body and every ailment out there, but unfortunately none of them can give us the complete peace of mind we're searching for as there will always be something even modern medicine might have missed.
The alternative is to stop coveting the easy road and start thinking of the bigger picture: complete well-being.
The triad of health
It's a bit of a cliché that all good things come in threes, and staying healthy is no different. Being healthy is not simply "not being ill"; it goes far beyond that and in order to be truly well your body's well-being must be threefold: physical, emotional and chemical.
A lack of pain or nasty symptoms could very easily be misleading us because, unfortunately, a great number of early warning signs get brushed under the carpet simply because they aren't making us feel sick. We are programmed to think that if it isn't broken we don't need to fix it.
But the intricacies of our central nervous system - the machine wherefrom all the cogs that keep us ticking get their orders - are a tad more complicated than that. Just 10 per cent of that system is concerned with telling us how we feel - whether we are hot, cold or in pain for example. On the other hand, a whopping 90 per cent of the nervous system is concentrated on getting everything from our digestion to our breathing done correctly and that part often isn't bothered by whether you're feeling ill or not. Therefore, if communication between the two sides breaks down you could be waiting to feel a symptom that's never going to rear its head.
So, some experts argue, the alternative is to become aware of this triad of health which coordinates towards our overall well-being.
20070519-lifestyle--cover1.jpgPhysical well-being
The physical component of well-being encompasses all of our body parts and their functions. To be healthy we need all of our tissues, organs and cells to be in tip-top condition so that they can function at 100 per cent, and also communicate successfully between our many systems.
For us to achieve physical health, every system within our body must be working towards the same goal.
Our body has an inner ability to work out how things should be and innately knows how to ward off certain infections or heal a wound. As humans we are self-healing, but if anything interferes with the nervous system our ability to heal ourselves is significantly decreased.
Chemical well-being
This aspect of our bodies can be influenced by everything from the water we drink to the food we eat and the chemicals found in the detergents we use.
Our body uses all that we come into contact with to help build everything from our hair and nails to our new muscle cells, and the chemicals that come into contact with our bodies during this time can have a great impact on how we function and can effect us positively or negatively.
In order for successful chemical well-being to occur our body needs to be able to ingest chemicals and use the nutrients within them to form our tissues and body cells, however on the flip side we can also ingest toxins in this way as any substance that enters your body will be utilised in some way.
The negative chemicals available out there are numerous and avoiding them all - whether they are in toiletries, foods or simply the air we breathe - would be impossible. So to combat the harmful things we ingest it is important to consume a lot of good too. Antioxidants are nutrients which can be found in many of the foods we eat in varying quantities and it is vital that we increase them to find a healthy balance and combat any damage done to our cells. These nutrients can be found in the foods we eat especially carrots, tomatoes, leafy green vegetables and berries and while it would be impossible to strive for a perfect diet, concentrating on eating the good nutrients we desperately need, will help us combat the negative effects of poisonous toxins.
Emotional well-being
The final part of the triad finds us searching for emotional balance so as not to offset negative implications on our chemical and physical make-up. Emotion is very much the key player in ensuring that everything works together as it can easily be the first stepping stone to positive or negative goings-on within our bodies.
If we have emotional wellness then we can be fully aware of how we think, behave and feel, meaning that we will be more able to notice changes in our body as well as changes to our external environment. It's hard to feel an emotion without there being some kind of physical or chemical reaction to it. For example, if you are scared a knot forms in the pit of your stomach or if you are shy, blood rushes to your face making you blush. Science has found that every emotion comes with a chemical response and a physiological retort.
The answer?
Today we can't help but find ourselves overrun with recommendations for medicine, therapy and treatments that can cure our various ills whether they're tiny or life-threatening - and thanks to the ongoing advancements in modern medicine there's always a glimmer of hope.
But drugs and medicines aren't always the answer. Thanks to our individual chemical make-ups, we never quite know how well or disastrously we're going to react to any substance we inject which has in turn led to an increasing number of people questioning their prescriptions and sourcing other methods for their cures.
Therefore "alternative therapies" have become lucrative and popular, and now make up a massive share of the private (and public) medical market.
One of these therapies, chiropractic adjustments, is steadily gaining supporters and increasing in popularity as followers believe that using this method can improve your overall well-being immensely and could offer the "prevention versus cure" option that many of us seem to be leaning towards.
Its results have been astounding, and even in Malta many of the "miracle" recoveries and findings cannot be ignored.
• Next week Weekender delves deeper into the practices, findings and teachings of chiropractic adjustments to discover whether it really does offer answers to painful problems, or whether it's simply another one of the options out there to stop you falling into the hypochondriac trap.