How Healthy Are You?
In a recent survey we discovered that over 50% of those surveyed had trouble sleeping and experienced regular headaches, that poor digestion can be a daily problem and half of women feel anxious, low or unhappy at least once a month.
So we’ve set up this page to provide easy access to information on how nutrition can not only help with these problems but bring you to a new level of health I call optimum health.
What is optimum health?
Optimum health means not just an absence of disease, but also an abundance of vitality. Positive health, sometimes called ‘functional’ health, can be measured in three ways:
- Performance – how you perform physically and mentally
- Absence of ill health – lack of disease signs and symptoms
- Longevity – healthy lifespan
I believe the experience of a profound sense of well-being can be achieved by everyone. It is characterised by a consistent, clear, high level of energy, emotional balance, a sharp mind, a desire to maintain physical fitness and a direct awareness of what suits our bodies, what enhances our health, and what our needs are in any given moment.
This state of health includes resilience to infectious diseases and protection from the major killer diseases such as heart disease and cancer. As a result the ageing process is slowed down and we can live a long and healthy life. At its most profound level health is not merely the absence of pain or tension, but a joy in living, a real appreciation of what it is to have a healthy body with which to experience the many pleasures of this world.
What is optimum nutrition?
Optimum nutrition is very simply giving yourself the best possible intake of nutrients to allow your body to be as healthy as possible and to work as well as it can. It is not a set of rules. For example, you do not have to be a vegetarian or take supplements, or to avoid eating any particular food, although for some people such advice would be appropriate.
Your needs are completely unique and depend on a whole host of factors, from the strengths and weaknesses that you were born with right up to the effects that your current environment has on you. You only have to look at the tremendous variation in the way we look, and in our talents and personalities, to realize that our nutritional needs are also not likely to be identical. No one diet is perfect for everyone, although there are general guidelines that apply to us all.
Your optimum nutrition is the intake of nutrients that:
- Promotes your optimal mental performance and emotional balance
- Promotes your optimal physical performance
- Is associated with the lowest incidence of ill-health
- Is associated with the longest healthy lifespan.
To date, fifty nutrients have been identified as essential for health. Your health can be promoted and maintained at the highest level if you are able to achieve your optimal intake of each nutrient every single day. Gradually your entire body, including your skeleton, is rebuilt and rejuvenated. Through optimum nutrition you can:
- Improve mental clarity, mood and concentration
- Increase IQ
- Increase physical performance
- Improve quality of sleep
- Improve resistance to infections
- Protect yourself from disease
- Extend your healthy lifespan
These might sound like bold claims, yet each has been proven by proper scientific research. Recently I rang up two doctors who had been in general practice for many years before discovering the optimum nutrition approach. One told me, “I’m convinced that nutrition will be a major part of medicine in the foreseeable future. I’m getting substantially better results with diet and supplements than I used to with drugs”. The other said, “The evidence for nutritional therapy is becoming so strong that if the doctors of today don’t become nutritionists, the nutritionists will be come the doctors of tomorrow”.
