“The Importance of a Healthy Lifestyle and Balanced Diet for Preventing Chronic Diseases”

A healthy lifestyle that includes a balanced diet is the key factor in our health. It has been estimated that 70% of all stroke cases, 80% of all cardiovascular disease cases and 90% of all type 2 diabetes cases in recent years were caused by nothing but unhealthy lifestyles. These diseases could have been prevented simply by paying more attention to food choices, weight changes and physical activity. Importantly, there is recent evidence to indicate that by addressing just a few risk factors for heart disease and diabetes, more than a third of the world’s Alzheimer’s cases could be prevented. These interventions should be all the more effective in preventing or reducing the less severe cognitive problems that naturally occur with age.

The truth is, we have more power than we realize. The power of personal choice often goes untapped because of Western medicine’s tendency to treat symptoms with drugs or surgery before considering less risky and often more effective approaches—like eating healthier.

Nutritionists recommend scientific diet planning as part of a larger treatment plan for many conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.

The quality of the food we ingest today has declined alarmingly, and many of us are just beginning to understand this. Animals are fed daily with growth hormones, antibiotics and genetically modified (GMO) food, which we ingest when we prepare a meal from them. Chickens and pigs are fed poisons such as arsenic as preservatives. Conventionally grown vegetables are flooded with pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Besides being toxic and draining our soil of nutrients, these treatments make vegetables grow bigger, masking their dwindling vitamin and mineral content. In addition, genetically modified fats and refined sugar are regularly added to most foods. And this is done not only to maximize the shelf life of the products, but also to deliberately increase our appetite for them, which leads to sales and profit.

Scientists often view food as an assembly of calories and nutrients that have certain interactions with human biology. If we followed this thought, food found in nature would be indistinguishable from food made in industrial factories. It’s just that nature doesn’t work like a factory.

Industrial food reflects approximately 200 years of innovation and human research in nutrition, production and optimization for human consumption. Natural food, on the other hand, reflects thousands of years of evolution and adaptation of life on the planet. When you put a blueberry in your mouth, for example, you benefit from all the effort (and thousands of years of trial and error) that the blueberry bush put into not only growing the fruit, but also protecting the future of the species, lying dormant in seeds.

Instead of risking the survival of the seeds on their own, blueberries use their own defense system, which is composed of several chemicals that we humans call nutrients—the very nutrients that we work so hard to industrially decant into pills and capsules. These nutrients include vitamins that keep the seeds from spoiling, minerals that give them strength, and sugars that give them energy.

In addition, plants produce a wide range of powerful compounds called phytonutrients—plant nutrients—such as anthocyanins and pterostilbenes, which have gotten blueberries in the news. Phytonutrients serve the important purpose of fighting oxidative stress and inflammation, thereby increasing the lifespan of the seeds. They are also responsible for the color, smell and flavor of blueberries. One reason these blueberries taste so good is that they do their best to attract birds, which eat them. That’s because through the combination of the bird’s digestion, flight and excretion, the plant can spread its seeds beyond its own territory, further ensuring its survival on the planet.

Psychologist Mihai Moisoiu

Tel. 0753937223

www.mihaimoisoiu.ro

E-mail: [email protected]