Foundations of Health

Optimal health and vitality begins with these six foundation principles. These are what I regard as the pillars of health. Without these fundamentals in place, optimal health will never become your reality.

Thoughts. Healthy thoughts create healthy bodies
Breathing. Focusing your attention on deep healthy breathing reduces stress
Hydration. For optimal health drink .033 L of water for every kg of your body weight daily
Nutrition. Eat high quality organic food that is right for your biochemical individuality
Sleep. Getting to bed before 10.30pm every night will promote optimal health
Exercise and movement. Exercise regularly and include energy building exercises for vitality

Nutrition tips

Eat the highest quality food, and drink the best quality water. Always opt for organic food. Why? Food and water is our best medicine and over time food quality has decreased for various reasons, and so too has human health. The Baby Boomer generation has paid the price with Obesity, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Cancer, Arthritis etc. Generation X'ers have not only suffered the same degenerative processes, but have also suffered from auto immune conditions such as Multiple Sclerosis, Lupus, Chronic Fatigue, Crohn's Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Infertility etc. Here are some basic tips for better health.

Food and water should always be your first medicine. 'Hippocrates'.
Avoid "Non-Foods" aka as "Fake Foods". When is a so called food, no longer real food?
Eat certified organic, unprocessed foods. If it wasn't around 10,000 years ago, don't eat it! If it can last on a supermarket shelf for months and months, then it is already dead!
Drink adequate quality water. Water is vital for digestion, transportation of nutrients, elimination of waste, lubricating the joints, regulating body temperature and circulation of blood and lymph.
The food you are eating is only as healthy as the soil it comes from. Healthy soil means a healthy plant full of nutrients.
Balance cooked foods and raw foods. Aim for 50% cooked and 50% raw.
Where are you from? Your racial/ethnic background will determine how and what you should eat. When you work out how to organise your meals, and macronutrient ratios, you will never have to consider dieting again. If you want to determine your "Metabolic Type", contact me.

Water

Water is life. Are you hungry or are you dehydrated? Water is crucial for health and when we are dehydrated the body will give us sensations that are similar to hunger pangs. This basically means it is very easy to over eat if you allow yourself to become dehydrated. We must remember that our body is 60 to 65% water and our brain is 85% water. It is also important to note that our brain is literally swimming in a pool of water.. Did you know that a dry mouth is one the final symptoms of dehydration (Dr Batmanghelidj, watercure). According to this amazing doctor, before prescribing medical drugs or labelling yourself as sick, we should first check if we are hydrated enough. Every function in the human body relies on water. Dehydration can cause disease. Water is the only fluid we need.

Water is vital for hydrating and cleansing. It helps with transportation of nutrients around the body by creating an internal river system. It is necessary for detoxification of our body via this internal river system.
Tea, coffee, alcohol and soft drinks are not substitutes for pure water, as these beverages contain dehydrating agents. This means they 'take out' more water than they 'put in'.
Dehydration will cause many symptoms (messages) in the body. Before using medical drugs to silence these important messages, check your hydration levels. Drink adequate water for 2 weeks to see what happens to your symptoms.
During dehydration, organs takes priority over over all other parts of the body. Brain function leads the way for obvious reasons. So joints, muscles will all be starved of water as the organs have priority.
Drink 2 to 3 glasses of water upon waking up every morning. This is important as we wake up dehydrated. Drink water 15 to 20 minutes before you eat breakfast.

Commonly asked questions. These are the most common questions I encounter regarding water.

How much water should I be drinking? The best formula I have found is the following; bodyweight (kg) X 0.033 = daily intake in litres. So if you weigh 80 kg, you would multiply that by 0.033 which means you should be drinking 2.64 litres of water daily.

Is tap water good to drink? Well I would definitely drink tap water if I had no access to quality spring water or a filtered water. But the the bottom line is that it contains synthetic chemicals that are detrimental to your health. Chlorine will kill the good bacteria and microbes in your gut leading to an imbalance in your intestinal flora. Basically your health begins in your gut. Fluoride can be a controversial topic but I believe there is ore than enough evidence that show the damage it causes on the brain and the central nervous system. No dose is safe as far as I am concerned,especially for children who are still developing. fluoridealert.org/issues/health/brain/ http://fluoridealert.org/studies/brain04_/

Goal setting

"People with clear written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine" Brian Tracy

"Failing to plan is planning to fail" Brian Tracy

The famous quotes above clearly emphasise the importance of goal setting.

Think of your head as the antenna of your "inner world", capable of attracting almost any form of idea or information from the "outer world". If you have clearly defined goals, this will act as a filter to the ideas and information you attract from the "outer world". Aristotle said that having a goal can be a cause of reaching that goal.

So now let's imagine what happens if you don't have a goal(s) in life. Think about God or the Universe as a Chef. If you go to a restaurant and tell the waitress to bring you anything she wants, would that be a smart way to order your meal? Probably not, as the Chef may decide to prepare you a meal from old leftovers and chances are that you are not going to like your meal. So the reality is that you have no one to blame but yourself. You didn't not give the Chef the specific directions on what you wanted as your meal. So now you have to eat what has been served to you and if you don't, you will be left hungry. If you don't have goals, you'll end up getting whatever is served up to you, good or bad!

According to Brian Tracy's Time Power, less than 3% of all people, have clear written goals and they are easily the most successful in every field. Less than 1% of all people re-write and revisit their goals on regular basis.

So the message here is to set goals. Write them down, as this is the first step in making your goals become a reality. When they are written down, you have them in a physical form. You can touch it, feel it and look at it whenever you need to. This is very powerful as it is becoming a real. Make sure your goals are clearly defined.

Setting and achieving goals goes through three important steps. Vision, planning and strategy.

There is no goal without a vision. So it is vital you have a clear vision of what your goal is and how your life will be once you reach that goal.

A vision is necessary, but it is also pretty much useless without a plan. A plan serves as a road map for you to reach your vision.

The third phase is to develop a strategy in order to guide you in implementing your plan and materialising your vision.

If you are looking at identifying your dream and setting realistic goals, contact me and let's work together to prepare a simple, detailed road map that leads you to your legacy.

Just remember, if you don't have a dream, any road will take you there.