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Preventive Medicine

What is Lifestyle and Preventive Medicine?

Originally, preventive medicine was largely concerned with understanding and preventing infectious disease. Today, however, its scope has widened. The aim of preventive medicine is to preserve good health; to prevent disease, injury, and disability; and to facilitate early diagnosis and treatment of illness.

Of the ten most common causes of death in industrialized countries, at least two-thirds are lifestyle related (i.e. poor nutrition, physical inactivity, overweight/obesity, cigarette smoking, alcohol/drug abuse and the environment, among others). Therefore the most effective and most rational treatment is to utilize health-promoting lifestyle interventions as primary treatment.

Healthier lifestyles would significantly reduce the incidence of coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, peripheral vascular disease, cataract and macular degeneration, among others. Moreover, they would significantly increase life expectancy and the quality of life.

Real preventive medicine--preventing acute and chronic diseases and in other words, Staying Healthy--results from the way we live. We are a culmination of our life experiences. Our health is a byproduct of our life: our genes and constitutional state, our upbringing and the habits we develop, our diets, our stresses and how we deal with them, our illnesses and how we treat them (whether we attempt to discover the underlying cause and change our lifestyle so that we no longer manifest disease patterns). All of this and more affects the level of health and vitality we experience.

It seems obvious that working to improve health rather than just to manage symptoms would be better all around. But despite the well-known benefits of having a lifestyle that includes physical activity, eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables, maintaining a healthy weight, moderate alcohol use and not smoking, only a small proportion of adults follow this healthy lifestyle pattern, and in fact, the numbers are declining, according to an article published in the June 2009 issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

Specialists in Lifestyle Medicine are knowledgeable and skilled in the evidence-based use of nutrition, exercise, stress management, and other lifestyle modalities in the treatment of medical problems.
It is especially tempting to ignore good prevention in tough economic times such as these. Ultimately, maintaining good health is less expensive and easier to achieve than regaining health if you've lost it. Whatever your current health, be sure to consult lifestyle and preventive medicine specialists, get those recommended preventive checkups and screenings.

Information provided by Dr. Dawit Mengistu - http://www.agapehealth-ltd.co.uk

Food Supplements

Dietary Supplement choices should be based on sound, scientific research instead of just marketing claims.
There are about 100 trillion (100,000,000,000,000) cells in the body. 50.000 of the cells in your body will die and will be replaced with new cells, all while you have been reading these sentence!
The Western Diet is high in fat, high in protein, low in fiber, low in Carbohydrates and deficient in Minerals And in vitamines.
Mineral Depletion in the soil

Our soil has had an average of 85% mineral depletion over the past 100 years
Mineral depletion in the soil, and thus in the food we eat, has horrendous effect on the health
People who don't get the right amount of Nutrients each day not only get sick much easier, they also walk around with abnormal cravings, which can cause obesity.
More than 50% of the population are taking prescription drugs for chronic conditions
Chronic medication use can result in depletion of certain nutrients in the body
Drug-nutrient Interaction (DNI's) occur between medications (Prescription & non-prescription) & foods, fluids, & nutrient supplements

Alcohol and medications has a big potential in depleting the body of Nutrients.
Food Supplements, who needs them?

Do you consume as many fruits and vegetables as you know you should?
Do you have trouble consuming even 2-3 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables a day?
Do you have a specific health condition?
Do you drink or are you on a medication?

Nutrient deficiency and toxicity can greatly affect the work of the cells.
According to Harvard Medical School researchers posted in JAMA (2002) every American should be taking a quality multi-vitamin and mineral a day.

Food Supplements usually produce best results only when synergistically combined. Example vitamin E needs a good supply of vitamin C so it can be easily absorbed into the cells. These nutrients work together and at the same time enhance each other's health benefits. You can cause a vitamin or mineral deficiency by taking large doses of isolates. There are certain disease situations in which large doses of vitamins can be beneficial. Most mass-produced nutritional supplements contain poor quality synthetic nutrients and may be harmful long-term consumption of isolates may cause deficiencies that lead to degenerative disease.

TIPS FOR CHOOSING DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS

It should be produced by nature
It should be produced in its most natural setting
It should be taken in its most natural form
It should be from reliable source
It should be harvested at the right time
Supplementation should never be random, but well researched, thought out, and tailored to your specific condition & needs and Supplements do not exist to replace a healthy diet; they exist to complement it.

The single biggest factor for your long-term health and wellness is something that you have personal control over. Consult your physician before you take any kind of nutritional supplement. "The Doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and prevention of disease." Thomas Edison

Information provided by Dr. Dawit Mengistu - http://www.agapehealth-ltd.co.uk

Your Immune System - Your best Defense

About 90 years ago, there were two men, Pasteur and Beachamp, who were at the forefront in their fields of science. Two men who would forever define our understanding of health and medicine in very distinct ways. Pasteur believed that we lived in a hostile environment where disease was always trying to invade our bodies in the form of harmful bacteria. Pasteur's attitude towards sickness was to protect the body from these harmful bacteria.

On the other hand Beachamp believed that a healthy body would be immune to harmful bacteria. Only when the cells became weak and sick did bacteria have a destructive effect on the body. But Pasteur insisted that healthy tissue is sterile of bacteria. Beachamp disagreed. He discovered that healthy tissue was constantly being exposed to bacteria but as the body started to deteriorate, the bacteria changed due to alterations in the cell's bio-chemistry. In the end, Pasture's theory was adopted and Beachamp's was ignored. This resulted in a prejudice towards preventative treatment of disease that is still present today in our medical communities. And the rest is history.

Beachamp's and Pasteur's theories are equally important for a healthy life. Unfortunately, medications for killing bacteria had become a large industry. It is indeed convenient to have germs to blame rather than being responsible for one's eating or other bad lifestyle habits. When cells are healthy (cellular health) and vibrant, the immune system is effective in fighting and controlling bacteria. However, through unhealthy lifestyle (e.g. poor eating habits etc.), cells become weak and sick (cell malfunction) and harmful bacteria are able to multiply. For example, candida is a bacteria that exist in two forms. The form, usually found in the intestine, is harmless and does not migrate to other tissues. In the event of the colon becoming toxic, candida changes into its fungal form. It then penetrates the intestine wall and infiltrates other body tissues, causing a multitude of metabolic disturbances

Beachamp discovered that germs are opportunists, waiting for the right conditions. Otherwise most are harmless to the body. Bacteria are in the air that we breathe, the water that we drink and the food that we eat. For the majority of the time, bacteria do not affect the body. The stomach secretes hydrochloric acid to kill harmful bacteria (H. Pylori). The large intestine has beneficial lactic acid-secreting bacteria which fend off harmful bacteria. However, when the body is not being fed correctly or if the body becomes a toxin waste dumping site (by ingesting, inhaling & absorbing) harmful bacteria are able to attack and multiply. In such a case medicines powerfully adjust the body's metabolism in an attempt to stimulate healing. The symptoms can disappear, but the cause of the imbalance is ignored which is mostly an Nutrient deficiency and toxicity.

The Antibodies in the body travel throughout the blood and lymph to identify foreign molecules, and guide the body's vast defense system. They latch onto and neutralize foreign invaders, even coating microbes to make them palatable for the scavenger cells. Antibodies respond swiftly to toxins and enable us to fight and resist infections. The immune system has the unimaginable ability of creating 1,920,000 different types of antibody constructions. Experiments have shown that white blood cells, called Lymphocytes, can attack cancer cells and hold them in check. Our immune system is a powerful mechanism. One B lymphocyte can pump out more than 10 million antibody molecules an hour. Yet the living, human cell has been incapable in keeping up with our ever-changing times. The life of most cells is short; new cells are constantly being made to replace dead ones. The raw materials for this rebuilding come from the blood stream. BUT when nutrients are missing in the blood stream and if the blood contains toxins, the process of rebuilding cells is disrupted and thus resistance to disease (Immunity) diminishes.

A person's resistance to infection can become compromised by many other reasons such as:

* A diet low in nutrients - Many nutrients are needed for the immune system to function and deficiencies are common. Some of the most important are: Vitamins A, C, D3, E, B6, the minerals zinc, selenium and essential fatty acids.
* Too much sugar in your diet - Sugar or foods containing it especially between meals is a real killer of the immune system.
* Food allergies- eating foods you are allergic or sensitive to puts a stress on the immune system.
* Too much alcohol - 3 or more drinks can damage the immune system.
* A toxic bowel - a large percentage of the immune system is in the bowel.
* Lack of sleep - growth hormone is released during sleep which stimulates the thymus gland repairing and renewing your cells.
* Lack of exercise - transportation of the immune cells throughout the body needs movement of the lymph which in turn depends on adequate exercise.
* Low thyroid function - the thyroid gland plays a crucial role in maintaining the body's defense system.
* Emotional and physical stress - cortisol produced by the adrenal glands in response to stress suppresses the immune system.
* Toxic chemicals in the body suppress the immune system

Information provided by Dr. Dawit Mengistu - http://www.agapehealth-ltd.co.uk

Longevity - Slowing Down the Hands of Time

Disease never comes without a cause. It is not fate or our stars, nor is it often due to factors beyond our control. Most diseases are due to the simple outworking of the laws of cause and effect. Longevity is not different. It is about keeping the laws of health. The laws of health are the laws of nature, just like the law of gravity. It is indeed a law of cause and effect. - Read more - article by Dr. Dawit Mengistu