“An ounce of prevention ins worth more than a pound of cure” – Benjamin Franklin

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 6 out of 10 people suffer from a minimum of one chronic illness throughout their life.

These figures are an eye-opener for all of us, but the question is, how can we prevent this from happening? What control can we take over our own lives to ensure our long term good health?

Prevent, Rather Than Cure:

Prevention is the act of taking measures to avoid any health problem long before it arises.

We are lucky to have access to the modern conventional medical system and its way of treating the symptoms as they arise, but not only can this be too late to fully reverse an ailment, but can come with side effects from medications as well as mis-diagnosis and dealing with just one small part of the problem instead of the whole picture.

Given the opportunity and the right education and support I believe that most individuals suffering from ill health would certainly choose to have prevented it rather than rely on the conventional medicine available to try and alleviate the symptoms.

One benefit of Functional Medicine is gaining clarity and confidence around what we each individually need to do for our own unique bodies using long-term preventive methods, helping people curb the complexity of chronic diseases by implementing lifestyle modifications.

These include a healthy diet, better sleep, regular exercising, and mindfulness.

What Can You Do To Prevent Diseases?

Eat a Healthy Diet:

More and more research is showing disease prevention with the right diet, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and cancer.

If you are keen on living a healthy life without falling prey to any sickness, stepping up the game of your diet is the best way to go!

Home prepared food is a great place to start, cutting out the processed meals, filling your shopping cart with healthy choices such as fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds and nuts, lean protein, and healthy fats (such as avocado, coconut and olive oil).

Fresh and healthy foods contain vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytonutrients that prevent the occurrence of disease and aid the bodies ability to function properly.

Avoiding foods that are high in saturated fats, sugars, and simple carbs as these are some of the main offenders of ill health, especially if eaten regularly over time.

Why Should I Exercise?

Getting out especially in the fresh air can have so many great effects on your health, physically and mentally.

Exercise keeps your body strong, releases endorphins, flushes toxins, boosts immunity, aids digestion, improves mental health and much much more.

If you have a sedentary job it is even more crucial you make the time to move outside of working hours or during your lunch break.

Office workers especially are more at risk from back problems, obesity, diabetes, cancer and heart disease due to sitting around all day.

Usually, people associate exercising with weight loss, but the truth is that working out is for everyone.

Whether you are old or young, some sort of enjoyable exercise should be included in your daily regime.

Quality Sleep:

Inadequate sleep might not sound like a big deal. But did you know that your body’s repair mechanism initiates during night sleep?

Nowadays, lack of sleep is considered the norm and not something you complain about.

But sadly many do not realise the correlation between poor, inadequate sleep and chronic illnesses later in life.

According to the Sleep Foundation, we need a good quality 8 hours of sleep a night to help our bodies recover from the mental and physical exhaustion of the day.

This repair and maintenance start in the deeper phase of sleep that initiates during night time.

The most important restorative work is done between the hours of 10pm-2am, which can not be made up for by a lie in in the morning.

Modifying Lifestyle Choices:

We have all picked up habits, patterns and behaviours over our life time, some of which will no longer serve us well or our long term health.

It can be challenging to make these changes alone and especially if you don’t know where to start.

It is never too late to make changes to your lifestyle.

If you feel you are ready to make positive changes towards better health or are concerned about the future we offer a wide range of services to help kickstart your path to optimum health as well as in depth testing which extends even to genetic testing, giving an indication of any potential health issues that you may face in the future and us a chance to prevent them now.

The future is in your hands.