A Good Start to 2008?
For most of us the festive season is now behind us and we are at the start of a New Year. I would hope that it will be an enjoyable one and full of interesting experiences for you.
Most importantly I hope that it will be a year in which you either enhance your current health or, if you have an illness that you can recover from it and regain vibrant health which is rightfully yours.
With regard to good health let me share something with you. On New Years day I was driving back to Bangkok from the South West region of Thailand known as Phang nga Province which borders the Andaman Sea. Further up the coast just before a village called Ranong there is a road which crosses from the west coast of Thailand to the east coast.
I stopped for a few minutes at the turn off and there was an elderly man standing there waiting for a bus which was not due for another hour. He asked if it was possible to get a ride across to the east coast to a town called Chumphon.
No problem for that as it is on the way to Bangkok.
Well on the way it became obvious that this man was in excellent health. He was bright, very alert and given the way he moved, very agile. In fact he moved easier and better than many men in their 50’s. I was trying to guess his age. But, I would never have guessed 85 years which is what he was.
He was explaining how he never gets ill, has a great memory and is in great health.
It turned out that he owned a fruit farm and had worked on it all his life (still did) and ate almost only vegetables and fruit. Never any processed foods.
Hi wife was 81 and she was just as sprightly. I took some photos of both of them on their farm and intended to post them on the blog, but unfortunately my photographic skills are not great as I must have had the camera on the wrong settings because they came out all blurred and are not suitable for posting.
Anyway, these people were living examples of how we all should be when we reach our eighties. In fact, we should all be in better shape as we have the benefit of knowledge which these people do not.
At the end of the day these people reinforce what we all know but often don’t practice and that is that it is critical to ensure that we ingest all the nutrients that we need and unless we live on a fruit farm such as these folk that inevitably means taking a supplement such as our Total Balance because you simply cannot get all the nutrients that you need from the modern diet alone.
Also, just as importantly we must avoid eating processed foods…in other words anything out of a packet…and lastly we must exercise. Remember, if you don’t use it, you lose it.
Let us all do our best to try and live by these principles in 2008 and finish this new year in a better state of health than we began it.
Reader Comments (4)
Happy New Year, Warren.
Concerning a vegan diet with only raw fruits and vegetables, you might find it interesting to read the series of posts that personal development writer Steve Pavlina is already posting daily on his weblog, about the "30 days trial" he's performing on himself these days with this kind of diet. As a man of putting theory into practice, you'll see he's explaining everything he does and feels throughout the day (describes meals -- with pictures --, mentions the calories, fats, proteins and so on, plus the physical and psychological effects he's experiencing).
Starting from here: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/12/raw-foods/
January 3, 2008 | Marius Chitosca
Happy New Year Warren & Xtend-Life Staff:
I wonder if this man and his wife enjoy good health and longevity because they eat what they have grown up with in their environment. In other words they eat a natural native diet which they are genetically suited for. One can also hear stories about good health and longevity among the Inuit or Eskimos and they eat a substantially different diet in their native environment. Most of us city-dwellers can no longer eat a pure native diet (hence supplementation). Where I live we have access to all sorts of exotic fruits and vegetables, but they are not native and due to how they are harvested and transported their nutritional value is questionable. Also people have an advantage living nearer the equator because their circulating levels of vitamin D are much higher. The Eskimos had to get their vitamin D from fat sources where it was stored in marine life.
January 6, 2008 | Rick
And Happy New Year to you to Marius,
I just read the article on the URL link you provided. It will be most interesting to see how his experiment evolves. He certainly talks a lot of sense.
January 7, 2008 | Warren Matthews
Happy New Year to you to Rick,
I think that there are a wide variety of healthy diets which vary depending upon where you live in the world. I subscribe to the theory that it is always desirable to eat produce that is grown locally, simply because of its freshness.
But, just as importantly avoid anything man made!
January 7, 2008 | Warren Matthews
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