There is a path that we are all on. Every destination involves a decision that we make on a daily basis, if not moment to moment.  If you remember back to the Wizard of Oz, Glenda told Dorothy to follow the yellow brick road.  To make a long story short, she did follow the directions and her end point or destination was home to Kansas. That is the ideal story.

On a daily basis, we all make decisions.  These decisions lead us down different paths. I think we can all remember many of the decisions that we made and wish that we had not made them.  When it comes to our health, we can have the best of care but if we don't make the right decisions to implement that care, then it is worthless.

I think we all have the ability to change our medical destiny. You are the Captain of your own ship.  I want to share with you a great article that was published in the Journal Progress in Cardiovascular Disease in 2005.  The title of the article is "Neutraceuticals, Vitamins, Antioxidants, and Minerals in the Prevention and Treatment of Hypertension."  If you or someone you love has hypertension or is at risk of hypertension, you owe it to them and to yourself to read the Daily Dose over the next few days. I am going to break this article down into tidbits of information.

the point of the Daily Dose, is to provide you with the current, state of the art medicine as it applies to both traditional and complementary medicine. There is a place for both.  I am a strong fan of complementary medicine but also a strong advocate of traditional or mainstream medicine!  I think there is a place to blend them both together. Neither one of them is complete without the other in my mind.

I want to discuss the early diet of the original man.  If you remember, the original man was a hunter and gatherer.  There were no grocery stores or fast food restaurants. They ate what they killed or what they gathered from the plants.  The food industry is very dependent upon mechanical processing for our food supply and most of the food supply that we buy has been modified and manipulated to provide scarce nutrition for the sake of mass production and long shelf life.   The early diet was composed of low sodium, high potassium, high fiber, low fat and low cholesterol.  They had lean animal protein, such as wild game, low to no refined carbohydrates, and a very high intake of natural fruits and vegetables such as berries, nuts, vegetables, and fruits. There was no such thing as High Fructose Corn Syrup. 

Our modern diet has produced of modern diseases that were unheard of when man adhered to the diet mentioned above. We now have hypertension, heart disease, hardening of the arteries, congestive heart failure, stroke, renal failure, Type II Diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, and depression, to name a few.

As the author's of this study reports, a short term reduction in BP using nutrition resulted in an improvement in morbidity and mortality in regards to heart disease, stroke and heart attacks.  They also list several other studies that support the fact that a diet that is rich in macronutrients and micronutrients will have a significant impact on decreasing the co-morbidities and mortality risk associated with a whole host of diseases. A Mediterranean type of diet will decrease the risk of a second heart attack by 76%. Wow!  There is not a medication on the market that has better statistics that this.  Given this information, why would anyone NOT eat like their health was dependent upon it?  You only have one body and when it is gone or ruined, where else are you going to live?

Well, there are good things to come this week from this journal article. Stay tuned. Pass this around to your friends and family.  Let's get some information sharing started.

You are in control of your medical destiny. While it might not be as easy as following the yellow brick road, you will have to make decisions on which path you want to follow. It is a choice every time we decide to eat poorly, avoid adequate sleep, and not follow good advice.  Also, the decisions that you make today might not be fully realized as to their outcome for years, if not decades.  If you decide to smoke now you then make a decision as to what path you will walk down.  That path has a destination that might have been totally different had you made a decision years ago to NOT smoke. Change paths.  Get out your map, use the Daily Dose, and change paths.  I will be here to help any way I can!

To your health,

Dr. Michelle Haendiges