Healthy Parents... Healthy Kids!

Do you want to grow old with your family?

Do you want to know your grandchildren?

Do you want to avoid spending your "golden years" in and out of the hospital?

Do you want to avoid heart disease, cancer, and diabetes?

Do you want to feel good and be active until your last days?

Do you want your children and grandchildren to have these things too?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this is the website for you. Follow this simple program, at your own pace. As you progress you will notice that not only will you feel better, look better, and be better - so will those around you.

Step#1: Establish a baseline.

You need a few basic parameters to follow so that you know just how unhealthy you are now and how healthy you are becoming as you progress through the program.

Step#2: Educate yourself.

Starvation diets and radical changes to your life-style based on the latest fads NEVER work and are generally unhealthy. True success is only achieved through making smart choices. Smart choices cannot be made because someone tells you they are smart decisions, they can only be made one you in fact believe they are smart decisions. Thus you must educate yourself and then decide for yourself what choices you will make.

Step#3: Reevaluate.

Every few months you need to step back and reevaluate your health status and redefine your goals as needed.

Through these 3 simple steps you can accomplish what so many Americans cannot - health for life. And not only your life but also the loved ones who surround you.

You can read any number of books that will tell you to have this blood test and that blood test. That you should take this body measurement and that body measurement. That you should know about the health history of people in your family that you probably never met. Most of these things are getting at essentially the same thing. I have listed below the 3 parameters that I believe are most important to establish your baseline. If you can improve these 3 parameters, you can bet that all the 1000s of others will be improved as well.

Body Mass Index (BMI) is a rough estimate of your body composition and how it relates to your health. Your BMI is based on your height and weight. A BMI less than 18.5 is underweight and greater than 25 is overweight. If your BMI is greater than 30 then you are obese. BMI is a helpful marker for most adults but becomes less useful for people with extreme muscle mass, like body-builders. This does not mean however, that if you have a large BMI that you have lots of muscle.

Body composition is a very important consideration for people who wish to be healthy. Overall, fat tissue is good for you and it provides many useful functions - warmth, energy, protection, etc. However, the location of your fat can give you some insight into how your body is functioning on metabolic level. Fat around the abdomen (belly) is pathologic (bad). Abdomen fat correlates well with insulin-resistance, which is a fancy way of saying that you are developing pre-diabetes. The more abdominal fat you have the closer you are to one day becoming diabetic.

Your abdomen fat also correlates will with the degree of athrosclerosis that you have. Athrosclerosis is hardening and narrowing of the blood vessels, which eventually leads to heart attack and stroke. Simply stated the more abdomen fat you have the more athrosclerosis you have. Lose the adbomen fat and you will also help to open up those life-sustaining blood vessels that supply your heart and brain.

Go to this website sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute which is a Division of the NIH. Here you can calculate your BMI and read more about the meaning of the calculation.

So with this simple calculation and a quick look in the mirror you should be starting to get an idea of your risk for diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.

There are about a thousand different ways to look at your cholesterol and much confusion surrounds this issue. In my mind it is very simple - just look at 2 different numbers - total cholesterol and HDL cholesterol.

Your total cholesterol gives you an idea about how healthy or unhealthy you are currently eating. If your total cholesterol is above 200 then you are eating an unhealthy diet. If it is less than 200 then you are on the right track, but unless your total cholesterol is less than 160 you have some room for improvement. Simply stated the more plant products you eat, the lower your total cholesterol and the more animal products (especially read meat and dairy products) the higher your total cholesterol.

Total cholesterol is also well correlated to all the diseases of affluence (heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc.) The higher your total cholesterol the higher your risk of developing these diseases. Do you want to avoid dying of colon cancer like others in your family? Or perhaps it is breast cancer that is the culprit. Probably the best thing you can do to modify this risk is to modify your diet a little, add more plant based foods, and thus lower your total cholesterol.

HDL cholesterol on the other hand is "good" cholesterol, mainly because it helps to remove cholesterol from the blood stream and all the wrong places that it has been deposited (like your blood vessels). The more if this you have the better.

Some people are lucky and naturally have very high levels of HDL. Most people, however, are not so lucky. The thing about HDL is that it is well correlated with activity level. If you sit around all day and can barely summon the energy to walk around the block, the you can bet your HDL level is low. On the other hand if you just finished you 100th marathon, you can bet your HDL is high. This is part of the reason active people have less risk of heart disease.

The best news is that you can easily control your HDL. If your HDL is low then you just need to increase your activity level. This does not mean your need to set your sights on the local marathon next week. Just start slow, maybe a walk around the block three times a week. Your long-term goal should be 30 minutes of exercise 5 times a week but for the most part more is better when it comes to exercise and HDL.

To read more about cholesterol click here to see what the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute has to say. Overall the information is pretty good with one exception. What they consider "desirable," is what can be accomplished with drugs. Their desirable falls well short of what can be accomplished by proper nutrition and exercise. If you want to lower your risk of heart disease to a "desirable" level, then follow their guidelines. If you want to virtually eliminate your risk I suggest you shoot for a total cholesterol of less than 160 and an HDL of greater than 60.

Blood Pressure is a good global marker for health. Virtually everything that you do has an effect on your blood pressure. Diet, lifestyle, atherosclerosis, stress, smoking, etc. all have an effect on your blood pressure. Blood pressure is positively associated with many illnesses, especially heart disease.

There are two numbers to your blood pressure the top(systolic) over the bottom(diastolic). The easiest number to follow is the top(systolic) number. You should shoot for a number that is less than 120. This can be done effectively through any combination of diet, exercise, stress reduction, etc. Many people go straight to medication, but this is really not conducive to long-term health because blood pressure medication does nothing for the things that high blood pressure represents. It essentially just masks the symptoms of poor health.

My advice - search for the cause of your high blood pressure then treat the cause.

To learn more about high blood pressure click here.

Your ultimate goal should be to get your BMI, cholesterol, and blood pressure within the parameters that I mentioned above. Each point outside the parameters puts you at increased risk for basically all the disease of affluence - that is heart attack, cancer, diabetes, and stroke.

You have probably heard a thousand different recommendations. This diet or that diet. This exercise program or that program. This supplement or that supplement. Eat salt, eat eggs ... no wait, don't eat salt and eggs have too much cholesterol. I am here to bring you the truth - no one can tell you how to live a healthy life. You must know how to live a healthy life and be compelled, in your own mind, about those things that are good for you and bad for you.

That is why the only way to long term health is through education. You must read the facts for yourself. You must understand the core concepts of healthy nutrition and human physiology. Only then will you be able to sift through the mass of information coming your way and live a truly healthy life.

If you follow my program and read the books I suggest, I guarantee you will add years to your life. However, it will not just be years to your life, but you will also change the habits of those you love... especially your kids.

Thus the reasoning goes - Healthy Parents...Healthy Kids!

The easiest way to health can be achieved oddly enough by sitting in your chair or laying in your bed. In will not happen overnight though - there is no quick fix. Allen Carr, a man that has probably saved more lives and increased the overall well being of more people than anyone else in the last 50 years unlocked the key to success. He did this by educating people and rewiring the way they thought. He initially did this through smoking but then extended it to alcohol and many other unhealthy habits. Millions of people were able to read his book and just put down their cigarettes - forever. Remarkably they did it not because they had been told smoking was bad for them, but rather because they no longer had any desire to inhale a toxic, foul-tasting, expensive, addictive substance into their lungs. It is truly remarkable what he was able to accomplish for so many people simply by getting them to read a book.

This is the basis of my program. It has radically changed the way I live my life and for the good. I have lost weight, I feel great, and all my parameters are below the levels mentioned above. More importantly though I feel healthy and know that I will be around much longer. Longer to spend time raising my kids and hopefully some day my grandkids. Longer to spend time enjoying life with my wife. Longer to spend time traveling the world. Longer to do just about anything I can think of.

Your education starts with the books listed below. There will be some overlap in the topics discussed in the books but those areas that overlap are helpful to review for reinforcement. Read these books, I promise you and your family will not be sorry and you will all live longer and better if you do.

Insulin resistance is a not a pre-disease, it is a disease. It is silent and deadly. More to come.

More to come on holistic health

More to come on whole food, plant based diets.

There is no quick fix. There is no program that you can do for a few weeks or months that will produce lasting results. Yes, the goal is a radical change in your life-style, but that change will not come in an instant. Slow and steady, stay the course. Learn as much as you can. Be prepared for failures as they are a normal part of the process. It is quitting that is the true tragedy.

The program is simple: measure the 3 parameters, read three books, and reevaluate every three months.

It has taken me almost 3 years to get to the point of feeling healthy and actually being healthy.

I strongly encourage you to sign up for more information. Click here to become a fan. I send out regular updates to my website and new information.

No time like the present.

Estimate your 10-year risk for heart attack.

This is a useful website to put in all the numbers mentioned above to come up with a 10-year risk of heart disease. This is based on the famous Framingham study which started several decades ago and continues today.

It is important for everyone to understand that the purpose of this website is educational - to provide information. It is not a replacement for your doctor and I am not entering into a doctor-patient relationship with any of the readers of these pages or their children. It is my goal that by providing you with easy to understand information based on the latest research you will be empowered to work with your doctor to raise...healthy kids!