It’s time to stop focusing on the treatment of symptoms and walk into healthy everyday living (disease prevention). Let us shake off our stinking thinking “once something is broken, we’ll fix it” and stand firm on the mindset “don’t break it in the first place.” The concept of health can be mind boggling and you may wonder how to mend and prevent your healthcare crisis. Begin by making the decision to change. Next apply these four simple concepts: make wise lifestyle choices, exercise daily, have a positive attitude, and eat nutritious food. An easy way to remember these four concepts is L.E.A.N.(Lifestyle, Exercise, Attitude, and Nutrition.)
Sickness Runs in Families
We are all born with a specific light switch in our bodies. Our own light switch, located in our body identifies what will most likely make us sick. Certain light switches run in families, like cancer, heart disease, or high blood pressure. We want to practice disease prevention that stop these proverbial “light switches” from turning on by making choices that will build up our health and make our immune system stronger. We call these choices “skills.”
Some simple disease prevention behaviors or skills that come to mind are washing our hands, breastfeeding our babies, and having our children immunized. Skills that may slip our minds may include thinking of eating “real food” instead of processed food, the joy of laughter, or playing outside with our kids.
Prevent Illness by Staying Healthy
The most important thing we can do in helping disease prevention is to stay healthy. By developing a health maintenance 
plan for you and your family, your immune system will stay strong. By promoting a stronger immune system, you will not have to visit the doctor as often. Medical care should be a partnership between you and your doctor. Unfortunately, many of us are in the “take a pill” mindset and are spreading it to our children. Reform your mind by learning to stay healthy and utilizing the Pills-Skills Model of Health.
The Pills-Skills Model of Health
The Pills-Skills Model of Health means you go into the doctor’s office and ask the doctor not only “What can I take?” but also “What can I do?” When healthcare providers see parents have the Pills-Skills mindset, they also adopt a healthy attitude: “Here’s what I prescribe,” and “Here’s what I advise.”
Each of our bodies has ability to muster up its own natural disease prevention, when we feed it the right foods and move it on a regular basis. This internal medicine can help prevent stroke, prevent obesity, prevent diabetes and even prevent cancer. Whether you want a healthy brain, eyes, nose, heart, lungs, gut, skin, immune system, or endocrine system, the recipe is the same – L.E.A.N.
Disease Prevention Using L.E.A.N.
- Lifestyle. Get a good night’s sleep, choose to be outside instead of inside, eat a brainy breakfast every day, etc.
- Exercise. Do some form of exercise for at least 20 minutes a day 3 days a week. For the time you spend exercising to count, you must be sweating. Find a way to put strength training (weight lifting) into your weekly routine, because the more muscle you have the more fat you will burn, even when you are not exercising.
- Attitude. Think positive, laugh…a lot, keep calm, avoid stress, etc.
- Nutrition. Just eat real food, avoid preservatives, food coloring, and artificial ingredients like high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils, eat small meals throughout the day,etc.
These are just a few simple changes, but that just shows how simple disease prevention can be.
