We all want to be and stay healthy. No doubt about it. When I ask patients what they are eating, how they are exercising, whether they are getting enough sleep–everyone reveals that they are either trying to maintain there health, or they are aware that they need to do so.
That’s huge. Virtually all of us care enough about ourselves that we are motivated to do something to be healthy.
One major question is… How do you know if you are actually achieving your goal. How do you know if your efforts are in fact keeping you healthy?
A common response is “I haven’t had to go to the doctor” or “When I had my last physical the doctor said I was fine”. That’s also good. But it only means that you don’t have an overt disease. In other words, you’re well enough to pass the “no disease” screening that your doctor does.
The trouble is that diseases sneak up on us. In spite of annual physicals and traditional medicine’s monitoring, disease can still sneak up on us. So is there a way to regularly monitor yourself to better insure living to a ripe old age?
The answer is yes. There are some simple ways to monitor your progress towards a healthier you.
#1 Measuring fat burning.
Being obese or overweight is a major health risk that is easily assessed by looking in the mirror. But looking at oneself in the mirror is not helpful to us if we want to know if we are “progressing”. If I see that I’m fat when I look in the mirror I don’t really know if I’m losing or gaining fat.
Even when you are eating to lose weight it’s often hard to tell if you’re making progress at first. Sometimes it takes time for the inches and pounds to drop. The way to tell if you are making progress is by measuring for ketones in your urine. Ketones are fat fragments that are produced when your body is in a fat burning mode.
Ketones can be measured in the urine using what are called KetoStix. This is a small plastic stick with a reagent strip on the end that changes color relative to the concentration of ketones in one’s urine. One checks the color change of the reagent strip a few seconds after dipping it into fresh urine.
#2 Omega Index
Having been in clinical practice for almost 30 years I’ve realized a startling thing about traditional and alternative medicine. That is that we usually assume that medical doctors know what they are talking about. Or perhaps that the science of medicine is infallible. In my 30 years I’ve seen many treatments come and go. Many drugs that were heralded as wonder drugs have been pulled off the market after causing untold harm. And much of our understanding of health has also changed.
Our understanding of the root cause of disease is also evolving. Ten years ago there was no concept of a unifying cause of many of the chronic diseases of today–diabetes, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, etc. Now we understand that a unifying factor and root cause of all of these is inflammation.
And what causes inflammation?
It’s a number of things. Being overweight is perhaps surprisingly, one of the causes. The fat cells that develop around the midriff secrete pro-inflammatory substances. This is one of the reasons that being overweight is a health risk. Toxins in our body also initiate an inflammatory response. So do infections.
A major culprit causing inflammation is being deficient in omega 3 fatty acids. These fats are essential meaning that our body cannot make them on it’s own. We must get them in the diet. But most of the food that we eat is lacking omega 3 fats.
Omega 3 fats are used by the body to manufacture chemicals that suppress inflammation. These chemicals are the body’s inherent system for regulating inflammatory processes. When our body is nutritionally deficient in omega 3 fats it cannot make the self regulating anti-inflammatory chemicals that it needs. Uncontrolled “silent inflammation” is now believed to be the cause of many diseases.
Restoring an optimal omega 3 fatty acid nutritional status is associated with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease. This fact has been well established by researchers. One measure of omega 3 nutritional status is called the Omega Index. The Omega Index is a measure of the amount of omega 3 fat in red blood cells as a percent of the total fat in the cell. In Western populations where the rate of cardiovascular disease is high this percentage averages 4%. In societies where heart disease is very low (including Japan) the Omega Index is 7%-8%, or about double.
You can learn more about the Omega Index here.
#3 Acid / Alkaline Balance
Another quick measure of one’s overall health is one’s acidity. Generally speaking the body’s of Westerners are too acidic. This is due to a diets with excessive animal protein, soda pop, refined carbohydrates, food additives and pesticides. In addition stress and lack of sleep can increase overall body acidity.
Excess acidity in the body creates a cellular environment in which infection and disease can more easily gain a foothold. One can evaluate one’s level of acidity by using pH strips. These strips change color when exposed to a liquid relative to the acidity of the liquid. You can moisten a strip with saliva to test yourself. This is best done before eating in the morning after rinsing your mouth with water and then waiting 5 minutes. An optimal saliva pH is 7.4 which is usually represented by a blue color on the pH test strip.