TriVita and Your Health

You’ve probably heard the expression, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This means that taking small actions now is better than doing nothing and then having to deal with a big problem later. This is especially important when it comes to your health because health disasters can be extraordinarily difficult to resolve.

With an infinite number of possible diseases how do you know which “ounce” of prevention is needed for your life? To start, ask yourself these questions:

1. What are the common behaviors that lead to disability and premature death?
2. What are my risks as an individual?
3. What strategies can I use to reduce my risk and improve my vitality?

Common (mis)behaviors
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the most common causes of death in North America are:

• Cardiovascular disease
• Cancer
• Respiratory disease
• Accidents
• Diabetes

The most common reasons why people lose their vitality and eventually their lives, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, include:

• Tobacco
• Poor diet
• Physical inactivity
• Alcohol
• Infections
• Toxins

From this you can see that tobacco, poor diet, physical inactivity as well as alcohol abuse can lead to disability and death from heart attack, cancer and lung diseases. So, we’ve just answered the first question and the first step in prevention would be:

• Don’t abuse tobacco or alcohol
• Do eat a healthy diet
• Engage in physical activity
• Take steps to protect yourself from infections and toxins.

Now, let’s look at question number 2.

What are your risks as an individual?
Your family can teach you much about your risk factors for disability and disease. You should pay special attention to your closest relatives: your parents, siblings, children and grandparents.

• How long did they live?
• What were their health challenges?
• How can I help avoid similar challenges?

Please see my article on Healthy Aging and indulge me as I share my own strategy which is based on my family’s personal history. My grandfather and great-grandfather died of congestive heart failure – so I add CoEnzyme Q-10 (CoQ-10) to my Healthy Aging nutrients. My father and aunt were Type “A” performance-driven people (like me!) and both developed Alzheimer’s disease. Considering this, I take Adaptogen 10 Plus mixed with Optima4 to help reduce the impact of stress while increasing brain-specific antioxidants.

What is your family history telling you? What nutrient strategies can you use to help reduce the likelihood of disease and disability? By assessing your health risks as an individual you can create a program to help you reduce these risks. I encourage you to call one of our Wellness Consultants at 1-800-991-7116 so they can suggest appropriate nutritional supplementation.

A strategy and motivation for everyone
Most of us know we need to care for our basic physical, emotional and spiritual needs and to look at our family histories for disease risk. So, coming up with the right health recommendations from these actions is usually not too big a problem.

However, there could be a big problem between “knowing what to do” versus actually doing it. If we are motivated by fear of suffering and death, we will practice prevention for awhile; but as the sense of disaster fades from our mind, we’re likely to lapse into a more “comfy” lifestyle and not maintain a preventive approach. A powerful alternative to the “fear” approach is to be motivated by our sense of purpose. This approach is much more likely to give us the greatest sustained motivation to act correctly, and thus increase the vitality and longevity of our lives.

A sense of purpose takes us away from a fear-based motivation to a desire-based motivation. With a purpose - based life, we certainly will not abuse our gift of health because that would interfere with our accomplishments. We will want to care for our health in every way we can.

To summarize, you can help improve and maintain your health by using:

• The 10 Essentials for Health and Wellness to create the physical, emotional and spiritual health you need for your many life purposes.
• Quality supplements to create the energy you need to succeed and as a bulwark against sickness.
• Use each moment of every day to fuel the fires of your own life purposes.

As Benjamin Franklin concluded, “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.” Start putting your ounce of prevention to work for you today!

To find out more about TriVita’s products including Nopalea, go here or if you’d like to find out how you can earn an additional stream of income, call me on 856-264-7802.

Es Riggins
Independent TriVita Affiliate Member #13160615

Technorati Tags: alzheimer, antioxidants, common ailments, coq-10, Healthy Aging, nutrient strategies, optima4

What is your experience? Does there seem to be more or less people with allergies these days? Do more or less children – and adults – seem to have asthma these days? Most people recognize that the prevalence of allergies and asthma is on the rise… and health statistics confirm it.

What are the causes of allergies and asthma? Why are we seeing so many more people suffering from these conditions? How can we find relief from these common conditions?

Antecedents, triggers and inflammation
We say we have allergies when we experience a certain set of symptoms (watery eyes, runny nose, scratchy throat, etc.) in response to a trigger such as pollen or dust. We say we have asthma when we experience breathing difficulty related to constriction in our airways and inflammation in the immune system of our respiratory tract.

Antecedents – Certain people have allergies while others don’t. And certain people experience asthma while others don’t. The difference between those of us with symptoms and other people is found in antecedents (literally “what comes before”). Antecedents may be:

• Genetic (rare)
• Trauma from smoke, chemical burns, etc. (more common)
• Emotional distress (far more common)
• Toxins from the environment that permeate our air, water and food (the most common antecedent for allergies and asthma)

Triggers – Triggers are the myriad products or processes in our internal and external environment that create symptoms. For one person, wheat triggers symptoms. For another person cat dander triggers symptoms. Almost everyone reacts to ragweed! Your symptom triggers are unique because of the way your personal, internal chemistry interacts with the antecedents that come before allergies and asthma.

Inflammation – Inflammation is the final reaction in this chain. The symptoms we experience are all related to inflammation. Examples of inflammatory mediators are histamines, prostaglandins and leukotrienes. These are strange and difficult words that are all too familiar to people that suffer from allergies and asthma.

Defense strategies
We protect ourselves through the process of insulation and isolation. It is very important to isolate ourselves from trauma, stress and toxins. It is also imperative to insulate ourselves with anti-allergy nutrients.

Vitamin B-12 (especially Super Sublingual B-12) helps your body reduce histamine formation. Nopalea helps your body reduce inflammation in the soft tissues of the respiratory tract, digestive tract and pretty well all other tissues! These represent the best strategies for symptom relief.

Triggers (allergens) are sharp, jagged proteins that are like shards of broken glass in your system. The cells lining your airways (and pretty well all other tissues) are like delicate balloons that pop when allergens attack. Fortunately, we are able to resist most of these allergens. However, the ones we cannot neutralize create real misery. Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs) like OmegaPrime toughen up the balloon-like cells and make them much more difficult to pop. You will likely need two to three times the normal amount of EFAs every day for several months to achieve lasting relief from allergy triggers.

Antecedents are more difficult to address because genetics, toxins and stress are pervasive: they don’t go away. With patience, though, we can develop strategies to minimize the impact of antecedents. For example, we can breathe deeply to de-stress our mind and body. We can drink pure water and eat nutritiously to cleanse toxins from our body. This can also help protect against new poisons setting us up for allergies in the future. And we can modify our sensitivity by exercising appropriately (and safely) as well as sleeping peacefully to balance our immune system.

Conclusion
Allergies and asthma are more prevalent now than ever. We can prevent much misery by addressing the antecedents that come before these reactions, by strengthening our cells to resist triggers, and by reducing the inflammation that creates so much misery!

Technorati Tags: adaptogen, allergies, antecedents, b-12, coq-10, inflammation, Nopalea, omegaprime