Keeping things simple

This week, I have been reading a lot of things that resonate with me around a central theme of simplicity. I often talk about how the diet industry and the health-and-wellness industry over complicate everything in order to sell you ‘solutions’ This may be selling you supplements that promise amazing results - yet in reality, in the overwhelming majority of cases, supplements maybe make up about 1% of the story in total, at best.

Or it may be selling you ‘detox’ retreats, or fad diets promising to rid your body of ‘toxins’ - when in reality, there is no scientific truth behind the idea that if you eat a few extra vegetables you are somehow going to ‘release toxins’ that might be in your blood waiting to harm you. If your blood was ‘toxic’ you would be in hospital, fighting for your life. Don’t buy into this bullshit sales rubbish.

I read a lot, and I teach ‘science reduced to simplicity’ as the core of what I do at Mother Nature’s Diet. Time and again, I find that there really are only a handful of genuinely good ideas, all of which are of course encompassed in the 12 Core Principles of Mother Nature’s Diet.

Today, I was reading about ‘The Simple 7’ taught by the American Heart Association. Heart disease remains the global number one cause of death, and back in 1978, experts at the American Heart Association thought that rather than spending all our time trying to ‘cure’ heart disease, prevent people with heart disease from suffering heart attacks (and strokes), and keep people alive for longer after a heart attack, why not spend some time trying to help people not get heart disease at all in the first instance.

Now this is my kinda medicine - prevention is better than cure!

The American Heart Association came up with ‘The Simple 7’

• Don’t smoke
• Be far more active (the definition of ‘very active’ actually starts at 25 minutes of brisk walking per day, so it is easier than you think to be considered ‘very active’)
• Lose weight - don’t be obese
• Control your blood sugar (to avoid type-2 diabetes, a major marker for heart disease)
• Eat better, eat more fruits and vegetables
• Manage your blood pressure (the above points, plus reducing stress, should take care of this)
• Manage your cholesterol (a point open to scientific debate, but again, the above points should take care of this)

If you like, you can read more here, on the American Heart Association’s website.

The simplicity of this appeals to me greatly. I think the first five points listed, broadly take care of the last two. Personally, if I were to rewrite this, I would make it this, I’ll be cheeky and call it ‘Karl’s MND Simple 7’

• Don’t smoke
• Be physically active, exercise every day
• Lose weight - don’t be obese
• Control your blood sugar (to avoid type-2 diabetes)
• Eat better, eat more fruits and vegetables, and more fish
• Reduce alcohol consumption
• Reduce lifestyle stress

Interestingly, if you look at this page from the NHS, we then also find that this would also make for an excellent cancer prevention lifestyle too.

If I wanted to write a longer blog post, I could apply broadly the same advice to avoiding obesity, type-2 diabetes and numerous other health conditions too.

Like I said, in my experience, there really are only a handful of good ideas out there. Avoiding a huge amount of our national health burden and living a simple healthy lifestyle always comes down to the same simple good ideas.

And of course, they are all encapsulated in Mother Nature’s Diet for you.

So, over to you…yes?

To your good health!