Eat Well – 5 Best Principles to Eat By

Balance is key to living a better quality and quantity of life. Maintaining balance in the body is known as ‘homeostasis.’ Learn the 5 best prin­ci­ples you can incor­po­rate into your day to teach you and your family how to eat well.

Prin­ci­ple #1) Make Your Eat­ing Choices a Lifestyle

One of the things we enjoy most in trav­el­ling to other parts of the world is how much the FOOD is actu­ally part of the lifestyle. For exam­ple, when we think of Japan, Italy, Jamaica or India, what com­monly comes to mind are images of their cui­sine. What we often love most about many parts of the world is not only their cli­mate and geog­ra­phy, but their food and the healthy rela­tion­ships they have to what grows nat­urally where they live. We under­stand the pop­u­lar­ity of getting a morn­ing cof­fee at Starbucks, with a donut or muf­fin, but in our mind, these are more socially sup­ported strate­gies than they are strate­gies of eat­ing that will sup­port your long term health & well­ness. Bet­ter home­osta­sis is found, when we learn to shop for home grown local and fresh pro­duce (blue­ber­ries, let­tuce, straw­ber­ries, broc­coli, apples, aspara­gus and peaches just to name a few…). We need to spend more time eat­ing what our geog­ra­phy grows, rather than what our soci­ety sells in pack­aged boxes from the mid­dle lanes of the gro­cery store.

Prin­ci­ple #2) If your body can’t Digest or Absorb it well, it doesn’t mat­ter how healthy it is

Your innate abil­ity to digest, break down, absorb and ulti­mately metab­o­lize all the food­ you con­sume are directly related to the health of your spine & nerve sys­tem. The chain of events respon­si­ble for this diges­tive process starts off in your sali­vary glands and mouth and moves through the esoph­a­gus, stom­ach, small intes­tine and large intes­tine before leav­ing your body out of your colon. If you think of this sys­tem as a blender, you’ll be wiser to not “burn out” the motor by eat­ing too many things that cre­ate “strain” for your nerve and digestive sys­tem. Mak­ing sure you are liv­ing with opti­mal spinal health and tak­ing proper daily steps to min­i­mize nerve inter­fer­ence will go a long way to keep­ing your diges­tive blender work­ing the best it can for years to come.

Prin­ci­ple #3) Build Nutri­ent Rich Habits

Below are a host of strate­gies that we sug­gest you make into a habit that will drive the cells of your body towards suf­fi­ciency with great ease. Make sure the major­ity of your food is not only raw or fresh, but color­ful too! Most peo­ple have a dis­con­nect between the things they put into their body and how their body looks and feels, and how their brain works. Our bod­ies were designed through evo­lu­tion to func­tion and repair them­selves by eat­ing foods that grew nat­u­rally on earth, which include whole, raw, nat­ural state and min­i­mally cooked foods. It is very dif­fi­cult for our bod­ies to break down unnat­ural, syn­thetic foods like sugar, white flour, fruc­tose, oils and super-heated foods, caus­ing tox­i­c­ity and inflam­ma­tion in the body.

Prin­ci­ple #4) Refrain from Nutri­ent Poor Habits

Many chronic dis­eases are linked to inflam­ma­tion, including asthma, depres­sion, anxiety, dia­betes, can­cer, hypertension and inflammatory bowel disease. Inflam­ma­tion is usually not the prob­lem though. Inflam­ma­tion is a nat­ural response by the immune sys­tem in our bod­ies to fight off toxic foods that we are ingest­ing. The real prob­lem is what is caus­ing the inflam­ma­tion, not the inflam­ma­tion itself. We have bac­te­ria nat­u­rally liv­ing in our bod­ies that help in the diges­tion of food. How­ever, when we eat syn­thetic, over-processed, unnat­ural foods, we are feed­ing the bad bac­te­ria in our gut. This causes abnor­mal bac­te­r­ial over­growth, which causes the tox­i­c­ity and inflam­ma­tion in your body. Refrain from eat­ing these nutri­ent poor foods. Choose more food in their whole, raw, or min­i­mally cooked, nat­ural state (God’s food). Stay away from refined sugar, processed flour, veg­etable oils and super-heated foods, to help reduce inflam­ma­tion, pre­vent dis­ease and live a health­ier, longer life!

Prin­ci­ple #5) Mind­ful Eat­ing, Lots of water

Water makes up about 60 per­cent of your body weight, and it is your body’s prin­ci­pal chem­i­cal com­po­nent. Every sys­tem in your body depends on water. For exam­ple water: – cush­ions and lubri­cates joints in the body – nour­ishes and pro­tects the brain and spinal cord – main­tains the body’s temperature – car­ries nutri­ents to your cells – flushes tox­ins out of vital organs – helps remove waste through per­spi­ra­tion, bowel move­ments and urination.

Reg­u­lar water refills are needed to bal­ance the loss of water from the body. If we did not replace the water lost, the body would not be able to sur­vive. Dehy­dra­tion symp­toms include headaches, tired­ness, loss of con­cen­tra­tion, and in extreme cases, con­sti­pa­tion and long-term dehy­dra­tion, can cause kid­ney stones.  Ade­quate intake is 9-13 cups of water per day, depending on body size. An indicator that you are drink­ing enough water, is when your urine is clear and transparent.

Maintaining balance is essential to eating well. Practice the 5 principles above t0 eat by. This post from our experts at Great Life Chiropractic aims to provide you with eat well and nutrition tips.

If you are experiencing interference in your nerve system affecting your digestion you may need to see a chiropractor. Schedule an appointment with our Great Life Chiropractic experts below. Let us provide you with an exceptional chiropractic experience!