ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel

How To Prevent Disease Through Diet and Exercise

Updated on February 2, 2014
Your Health is Up To You
Your Health is Up To You

You Are What You Eat

Some people don't realize just how much their nutrition matters. Nutrition is both a science and an art. The right foods support all your body's systems, enable growth and maturation and promote physical and mental wellbeing. One important function a healthy diet can provide, and this is a fact many people don't take into consideration- is disease prevention.

How you eat- and your level of exercise- will have an immediate effect on your short- and long-term health. In order to positively impact your health and wellbeing, being aware of nutrition and the effects of your eating and lifestyle choices is a responsibility you owe to yourself and the people you love and care for.

The foods you eat should contain the right kinds of vitamins, nutrients, carbohydrates and fibers. The right kinds are those that create balance, nourish you at a cellular level and leave your body in the alkaline state that nature intended. You may have heard this before, but creating a healthy alkalinity in your body prevents many diseases and chronic conditions. The food you eat should be 70% to 80% alkaline in order to achieve this healthy state. There are charts available that will tell you exactly what those foods are.

What Are Dietary Guidelines?

Dietary guidelines are nutritional principles that help guide us in making the most intelligent and healthiest nutritional choices. They are available in several different forms according to who uses them: the USDA publishes Dietary Guidelines every 5 years for people interested in their personal nutrition, and Food Guides to make it easier to plan healthy daily menus. Using the dietary guidelines and food guides helps people who are concerned about replacing the unhealthy ingredients in many popular foods available (that may be high in fats, sugar and sodium) with healthy food choices containing the right nutrients and correct portions to improve and support good health.


How Does Exercise Impact Health?

Regular exercise has an impact on many facets of health. Cancer, heart disease, cardiovascular health, memory loss, diabetes, osteoporosis, neurological disorders, depression, anxiety and even complications during pregnancy are all areas of health that have shown improvement with regular exercise. It also promotes restful sleep, happiness, brain health, lower cholesterol levels, lower weight, increased bone mass and general wellbeing. People who lead sedentary lifestyles have lower energy levels than people who exercise on a regular basis. Exercise builds stamina and improves physical endurance, giving regular exercisers a higher vitality level than more sedentary individuals. Exercise has even been shown to reduce the pain associated with arthritis.

Why Should I Care?

What would you rather spend your money on? Healthy, highly nutritious food or expensive medications? What if food was the key to good or bad health? Living to a healthy, active old age is something that probably everyone would like to do. We all look forward to retirement as a time when we can enjoy the fruits of our many years of labor in the work force. Taking the right steps to ensure good health up to that time will enable many people to realize their dreams of what pleasures await, whether it be travel or simply enjoying the free time to pursue their favorite hobbies and recreations. The ramifications of chronic disease brought on by poor nutritional choices and sedentary lifestyles includes higher medical costs, lost productivity and premature illness and death- it's becoming a worldwide problem.

Assessing Your Diet

How do your dietary choices stack up? As today's economy forces more and more mothers into the workforce, our food supply has evolved to meet the demand for cheap, fast, convenient meals that busy people can eat on the go. The unfortunate thing is that these types of foods are so lacking in nutritional value that, if ingested on a daily basis, people experience undernutrition (their nutritional needs are barely being met) at the same time that they experience overnutrition (energy intake is too high, resulting in weight gain). If you would like to know if your daily food choices are providing you with proven nutritional value, the University of Massachusetts has developed a diet assessment tool that will take your personal daily food intake and tell you how your eating habits are benefitting you (or not).


How Much Exercise Do I Need?

Good question. How much is enough? What is the minimum? Is there such a thing as too much exercise? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have put together Physical Activity Guidelines for people in different age groups. These guidelines are flexible and contain different schedule options to fit different lifestyles. Working an exercise regimen into your (and your family's) daily activities is easier than ever with the CDC Activity Guide for busy Americans. Staying healthy and avoiding disease with nutrition and exercise is a proactive choice many Americans are making as more emphasis is made on active health maintenance.

working

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy

Show Details
Necessary
HubPages Device IDThis is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons.
LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service.
Google RecaptchaThis is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy)
AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Traffic PixelThis is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized.
Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)
CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy)
Google Hosted LibrariesJavascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy)
Features
Google Custom SearchThis is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy)
Google MapsSome articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
Google ChartsThis is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)
Google AdSense Host APIThis service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Google YouTubeSome articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
VimeoSome articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
PaypalThis is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook LoginYou can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
MavenThis supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)
Marketing
Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Google DoubleClickGoogle provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Unified Ad MarketplaceThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
AppNexusThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
OpenxThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Rubicon ProjectThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)
Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.
Conversion Tracking PixelsWe may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.
Statistics
Author Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)
ComscoreComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Tracking PixelSome articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)
ClickscoThis is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy)