I have not been feeling well recently. Especially I have been feeling tired all the time, I keep catching colds, and sometimes I struggle to breath (a horrible experience). My GP says he can't find anything wrong with me, so I went to see Helen's mother who is a nutritionist (I offered to pay her for the appointment, but she wouldn't accept anything).
She has given me a six point plan to improve my health. It covers diet, exercise, sleep, stress, food supplements and phyto-nutrition. I have my doubts but I am going to try it for a month.
Diet
Most GP's have no training in nutrition, and yet it is the single most important factor in maintaining good health. Poor diet is the cause of most chronic (non-infectious) disease. Bad diet leads to heart disease, cancers, depression etc. I am supposed to be giving up bread (which I know is impossible, but rye bread is allowed), red meat, sugar. No processed food of any kind. Replace with fruit and vegetables (10 portions, ideally including at least three apples a day), lean meat, occasional good quality dark chocolate (high polyphenol).
No alcohol (I might last a month), no tea or coffee (no chance of this), no fizzy drinks.
Exercise
I'm aiming to run three miles a day. Because the weather is so cold a wet now I am stopping off at a gym on my way home and using a treadmill. Walking also counts, so at the weekends I will walk the dogs for three miles.
I also need to increase muscle mass, which helps metabolic rate.
So I am looking to Paul Amos for advice
http://www.theactivechannel.com/player/abman-ripped-365
Sleep
My bed from a recent stay in an hotel. Not enough sleep is one of the areas I know I must improve. Most nights I am lucky to get 5 hours when really I should be aiming for 8 hours.
The trouble is I am usually wide awake at 11pm (Newsnight) when I should be preparing to go to sleep.
Stress
I find the easiest way to relieve stress is to walk the dogs in the countryside. If I miss this for any reason (overwork, going away, bad weather) I start to feel stressed. Stress is a big killer, so needs to be addressed.
Food supplements
Your GP will tell you that you can get all the nutrients you need "from a balanced diet". This overlooks the fact that it is almost impossible to eat an old-style balanced diet without spending lots of time in preparation and cooking and lots of money buying high-quality fresh food. I have been told to take magnesium and chromium, and I am working my way through these giant tubs of capsules.
Phyto-nutrients - eating the right plants
This is the area that is probably the most controversial part of the advice I was given. Basically Helen's mother has developed an interpretation of nutrition inspired by Goethe's
Urpflanze theory. Humans evolved from primates over a period of millions of years, and for almost all of that time they ate only plants, wandering in enormous continental circuits and consuming roots, barks, leaves, berries, nuts, flowers etc from a continuous rotation of edible plants. As the seasons changed different plants came into season, and so the diet was varied on an almost weekly basis. The evolution of the human body was intimately linked to the consumption of these plants, and without them our bodies are susceptible to disease (this is supposedly because the wet internal surfaces of the body are home to billions of microbes which regulate our health, and over the course of evolution these microbes were modified by the plants eaten by primitive humans).
Apparently there are 350 different plant parts you need to consume each year to maintain optimum health and keep disease at bay (so roughly one different plant per day).
You don't need much, perhaps only a little of each plant extract, but the important thing is to keep up the variation and rotation. There is evidence that suggests in the paleolithic period a travelling "stock-pot" of plants was kept on the go, supplemented with new plants on a daily basis and providing a sort of paleolithic superfood. In the comments section I have listed the majority of plants, many of them have constituents which are anti-inflammatory (the importance of this depends on whether you believe cancer is inflammation that is out of control).
Caveat - I have no idea whether any of this is true, and I record this mainly because Helen's mother is notorious for not writing up her work. Also some of the plants are poisonous. I have no intention of trying all of them (you can buy most of the plants extracts from Neals Yard in Covent Garden, but they are not cheap).
Anyway, I freely admit I have my doubts about this theory, and will probably just try one or two and see how it goes.
