Bush Medicine 101: Lesson 11 - Your Health IS Your Child's Inheritance
You'll never change your life unless you change something you do daily.
Dear Family, Friends, Mentors, Colleagues and Jane-Your-Younger-Self,
I hope you are well. We are well!
Following on from my last post, and being passionate and enthusiastic about helping people loose weight, a friend kindly asked me what I would suggest as a healthy eating / lifestyle program for people struggling with their weight as I failed to mention it in my previous post.
As in, “what would Dr Jane suggest”.
Not that I am a guru on the subject, but well read and versed on podcasts.
I am a Bush Doctor working in one of the poorest countries in the world, a busy Mum of 2 kids who owns my “dream” Robin Hood community clinic, and I prioritize my physical and mental health because the job is demanding, I work night shifts, I work busy days and I’ve been keeping this business running including through a pandemic.
Without being obsessive, and making sure to have fun “doing health” and life, my husband and I have spoken about it at length on the subject and we do almost daily exercise in some form because we enjoy it, we enjoy the way it makes us feel, and our intention is to be strong until our end so we can live a full and adventurous life always able to do things with our kids, and perhaps our grand kids one day.
We have told our kids we don’t intend to leave them a financial inheritance, we will leave them their education which we are encouraging them to get, and we will give them our good health as their inheritance.
As an aside, what kid have you ever seen who’s inherited a bunch of finances or assets they haven’t had to work for, do well, gain good character and contribute positively to the world in the way of their shining and developed personality?
Healthy people live a better quality of life and die quicker. It’s a scientific fact which I’ve seen in my clinic.
After treating so many people in my life, including the dying, if I had a choice, I want to live big and die quick.
Not in a risky going-down-in-flames jackass winning a Darwin-award way, but in good health, connected to community, and learning more how to be a human-being and not a human-doing (aptly stated by Dr Mark Hyman, American Physician and author who has a lot of scientifically based stuff to say on health, healing your body through food and well being).
Our global declining physical and mental health is attesting to this statement shown by the chronically stressful lives we are living plagued with sleep deprivation, obesity, excessive device time, and other lifestyle diseases from reduced sunshine (which resets our sleep patterns), time to just sit and think, meditate and pray (which resets our brain patterns and hormones), friendship time (which resets our hormones like dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin, cortisol, adrenaline and the like, and exercise (which resets our entire body physically, mentally and chemically and emotionally).
Do not stop reading if you don’t understand the hormones I’ve mentioned or if you are currently feeling discouraged about your state of human-being/doing-ness.
All you need to know is that our body works in cycles and rhythms controlled with chemical hormones which either make us feel good or make us feel bad.
Without becoming too scientific and with my intention wanting to make this as easy, encouraging and accessible as possible for anyone and everyone who’s planning on reading this, please read on, because I hope to motivate and inform you why you should prioritize your health.
For you. For your kids.
Below I compare our Western and First World ways to Third World ways. And I will discuss why treating an impoverished Type 2 Diabetic with no money for treatment and no literacy, is in some ways easier to treat than a more affluent Type 2 Diabetic who is rich in basic education and literacy, and unfortunately, in too many choices.
As in life, it’s all about the balance and doing things in moderation. Too much of anything is not good. Too little neither. And good daily habits can change your world.
For those who may not read until the end of this post, I suggest keeping your daily routine simple, affordable and don’t forget to have fun, eat with friends and family, not become obsessive, and be grateful that you have access to 3 meals a day (and electricity and a fridge) even if you decide to eat only two meals per day.
Here is my recommendation to my more affluent patients who have electricity and a fridge, but I don’t like to be too prescriptive, each one to their own:
Breakfast (if you’re not fasting) - Eggs, avo, olive oil, veg, bacon, tea and / or coffee
Lunch - Same as breakfast or salad & veg, meat, potato / rice + beans.
Supper - Same as breakfast, salad & veg, meat, potato / rice + beans.
(regarding the meat, it’s not necessary every day and certainly not three times per day, please note I don’t condone vegetarian or herbivore diets - as I said, each one to their own)
Snacks - peanuts, cashews, mixed nuts, peanut butter (peanut butter is often by go-to if I’m PMS and need something rich).
Avoid - Alcohol, sugar, flour, processed food - any food coming out of a packet.
Enjoy - raw and real (that has come out of the ground or has been grown).
Fruit - is sugar, so in moderation, particularly for diabetics.
Drinks - water.
ABOVE: My water bottle I walked with in Berenty Lemur Reserve in the south of Madagascar, while I watched some men from a community collecting their water for their community for the day, collected from the Mandrary River where everyone bathes and washes their clothes, and where parasites like bilharzia and amebiasis abound. Survivors guilt is a real thing.
Sweeties, chocolates, cakes & things I recommend “avoiding” - life is short, everything in moderation, meaning once or twice a week shouldn’t be a problem unless you are struggling with a food addiction and you don’t find it easy to hit the “off button” on consuming sugars and carbs, and unfortunately sugar and sugar-and-preservative containing foods which make us hungrier with less feelings of satiety (being full), so be aware of this as this may derail your good eating routine day and ultimately your week unfortunately.
Sports & exercise - move, walk where possible, do online HIIT sessions and strength training in the comfort of your own home for at least 20 minutes three times per week. Start small, 2-5 minutes is better than zero.
I compare my above suggestions to a third world / south of Madagascar impoverished patient’s daily routine:
Breakfast - often nothing, it needs to be cooked over a fire, the water for cooking which needs to be fetched first; if something it’s deep fried dough balls with recycled oil, made with sugar and flour. And locally roasted and brewed coffee with lot and LOTS of sugar, or, for the slightly more “affluent”, condensed milk.
Lunch (around 10h00-11h00 - when the rice +- sauce has cooked.
Supper (around 18h00-19h00 before the sun sets because there is no electricity) - left over rice +- sauce from lunch (no fridges to store left over food, thus no food is left over).
Snacks - none or deep fried dough balls, dry roasted peanuts, grilled grasshoppers, grilled sweet potato (one of my favorites), boiled manioc, seasonal fruit.
ABOVE: Grilled grasshoppers, a great source of protein. No, I haven’t got around to trying them yet in the 14 years of living here….I prefer the locally made peanut butter for my protein and fat snack.
Drinks - dirty water from the river or closest puddle, or town water coming from the lake where the community bathes, does their washing and washes their vehicles.
ABOVE: A local lady collecting water from a puddle in the road near her hut. The water she collects will be used for cooking, cleaning, and drinking.
ABOVE: A child collecting water from the Mandrary River in the south of Madagascar. This river is seasonal and for some parts of the year it runs dry. No matter what the color and condition of the water, the fact that their IS water is a reason to be grateful, in one of the driest regions in Madagascar plagued by cyclical droughts and famines.
Sweeties, chocolates, cakes - once a year if an NGO passes by and hands out sweets to the kids, or if there is an auspicious occasion like a marriage or death.
Sports & exercise - walking 2-5km or driving a zebu/cow cart to fetch water, tending the field, paddling 10km in a boat wearing no life jacket to catch fish, walking 2-5km to town to trade.
If one had to summarize impoverished daily diet in the south of Madagascar, it’s deep fried dough balls or rice cakes for breakfast with coffee and LOTS of sugar, rice for lunch, rice for supper, vegetables and sauce if money and seasonal crops allow, remembering that the south of Madagascar has recently been through a drought and famine which was publicized as the first famine in the world to be caused by climate change. However when one looks at the data on Wikapedia when you google “Androy”, this region has been enduring cyclical droughts and famines since the early 1900’s.
I don’t dispute climate change, but I question whether global climate change has caused our particular drought and famine we recently endured.
We were on a bush road trip a few weeks ago and a friend aptly challenged us that if we were told we could choose only one car for our entire life, any car, but, we could not change it, we would research it, read the manual on how it functioned, and we would do our best to take care of it for the rest of it’s life and ours.
Our one life is our one and only vehicle. Yet wealthy literate people (literacy = wealth in case you’re confused) could do better to read the instruction manual on the do’s and don’ts.
And sadly I witness people with resources not taking care of themselves to the point that they become prisoners in their own bodies, plagued and ailed by pain and illnesses that most of the time can be prevented, and treated.
I’m not saying for one moment that being healthy is easy. Especially since modern life has become more sedentary and excessively busy causing chronic stress and hormonal shifts that we are not aware of, the food industry is purposefully making food that is addictive - high in sugar and preservatives which make us want to buy and eat more.
Being healthy or becoming healthy is a daily choice.
And the great news is that you can turn it around in 2-3 weeks because I’ve seen it done.
But. To be sustainable and pay off in the end (yes, I mean when we age and die) it has to become a way of life more often than not.
I have a patient who is now 84 and up until 2022 he smoked, drank and lived a sedentary life of drinking with his like-minded friends eating rich and unhealthy foods.
During COVID I was called out at 2am one morning to treat him at home, he was suffering from what we call acute pulmonary edema, which is water in the lungs.
It was caused by a sudden increase in his blood pressure, his heart was too frail to cope with his increased blood pressure and it resulted in increased blood flow through his lungs and fluid from his blood vessels leaked into his lungs causing him to basically start drowning in his own fluids.
I treated him all the while thinking about his longstanding medical health problems, certain that he would not make it through the night in the state that he was in.
Yesterday I saw him taking his daily walk, with color in his cheeks and he had a smile on his face when he blew me his daily kiss as I passed him driving. Otherwise we usually exchange three cheek-to-cheek kisses and a nice warm hug if we walk past with our kids on the way to the beach.
The day he nearly drowned in his own fluids he stopped drinking, stopped smoking and fought for his life.
2 Years later, contrary to what I thought was possible, or rather impossible, he is walking 2-3 times per day, and he’s able to blow me kisses (which is what every girl needs).
He is my proof that I need to tell my patients that it is never too later to turn their health around because I’ve seen it and I get the french cheek-to-cheek kisses to prove it.
Our health is exactly like investing money in a slow compounding interest account, there is no get rich quick scheme, it’s about slow steady compounding interest that pays the dividends at our retirement age and beyond.
“What would Dr Jane suggest?” is a great question, because for the past 2 years I have been researching and trialing what works and what doesn’t.
My mentors and influence-rs are backed by science, I have chosen them because they give free, easy, practical advice, and I believe they are motivated by wanting to make this world a better and healthier place.
In my under resourced setting I am always looking for free ways to improve health, because our community in Madagascar is one of the poorest in the world.
These mentors are all science-based authors and pod-casters who include but are not limited to Dr Jason Fung, Professor Matt Walker, Professor Andrew Huberman, Dr Mindy Peltz, Dr Peter Attia, Professor Tim Spector, Dr Mark Hyman.
I’m not a specialist. I’m a humble GP and I consider myself a Bush Doctor wanna-be (as in I am constantly wanning to be a better Bush Doctor).
I work in one of the poorest countries in the world where I started my dream “Robin Hood” community clinic aka Centre Medical de Taolagnaro.
We treat those who can afford to pay, and we run free community programs for those who cannot afford to play including free family planning, free pregnancy care, free post-pregnancy care, free childhood vaccinations, free burns dressings, and when budgets and donation-investments allow, free malaria treatment (thanks to Joachim Kulmann Stiftung).
I’m privileged to treat the rich and the poor and I cannot help but make the glaring comparisons between each population of patients.
It is hardwired into me to always look for the cheapest and easiest option for patients. What ever I implement in my clinic I want it to be affordable and sustainable for all.
The irony is that to be healthy, particularly for the “have’s” like us, is free. For most, it’s eating correctly (note I did NOT say eating less") and it’s about moving more.
Please note I did not say moving a minimum of 1 hour per day, all it takes is 10-20 minutes per day at home, not in an expensive gym, and incorporating movement into daily routines.
The rich (defined as having literacy, access to a brick house and indoor flushing toilet and running water, with electricity, a fridge, 3 meals per day and a Smartphone) have it all yet fail to use their resources wisely and take care of their health so they age and die at the end of their days with lifestyle diseases including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease including heart attacks and strokes, chronic obstructive airways disease from smoking, cancer, addictions, mental health disease and suicide. All of which could have been prevented or treated.
The poor don’t even have access to clean drinking water, mosquito nets, education, family planning, balanced diets or health care so many die, many of whom are kids under 5, from diarrhea, malaria and malnutrition.
I’ve become enthusiastic and brazen about helping all people from all walks of life with their weight loss because they ALL have ALL the resources they need. The good news is that it’s free, and it’s achievable for those who are willing to make small but significant changes to their daily habits and routines.
For the poor, they often do not have a choice about changing their daily habits or routines. They certainly don’t have a choice of what they don’t eat. They often can’t eat because they don’t have money for food and a balanced diet, and if they do have money, not enough for meals three times per day.
Their family of 6 - 10 (sometimes more) wake up in their hut with no mosquito nets, they send their kids to the river or closest dirty puddle if it’s rained in the driest region of Madagascar while someone starts the fire on deforested fire wood, to fetch bilharzia and parasite infested water.
They cook rice, manioc or sweet potato for the day.
If their crops have produced they may have a beans for sauce. Tomatoes, onions, carrots and the like are available at extra cost if they have not been able to grow it themselves, or trade it with something of similar value.
If they have a herd of livestock or chickens they may eat meat. But not daily.
Vegetables are hard to grow in the extreme environment of the south. Often greens are in the way of sweet potato leaves, grown organically obviously because very few have money for fertilizers anyway. So no designer salads.
How much do we in the first world pay for organic vegetables and greens?
Fun fact - Sweet potato is one of the most high energy yielding crops per square meter.
Apparently in the first world sweet potato is being advertised as a good carbohydrate. Here it is sometimes the only carbohydrate if the rice crops have failed.
For the Have’s, research is showing that the only way to save people from dying from the top 3 cause of death world wide is to eat healthily, stop smoking, and exercise.
Daily habits. Daily routines. Daily lifesaving practices.
It may not be easy, but it’s free.
100% Free.
Which makes it attainable even if you are down and out, you can treat yourself and save your own life. Because by the time it comes to doing CPR for cardiovascular disease, it is too late. I’ve tried. Many times. And failed.
For the Have-nots, they physically move distances by foot, bicycle or zebu cart to fetch water, grow crops, tend fields, shepherd their herds, visit neighbors or go to Market Day to buy, sell and trade.
When I qualified at medical school we were taught about Diabetes, Hypertension, Cardiovascular Disease etc.
We were not taught that these Type 2 Diabetes was reversible, and that even Type 1 Diabetes could be managed with fasting and daily exercise.
We were not taught that 7-8 hours sleep per night can completely reverse certain cases of high blood pressure (or that less than 7 hours sleep can cause high blood pressure and contribute to obesity), or that too much coffee and even 1 glass of alcohol per night can cause high blood pressure and poor quality of sleep.
We were taught what Diabetic, Hypertensive, Cardiac and sedative medications to give.
We were also taught Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS), ACLS which is basically how to resuscitate a patient suffering from a heart attack or stroke when our medical treatment fails and patients succumb to their lifestyle diseases.
In our training we are taught about reversible causes of death (known as T’s and H’s) which include Thrombosis which are blood clots causing heart attacks and strokes.
During the years since qualifying as a medical doctor I have become increasingly frustrated with feelings of hopelessness at performing Advanced Cardiac Life Support and CPR on patients suffering from cardiovascular disease from blood clots and high blood pressure.
We in my clinic have never successfully resuscitated a patient suffering from cardiac arrest due to cardiovascular disease (heart attack or stroke) back to life to walk out of our clinic.
It’s not because we lack the skill. Quite the contrary. My Team are enthusiastic about performing CPR.
More enthusiastic than I am about doing CPR because I just see my purpose in helping people loose weight when they are very much alive so we can avoid and prevent cardiovascular disease which has lead to the cardiac arrest and unsuccessful resuscitation in our limited resource third world setting.
To me the most tragic is that it’s the patient’s kids who suffer.
They suffer an early death of a parent which could have been prevented.
Or.
Suffer the slow and gradual decline of a parent which could have been prevented.
ABOVE: The new mural I asked one of my artistic nurses, Roberto, to paint in our patient waiting area which was finished yesterday. The wording states, in Malagasy and French, “Our Health Is Our Children’s Inheritance”.
Patients who we have managed to successfully resuscitate are newborns with breathing problems, kids and young healthy adults in near-drowning accidents, post-delivery (maternity) bleeding where we have been able to stop the bleeding and replace blood.
All these patients we’ve been able to save have not had co-existing lifestyle diseases like age (yes, I always tell my patients and families that age is a diagnosis), diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea and the like.
The patients we have saved are young, fit, and can, if we react quickly enough, be dragged back from the dark grip of death, back from where their pulse almost disappears or has already disappeared and they have turned pale and cold. Back from where their lights have gone out, and we drag them back to the noise and the chaos and the light of this world to live another few good quality years hopefully.
When I become despondent about loosing yet another patient in a futile resuscitation, I remind myself that my clinic is situated in Madagascar which is one of the poorest countries in the world, with limited resources.
Particularly limited resources in the way of post-cardiac resuscitation care.
So even if by some miracle myself and my team managed to perform CPR and get back a viable pulse on our patient fighting for their life after performing CPR, it would only be for a limited time because we do not have all the necessary resources like a Cardiac ICU, a ventilator, or a Cardiologist to keep the patient alive indefinitely until such time as a Cardiologist can perform an angiogram with or without a stent to widen any blocked heart vessels which caused the heart problem.
With all this in my mind, including the disappointment I have endured after every single one of our unsuccessful cardiac resuscitations, my cardiac resuscitation now starts as early as the patient is diagnosed as overweight, even if their only complaint is a headache and completely unrelated to their weight.
I’ve been told by fellow international colleagues who’ve worked with me that my style of addressing a weighty patient would not be widely accepted in the first world because I am too forthright, direct and straight which could be offensive.
I liken it to you taking your vehicle to a mechanic and the mechanic avoiding telling you that your vehicle is heading towards catastrophic failure.
I tell patients, as kindly as one can tell a patient that they are overweight, that they need to loose weight, and that they are officially admitted to my virtual pre-resuscitation ward.
Meaning that if we do not get their weight in check or stop smoking, they will most likely endure a cardiac arrest due to a heart attack, stroke, chronic obstructive airways disease or cancer, which even with all of my and our collective education, skill, and training will never be able to successfully resuscitate back to life or to a decent quality of life.
Resulting in their death or disability, and a child or children / wife / husband / mother / father / siblings behind to live their life unfairly deprived of their caregiver, breadwinner and significant other.
Because that is often what death does. Death leaves people behind. Broken and mourning and wanting things to go back to what it was when life was better and healthier and together in community.
Money cannot buy back time. Money cannot buy back health once it is lost.
Time and health are free. For those who choose it.
But, it takes daily choices and daily routines.
Coming back to the question, what would I suggest?
Pick 1 bad habit and work on that daily. Just one. Because if you try to change too much too soon I’ve seen it is not sustainable.
Think about yourself as a pilot that takes off from an airport, changing the direction of travel by only 1 degree. Hours later the destination is not just 1 degree off, but several. That’s what I believe and what I have seen 1 change can do. Because at the same time, it changes your mindset and it changes your daily discipline. And success is found in changing one’s daily discipline.
If it’s eating a few sweets, make it one sweet and only after your meal.
Eating a sweet after a meal decreases how the glucose from the sweet hits your blood stream.
Start with 15 minutes of exercise per day, whether it’s walking, cycling on an exercise bike, or swimming.
Find movement you enjoy because you will be more likely to continue, but, you must give yourself time to find the pleasure in it and feel what the hormone shift from the exercise does to your body.
Try to incorporate your movement into your daily routine so you’re not trying to overcome waking up at 05h00 in the morning like I do. I’m addicted to exercise. I don’t expect people to follow my energy-addicted habits.
Ask yourself if you are really hungry. If you’re not hungry, don’t eat, wait for the next meal.
Research shows that most people do not have an appetite in the morning, appetite is the highest around 20h00. And the later you snack the hungrier you get later into the night ad the following day.
If you are hungry in the morning, try to wait at least one hour before eating breakfast, and in that one hour get at least 15 minutes of early morning sunlight or natural light which decreases your melatonin and increases your cortisol (your circadian rhythm sleep-wake hormones which are the basis of life its self, because without sleep all health is lost, no matter what else you try to change) to properly wake you up setting your circadian rhythm for your next night’s sleep, the sunlight and sleep which boost your immune system and keep healthy.
Try to move - walk / run / stretch / swim in your first hour, for at least 15 minute, and avoid coffee and devices for your first hour (devices for at least your first 2-3 hours?).
Drinking coffee in your first hour impacts your natural cortisol production and it may not have the desired stimulating effect (it will have more effect as your cortisol levels drop during the day).
By moving in the first hour, it helps set your energy levels for the day by clearing your sleep hormones and producing endorphins which are natural painkillers and feel good hormones.
Meditate and / or pray which is proven to decrease anxiety by decreasing stress hormones (adrenaline and cortisol) and increasing feel good hormones such as dopamine, serotonin, GABA and oxytocin (your feel-good and feel-loved hormones).
Breathe. Don’t forget to just breathe.
By regulating your breathing, for example anywhere any time pick a door frame or a window frame and concentrate on moving your eyes up the frame on inspiration for 5-6 seconds, holding while you glance across the horizontal, and breathing out for 5-6 seconds while tracing your eyes down the frame and again hold for 5-6 seconds coming back to where you started.
Breathing is one of the most powerful voluntary and immediate actions you can do to reduce and treat anxiety and stress by preventing or managing your flight-fight response and stimulating your parasympathetic “stay-and-play” calming response. It stimulates your Vagus Nerve which runs through your diaphragm under your lungs, which in turn calms you.
I encourage intermittent fasting, because I don’t think that we were built to eat three meals per day and the research is showing that by resting our gut we give it time to process our food, make the hormones we need to feel good, and strengthen our immune system so we don’t get sick.
I consider what is being coined “intermittent fasting and time-restricted eating”, normal eating. I consider three meals a day excessive eating.
Think about our ancestors, they had to wake up, run to catch their food or walk to find their food, and they feasted and famined their whole lives.
Having electricity, a fridge, appetizers, snacks and Uber Eats on demand has dramatically changed our eating habits.
Food quality and good gut health is coming to the forefront of medicine, thankfully.
Included in good gut health is giving the gut time to rest, as well as to change our metabolism and the way our body deals with food, from a glucose metabolism to a ketone metabolism.
And this is the way that Type 2 Diabetes is essentially being reversed which is really exciting.
By skipping meals and embracing the feelings of hunger which we in the First World hardly ever experience any more, but which is a very familiar feeling to Third World inhabitants, our body is required to use other forms of energy and this has several good effects on our bodies including the use of fat, boosting our energy levels, boosting our immune system and improving our concentration.
In all my reading one of the most important nuggets of information I have learned is that what you eat the first thing in the day is so important. Essentially how you “break fast”, be that 10 or 11 or 12 O'clock.
If you eat egg (and perhaps bacon) and avo, for example, it’s mostly proteins and fat which produces different hormones in your body compared to, say, high carbohydrate breakfast cereals which leave you with a glucose and insulin high then a glucose and insulin crash so you end up craving, and unfortunately more carbs throughout the day.
I am treating some of the poorest people in the world. Some of whom sadly have what I call “thin” Diabetes Type 2. These unfortunate patients don’t have much choice of what they eat, but worse still, they do not have the education to know better, OR the treatment to help treat them.
I’ve started to treat my “thin and poor” Type 2 Diabetic patients with more enthusiasm because most often they don’t have many choices in life so they do not need the motivation or discipline to stop over-eating or stop eating the sweets and chips once they get started.
For these patients I’ve started prescribing:
Breakfast - nothing
Lunch - 11h00 a handful of peanuts (protein and fats with fibre which slows down the glucose from the rice they will eat at midday) or “lasary” (local dish of grated green papaya / carrots / cucumbers in vinegar), 12h00 rice +- sauce - because there is only one meal available eaten by the entire family of 4-10 plus and changing this will not be possible.
Supper - 17h00 a handful of peanuts or “lasary” (local dish of grated green papaya / carrots / cucumbers in vinegar), 18h00 rice +- sauce left over from lunch.
ABOVE: A peanut seller on my way to see a patient. Peanuts are my go-to for snacks - cheap, dry roasted, high in protein and fat. The white “cone” of paper is how they packaged my purchase. It looked like an old government paper with a red stamp (red stamps hold a certain air of importance in Madagascar). I ignored the government legislation on my paper cone and enjoyed my snack.
Snacks - none
Drinks - water - the cleanest water they have access to, and at least 2-3 litres.
Exercise - walking 30-60 minutes per day, which they do anyway to get from place to place so this takes no motivation, discipline or persuasion.
Metformin - money and dose dependent on their blood glucose levels, with the idea to manage their blood glucose levels with “intermittent fasting”, water intake and daily normal exercise.
For years I have felt despondent treating “thin / poor” Diabetics Type 2 because they will most likely die from lack of resources, or suffer terribly from the ill effects of Diabetes on the body.
However I have come to realize impoverished Type 2 Diabetics are easier to treat because they do not have the electricity, fridge or choices First World Type 2 Diabetics are afforded in the way of sugary snacks, breads, pastas, sweets, processed foods and the like.
Which is perhaps why I’ve become passionate about treating “weighty” and relatively rich Type 2 Diabetics, Obesity and Lifestyle Diseases because they have the resources to help themselves.
Research has shown that the one life saving and contributing factor to preventing and / or treating lifestyle diseases is education.
Everyone reading this post is rich and has education whether you realize it or are grateful for it or not.
You are clearly literate, which is a wealth we take for granted.
You have a brick house with running water, a flushing toilet, electricity, a fridge and internet.
The exciting news in this regards is that this means that we are 50% of the way to turning our First World Health Crisis around. The other 50% takes motivation, discipline and a daily change in routine.
Or. Opt to live poor and take choice, motivation and discipline out of the equation of what to eat when.
That is why I believe that it only takes 15 minutes to change the world, because by changing one thing in your lifestyle, it is often that 1 degree of take off you need to arrive at a completely different destination in your life.
The destination which I am aiming for for all of my patients is to be healthy, which will then lead to being happier, and which will afford children their inheritance of a healthy, happy parent until the end.
Because your health is your children’s inheritance.
Kind and mad regards,
Dr Jane