A Real Health Assessment - a podcast by Michael Lingard BSc. DO. M.DOC Cert.WPNut. Orthopath Buteyko Educator Plantrician

 

  Podcast #2 A Real Health Assessment.

Most health checks focus on pathology, screening for diseases and markers of possible future health problems, and little information is offered the client on health promotion or possible therapies that would help them towards better health and wellbeing.

As an Orthopath, I am always trying to improve the health of my patients and in particular teaching them how to help them help themselves to better health. 

A Real Health Assessment should be designed to identify changes of lifestyle to improve health and fitness, and to reduce the chance of serious disease in future. Doctors are not trained in health promotion, most of their training being devoted to pathology and medical treatment with drugs or surgery. It is this neglected area of healthcare that a Real Health Assessment is about far more than simply identification and prevention of disease or sickness it should seek to guide individuals’ to the health and zest that most of us only experienced when very young. 

There is a widespread view that we should all feel less healthy as we get older, this is not necessarily true, some of my “youngest patients” are in their 80s. So what's so different? I check their mechanics, the body connection, this is the normal field of therapy for physical therapists and seriously neglected in our NHS. I check their diet, food  connection, “we are what we eat”, I only this modality to my practice after discovering the work of the China Study. I use a simple twelve question survey to screen every patient, this takes less than five minutes, after which I give an A4 sheet of useful notes as a guide to better eating and better health. I check their breathing, the breath connection. Breathing is the most important activity in our lives; we can survive the three weeks without eating, three days without drinking, but only three minutes without breathing! Also it would appear that all mammals, that include you and me, have a given number of breaths in a lifetime, so it matters that we use them well! 

I trained as a Buteyko Breath Educator fifteen years ago and I now check every patient’s breathing quality as part of an ongoing research programme and give them a simple guide to better breathing and better health if they don't want to have a full training course. This research programme has identified a relatively unrecognized relationship between “what we eat” and “how we breathe”. Did you know that what you eat will change the way you breathe, and how you breathe will change the way you choose your food to eat? This link I discovered after gathering a sample of almost two hundred patients over the past three years. It came as a surprise to me even though I've been working in the field of breath training for over fifteen years and as a whole plant nutritionist for the last three years. Since a poor diet can lead to most modern diseases, from allergies and diabetes to cancers and poor breathing is a major factor in the development of asthma, hypertension, panic attacks, ME, heart problems, gut problems and many more conditions, even orthodontic problems, this link between the two needs far more attention. To explain the physiological connection between poor diet and poor breathing is easy; a diet comprised of too much meat, dairy foods, soft drinks and highly processed foods often leads to metabolic acidosis, the body becomes too acid. To correct this the body can either draw calcium from your bones or cause you to hyperventilate and get rid of carbon dioxide to neutralize acidity. Thus it is important when teaching people to breathe normally and to stop hyperventilating to ensure they are eating a good diet. The connection between their breathing and diet is more subtle, When we breathe normally the body is optimally oxygenated and we are usually calm and free of stress. This appears to make us more thoughtful of what we eat, we tend not to snack on junk foods. More information can be found on my website <www.totalhealthmatters.co.uk> or from my book “Connection - towards a broader understanding of health in medicine today.” By Michael Lingard from Amazon HERE.  Learn more about Orthopathy at www.orthopath.org

 

 

Further episodes of Your Health in Your Hands!

Further podcasts by Michael Lingard BSc. DO. M.DOC Cert.WPNut. Orthopath Buteyko Educator Plantrician

Website of Michael Lingard BSc. DO. M.DOC Cert.WPNut. Orthopath Buteyko Educator Plantrician