Health Problems and Getting in Shape

Following is a post I had drafted in January 2012, but neglected to post. Well here it is:

"Recently I was diagnosed with a few medical problems. I had already been on a weight loss regimen of my own, prior to the doctor's diagnosis, but with little sense of urgency. After all the news from the doctor. the sense of urgency grew. The diagnosis of the problems actually was a blessing since it occurred early in the progression of the health issue, and allowed time to begin to get into better physical and mental shape. I realize now that a diagnosis of some health problems, is generally good and can get our attention and allow a change that could extend our lives.

When giving a little more thought to this, I realized that maintaining one's health has a significant connection to sustainability. In just about anything we do our actions have an impact on sustainability. However, with personal health, to me sustainability means living healthy without a lot of inputs. By inputs I mean for the most part, drugs, medications, hospital confinement, etc.

I have for several years used supplements to help maintain my health, and that has probably contributed to  some extent, to not having problems much earlier. Most supplements that I take are primarily organic herb and plant based. However some like the Omega 3 fish oils, come from animal materials, harvested from the ocean. Most of the herbs and plants have a growing cycle of less than three years. The same may not be true for fish.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), created a list of fish oil products that were supposed to be healthy and sustainably harvested. The EDF site indicates that they no longer solicit information from the fish oil manufacturers, but will accept updated information voluntarily submitted by the various companies. The list can be found at this LINK. The brand I use was a "Best Choice" selection. Now I guess the next step is to follow up the same process for other supplements I use.

For more information Google: "how sustainable is fish oil as a supplement", and a whole plethora of additional links will be displayed. Incidentally, I generally trust ".org" sites more than ".com"

Have a great healthy day,

Dave"

Next time, perhaps I will go into exercise as a sustainable method of health maintenance.