What’s Your Interest?

Health is a massive area of today’s living. We know to see qualified doctors when we are unwell and we know to take medicine when it’s needed. With the slow passing of the pandemic and the massive discussion of vaccines and our own choices, it has been paramount to us all to know what we are taking and why we are taking it.

This part of Latent Lifestyle comes from my own search for understanding within health. I wanted to understand why people chose to watch funny movies to cure cancer or when they felt tired and stressed that they would work out or take an hour yoga class. It is not different from my own need to go for long walks up mountains or to wander the streets of a new country.

Each brings us to different places, each feeds our inner person and sometimes sharing can be helpful. For me, this is really a collection of topics I wanted more information on. From Hemmingway’s Hemochromatosis to Anthony Bourdain’s Depression, I wanted to understand why and how these small things could loom so large for them and for us.

Find how fitness can improve the mind, as well as energise the soul. How Stress can cause our ‘conditions’ to be magnified (like the diabetic feeling worse because they eat more carbohydrate meals when they have less time to prepare their meals), and why not all diets are good… or bad.

On Fitness

Fitness can be as hard and intense as you want to make it. You can do the daily stroll around the park, or work out for 2 hours at a time, and both contribute to your level of fitness. What you choose will depend on what time you have and what you want to achieve.

There is no point getting up at 5 am to get to the gym and work out if that doesn’t make your life more interesting and you benefit from it. Neither does saying I’ll sit for a further hour while I watch another episode of my favourite TV show and not move at all.

Both are extremes and what we need to aim for as humans is a medium between the two.

This page is dedicated to all the ways you can get and stay fit. From the casual walk around your neighbourhood park with the dog to an intensive 8-week training regime to make sure you make your next marathon count!

It is your life to live, and research has clearly shown exercise is an important part of fending off depression, weight gain and restless sleep. Get up, get out and enjoy the world around you.

On Diets

Let’s address the issue immediately

There is no quick fix to health!

Not surgery, the reality is that to even get surgery, a journey to health has to be started. Most health meals also suggest that combined with a healthy diet, regular exercise should be undertaken. Even a gym membership comes with the disclaimer that one cannot expect the gym to provide the results, but that they are all dependent upon a person’s ability, attendance and motivation to succeed.

I am fascinated by those who get up one morning and decide to quit smoking, or the 450-pound overweight person deciding today is the day that they will turn things around and get healthy, discarding years of harmful abuse to their bodies because of great advertising and misunderstanding.

I heard on the radio the other day that a glass of red wine with a meal has been found to lower blood sugar levels due to a chemical called resveratrol in the skin of the grape. The radio DJ then said something even more profound. “Why don’t we do a study about how eating grapes with a meal affects our blood sugar without the wine?” Interesting thought, but as humans, we often want both the thing we crave and the cure of the disease it causes.

I wanted to know more about the diets that some people swear cured them of obesity, depression and lethargy and though I want to try and approach this matter with an open heart and mind, I am driven to say, it all starts in the mind, and affects our outward behaviour.

On Complentary Health

I am sure you are aware people dedicate their whole lifetimes to health. They search for meaning in Tai Chi or swear by Yoga. Some only use Traditional Healers while others only swear in the effects of Bio-Resonance. Each has its benefits and each improves the user’s health. I wanted to understand them a little more. They are not the be-all or End-all of Complementary Health but they are ones I have come across.

This is more of a personal study for myself, but there is no value in studying something without sharing, so here is what I have learned about these practices.

On Conditions of Health

What is depression or that floaty feeling when you stand up suddenly? Then there are migraines, asthma and restless leg syndromes. I want to learn about them and understand their effects on people. Again this is no more than thoughts or ideas shared from other people, research agencies or musings but it is interesting.

I doubt everyone will agree with my thoughts. That’s okay, we all need feedback and I hope to have some. Obesity is just overeating. The inability to control what we shove in our mouths, but to someone who is obese, there is nothing that can be said to alter their world view that there is something else wrong. If someone refuses to move but eats the same calorie intact as a top athlete there is only one conclusion, obesity.

It could be said that it is the type of food one receives, the education one gets about preparing food and the constituent parts of that food to make it healthy to someone, but in the end, if I eat chocolate every day, all day for every meal, I will get sick, and it will be no different if I choose to eat potatoes only as fries, boiled, or roasted. The outcome is the same. One food group will make you sick, even though when eaten as part of a balanced diet it will be perfectly fine.

I cannot cure Type 1 diabetes that has been brought through the genes of our ancestors, but I can tell a Type 2 diabetic that eating sugar and carbohydrate heavy foods will increase their blood sugar and result in a condition that will make you sick.

Let’s see where this leads…

On Natural Beauty

I hate, and I use the word hate, how society believes that beauty is only surface deep. BUT, and yes there is a but here, there is one vital lesson in every beauty discussion. It is all about extremes. Someone who neglects to stay at least clean is letting themself down and has, in my opinion, a poor self-image of both themselves and of their ‘neighbours’.

I choose to meet a friend in clean clothes because I think I can show I am capable of ordering my life and I respect the person around me enough to show I care about them too.

I despise that women have to feel they MUST wear make-up to be seen or that they feel pressured to leave it behind because in so doing makes them a slave to the misogynistic society. Wear make-up to feel great about yourself, but don’t spend your life worrying about it. Don’t neglect it because someone found some angle to get back at men for their own failed understanding of life.

Men are also not excluded from beauty. A man is beautiful if he attends to his body and appreciates those around him. Is strong and yet is able to understand the fragility of life. Yet there has been a huge shift in society to bash the male figure for wanting to be the protector and provider, and then blame the male for not being those things when they choose something else.

The most one can do is have self-respect for themselves. That person is beautiful. They know what it means to appreciate this life, their position in it and those around them and that is becoming a very rare thing.

May we learn together through this journey of life and share what we learn together.