Eating Right Helps Fight Illnesses

Eating Right Helps Fight Illnesses

Guest Post By: Jackie Clark

I have had a personal experience in losing weight. As of right now I have lost 30 pounds by balancing healthy eating and exercise. I set another goal for myself and that is to lose 8 pounds by the end of August. My weight has always been my greatest challenge, but a year ago I realized that it didn’t have to be. I control what I eat and how I want my body to look. It was time to stop eating out of boredom and time to take back my body.

Diet is an important part of living a healthy lifestyle. Proper diet can help solve numerous medical problems including losing weight and overcoming illnesses like cancer and mesothelioma that is triggered from asbestos exposure. A well balanced diet can provide you the right balance of vitamins, minerals and nutrients your body needs to properly function. To understand about how diet affects you, there must be an understanding of what nutrients and vitamins are and how they help the body.

Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates provide the body with immediate energy as some of the digested sugars are immediately absorbed into the blood stream. Carbohydrates are a source of glucose and therefore the body’s main energy source.

Protein
Protein is the nutrient that helps the body grow and repair itself. It provides the body’s cells with amino acids to use for cellular growth and repair.

Fats
Fats provide more calories per gram than carbohydrates or proteins. The body needs a small amount of fat storage to use when it needs extra energy that your daily caloric intake did not provide.

A good diet contains a proper balance of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. About 50-60% of your diet needs to consist of carbohydrates, 15-30% should be from proteins and only a small percentage, 10% or less should be from fats.

Your body also needs the proper amount of vitamins and minerals to maintain health. Vitamins essential for good health include:

Vitamin A- for maintaining good eyesight
Vitamin B- for energy and metabolism
Vitamin C– for repairing your body and boosting your immune system
Vitamin D- for healthy skin and calcium production

Essential minerals include the following:

Iodine- for proper hormonal production
Sodium- key for a good functioning nervous system
Calcium- for health teeth and bones and muscles
Iron- for the production of blood cells and hemoglobin

Your Diet and Weight Loss
Weight gain or weight loss is a simple concept. If you take in more calories than you burn then you will gain weight. If you burn more calories than you take in then you lose weight. Eating a balanced diet with the proper percentages of carbohydrates, proteins and fats will help maintain a healthy weight. Try to limit foods high in fat and only occasionally eat fried food or fast food. Eat several meals throughout the day to keep your metabolism going. Skipping meals will cause your body to store more of your next meal as fat because it will be in starvation mode.

Illness and Diet
Having a proper diet helps people with illnesses like cancer. Specifically, those with mesothelioma need every advantage to fight their mesothelioma life expectancy. The correct amounts of nutrients, vitamins and minerals can help those with mesothelioma to repair their bodies and give them energy for their daily activities.

Bio

Jackie joined the Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance in 2009 as research assistant after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English and a minor in fitness and nutrition. Jackie’s experience in technical and medical research has allowed her to oversee all web content production and authoritative processes. Jackie has earned the esteemed HONcode accreditation for reliable and verified health information on the web. Jackie supervises a team of medical writers and produces much of the website’s content for mesothelioma cancer and related health and wellness outreach efforts.

Check out her blog at: Jackie’s Arc. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter.

QUESTION: Do you have any personal experience with food curing an illness?