While there are no guarantees in life, healthy eating habits will give you that edge of a positive outcome. If you have found yourself sick or recovering, it is more important than ever that you get this.

FUEL-UP EARLY IN THE DAY
Fueling your body with food is the only way it gets fed. Your body will never hold up long-term if you skip breakfast, miss meals and eat sugar-laden carbohydrates on-the-fly on a continual basis. That is equivalent to putting watered-down gas in your car and expecting it to run at high speeds – ain’t gonna happen! So what do you do? All I can teach you is how I was taught through my mom and dad. Our mom made sure we ate breakfast most of our school years, and usually it included eggs. She said that she did not feed us processed baby food, she would just mash up, or chop the food they ate, and my brother and I loved it and neither one of us contracted any of the normal childhood diseases (mumps, chicken pox, measles). It will always remain a mystery, but I've got to believe it helped.

BUY FRESH for GOOD HEALTH
By the time we were teenagers dad was out of work and mom was gone to work, so dad took over the job of cooking. The transition was a little hard at first, but when dad got settled into his new-found place we ate well! I would go with him to the grocery store, and he always bought food out of the fresh produce section and would cook delicious meals. This obviously takes preparation, but it is well worth your efforts if you are willing to give it a try. Chef’s shows on TV are so interesting, but they have many assistants to help. In a normal setting and on a smaller dynamic, the result is still the same. Prepared food made from fresh produce is better for you hands down.

PICK A FEW FAVES
Below is a short-list of the major vitamins a person needs every day, followed by foods that contain them. We all know bananas contain potassium and pomegranates help the heart, but what about the rest? You may want to revisit a long-forgotten favorite! Take a look:

VITAMINS
Vitamin A – builds an effective immune system. Without it your body is vulnerable to a whole host of infections ranging from measles to AIDS, and helps to prevent cancer and blindness. If you have low amounts of it in your system, you could develop dry eyes, loss of appetite, and poor taste and smell. Vitamin A is a fat-soluble substance, so you should eat a certain amount of fat when you take it. It is found in carrot juice, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, carrots, spinach, butternut squash, tuna, dandelion greens, cantaloupe, mangoes, turnip greens, and beet greens.(Look for anything orange!)

Vitamin D – This is one good thing we do get from the sun
Vitamin B-12 – This vitamin is vital to the production of myelin, the fatty sheath that insulates nerve fibers keeping electrical impulses moving through the body. People who have a deficiency will show signs of memory loss, confusion, delusion, fatigue, loss of balance, decreased reflexes, impaired touch or pain perception (Editor’s note: this reminds me of dementia and Alzheimer’s symptoms), numbness and tingling in arms and legs, tinnitus and noise-induced hearing loss. It is found in clams, ham, cooked oysters, kind crab, herring, salmon and tuna (the last three contain much needed Omega-3 fatty acids, good for the joints and cardiovascular system).

NEW HEALTH RESOURCES
I would like to introduce @1800health from Twitter. 1800Healthy is a health magazine that is chock full of resources to keep you healthy, including supplements, delicious recipes, and they even offer information on pet health.

It’s never too late to start. Here’s to good health!

Source: Healing with Vitamins by Editors of Prevention Health Books (First Edition 1996).