“4th Global ACUPUNCTURE and Therapist Annual Meeting”

http://acupuncture.conferenceseries.com

11) ARTICLE: Diet, Health and Wellness (2015.10.07)

http://medcraveonline.com/JNHFE/JNHFE-02-00073.php

Opinion

Volume 2 Issue 5 - 2015

Diet, Health and Wellness

Dora Dragoni*

Nutritionist, Acupuncture fellow at AMAB, Italy

Received: October 7, 2015 | Published: October 7, 2015

*Corresponding author: Dora Dragoni, Medical Doctor, Nutritionist, Personal Trainer, Acupuncture Fellow at AMAB, Italy, Tel: +39 338 5085731; Email: 

Citation: Dragoni D (2015) Diet, Health and Wellness. J Nutr Health Food Eng 2(5): 00073. DOI:10.15406/jnhfe.2015.02.00073

Keywords: Diet; Nutrition; Lifestyle; Wellness, Health; Reward; Fitness; Mediterranean diet; Italian Cuisine; Turkish cuisine; TCM; Food culture; Ayurveda; Multi-Strategies; Right to food

Abstract

Food is part of us: it is nutrients, tastes, and flavours…and it is one of the basic social ways we spend time with others. So it is important to know conscious approaches to it, to choose wisely how we eat, to regulate our diet at better, to have healthy and pleasant foods, and to prefer social eating solutions.

No matter if we are in fit or we want to improve our BMI, we should choose healthy foods, like organic ones, we should balance our diets with the best proportions of nutrients, and we should know which flavours adapt to our way of being (according to traditional chinese medicine, for example); or in case of diabetes, or other dysmetabolisms, we should even more pay attention to our nutrition and lifestyle, in order to stay in the better equilibrium. Even pregnancy, infancy, and sport habits need particular attentions, since all are physiological situations in which diet has an important role.

Understanding how considering our daily and weekly nutrition is the first step. Then we should choose the foods, amongst the healthiest, that fit best to our preferences. And moreover it would be important to have an overall global lifestyle: having a regular physical activity, in order to get to fitness body and mind conditions, and try to train with daily relaxation and mindfullness techniques as well, like yoga, zen practices, or maybe others based on concentration or even visualization. In case of some dysfunctions we could recur to CAM strategies: complementary and alternative medicines are considered more and more important and worth (like acupuncture, fitotherapies, mental training and so on).

The basis could be the mediterrenean diet, declared in 2010 “intangible cultural heritage for humanity” by Unesco, and typical of mediterrenean countries: the world “diet” comes from the ancient greek world “diaita” that means “lifestyle” indeed. So preferring complex carbohydrates (at lower glycemic index), white meats, fish (rich in omega-3), some fresh cheese, and lots of vegetables and fruits (for vitamins and fibers), dry fruits and nuts (containing omega-6), adding some herbs and spices as well (I can say that for some cultures, like ayurveda, they are a real healing system), evitating sweets and fats (helping in such a way metabolism), and reducing coffee as well, is the ‘nutrition side’; to this we should also have a daily sport activity and if we can find some time to relax at sun it would be great for our body and mind as well - vitamin D is related to higher fertility rates according to recent studies.

In conclusion we can underline the relationships between nutrition, lifestyle, emotions and reward system, the brain pathways involved in the modulation of stress and in the wellness perceptions and feelings, that are the basis for healing, resilience and health: even World Health Organization declared that health is not the absence of diseases but it has to be the complete body and mind well-being.