Very First Steps in Taking Care of Your Health

On my approach (nowadays called holistic) to health we need to start from the very basics, only after we can move onto herbs and other supplements if needed. The name alone refers to the fact that they are just supplements to the correct way of taking care of your health.
Luckily health issues are simple, really simple, but you have to take the steps yourself and affirm your responsibility for your own health as the foremost factor.
The very elemental basics to stay alive are of course breathing, drinking water, and finally eating.
There are some tricks in every one of these elements.
A) Breathing
We can't stay alive for a very long time without breathing. So obviously this actually is the most important element and there are many secrets to it.
It is said that breath is the bridge between the body and the mind. When we can regulate our breathing, our body and mind will follow.
Diaphragmatic breathing or deep breathing is one of the most important foundation practices for health.
On inhalation, the diaphragm muscle contracts, and pulls downward, such that the ribs flare out slightly, and pulls the bottom of the lungs downward to bring in air. On exhalation, this releases and the air goes out. This is the way to maximize your oxygen intake. Sufficient Oxygen again keeps your body alkaline and healthy. ( I'll come back to this issue on upcoming articles)
It is important to note that modern medicine has finally acknowledged that The Breath is intimately connected to The Autonomic Nervous System and The Mind. Even some hospitals and medical establishments are now willing to train people in breath regulation and diaphragmatic breathing.
We need to consciously practice diaphragmatic breathing. This involves a retraining program, and while another person can teach us how to do it, it is actually a self-training program. Nobody can do the actual awareness and training for us.
(I urge you to study breathing if you are really serious about your health, most of the information that I obtain and put into practice is from http://www.swamij.com)

B) Drinking Water

How long can you live without water? A few days at most, so obviously this is the second most important factor.
Although water itself is truly an amazing element and contains plenty of secrets; from my opinion, the one factor that concerns us mostly now is to drink water that is ‘‘alive’’. If you drink bottled or tap water you are drinking dead water that has very little of the original value left. The process of cleaning water with Reverse Osmosis and many other methods basically kills it. Also the chemicals and the fact that tap water runs in tight pipes and corners, kills the water. Among other things it becomes acid whereas it should be slightly alkaline.
Drinking a large amount of dead water does not actually benefit you much.
Luckily, there are simple ways to revitalize the water. The simplest is pouring water from a vessel to another with as great distance in between as you can handle. For example, from your bottle to glass then from the glass to another glass as many times as practical. You'll notice the difference immediately.
Again there are other simple, cost effective ways and I'll come back to those in future articles.

C) Eating
This is the most talked about subject concerning health so I won't go too much in detail about it.
If I'd give just one advice, that would be, “ Do not eat refined sugar at all” but find alternative sources to satisfy your craving for sweets. Sugar is more addictive and dangerous than alcohol, nowadays it can also be found in every different sort of packaged food that we find. In that case, we have to pay very close attention to the labels of the food.
Good alternatives would be fruits, honey, and non-refined sugars like coconut sugar (available here in Thailand).
On the other hand, I need to give at least one more advice “ do not eat refined starches at all” but try to get brown rice, wholegrain bread etc.
The secret to eating in general is proper mastication just like your parents told you. Never hurry while eating, make a point to take your time. The reason why is that mouth is actually the first part of your digestive system. Saliva has enzymes that are very much needed by your belly to continue the processing of the food properly.
Like with all the information it is only good when you put it in practice. Just do it.
Last but not least, there are plenty of good herbs (and other supplements) that are capable of assisting us to reach optimal health, but firstly we need to take care of the elemental factors.