What You Should Know About Your Health and Zones of Life

ZONES OF LIFE

By Akinyemi Esther.

Picture Credit: Google 

As we all know, "health is wealth and life is also in stages. If you can eat food as your medicine, you will not eat medicine as your food. Your health is your asset"

A funny cartoon picture reads the reaction of a child to all the life struggles and says, "I hate growing up". Growing into different stages of life makes it of utmost importance for us to be conscious of our body systems, stress management and most essentially DIET. I will like to share the stages of human life according to WHO.

1.  There is a stage when we all are very active and never tired, this is from age 0-25 years, people at this stage are still growing which makes the immune system be at its peak. At this stage also, about a 19million cells are lost on a daily basis but somehow, the body replaces them and that is why it is easy to grow another tooth after the removal of one, even the brain assimilates faster. This zone is known as the Active/Vibrant Zone

2. Growing forward, we get to the Tired Zone from the ages of 26-50 years. Here, the body system finds it hard to replace some essential nutrients in the body as it loses about 15 million cells daily due to stress, anger, irritation, mood swings, tension and lot more. The immune system and body organs begins to deteriorate and even the brain is gradually weakened. Here, balance diet and stress management will help

3. Age 51-70 is the sick stage of the human life. The immune system is now much more open to diseases especially sugar related ailments due to the consumption of sugar content food eaten overtime especially by office workers in Lagos due to meeting up with office time and task, winning against the traffic, getting home  exhausted and end up eating fast foods such as rice, spaghetti,  junks etc. The body as well as the immune system becomes weak which makes it possible to easily fall sick, poor eye sight will begins to manifest, weakened bones and loss of energy. The people in this stage must be more conscious of what they feed on and reduce stress as much as possible than the other stages.

4. The final stage brings human to the Death zone where anything even the slightest unimaginable thing is capable of killing the person and that is the case of people who we hear slumped and died without any sign of illness. It is from age 71-upward. Note, it is possible to be in the sick or death zone of life even at a tender age and the reason is not far-fetched from our DIET, WE ARE WHAT WE EAT.

Consuming a healthy diet throughout the life-course helps to prevent malnutrition in all its forms as well as a range of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and conditions. However, increased production of processed foods, rapid urbanization and changing lifestyles have led to a shift in dietary patterns. People are now consuming more foods high in energy, fats, free sugars and salt/sodium, and many people do not eat enough fruit, vegetables and other dietary fibre such as whole grains.

HOW BALANCE IS YOUR DIET? Sometimes, when I see some mothers buying food for this children, the quantity of carbohydrate is much more  than protein. You can imagine, buying #100 rice and #50 spaghetti and #50 meat and you can bear me witness of how small a piece of meat is nowadays or a mother cooking Indomine or spaghetti pasta with no fresh vegetables such as green pea, sweet corn, carrot ugu or any other green vegetable in it and just one egg to serve as the protein. 

 The basic principles of what constitutes a healthy-balanced diet is: Fruit, vegetables, legumes (e.g. lentils and beans), nuts and whole grains (e.g. unprocessed maize, millet, oats, wheat and brown rice).  Brown rice is more rich in nutrient than the normal white rice we consume daily, the end-product of every white rice is sugar which we all know that accumulated excess sugar is not healthy for the health.                                      

BREAKDOWN OF A DAILY HEALTHY DIET:

More of whole grains consumption [Ofada rice, millet, wheat and cereals]

15% protein [brown beans, egg, meat that are not red meats are more healthy than red meat]

Not less than 400g of fruits and vegetables  [eat fruits that are in season]

Less than 10% of energy drink intake free from sugar [smoothie, fruit-juice]

30% fats from fish, nuts, soybeans etc

5g of salt intake