I was reading in a magazine about how to keep healthy in these times of lock-down. All the usual things such as fresh fruit and vegetables, plenty of water, high fibre diet, mindfulness and where possible daily exercise. If, like me, you have probably read it so many times you wonder why you are killing time reading it yet again. So I thought I would give a slightly different approach to what keeping healthy means to me...
I’m a Crohn’s suffer for over 40 years and during that time have had many major surgical procedures, some that have saved my life. But that’s not the keeping healthy bit it just explains this next bit.
.....and at the start of my Crohn’s I was a healthy, magazine healthy, highly active, tea total, vegetarian. Over this time and as a side effect of the Crohn’s and surgery my dietary constraints are now such that I cannot eat leaf vegetables, high fibre, nuts, mushrooms, pulses, sweet corn, fibre such is found in brown bread, unprocessed wheat such as In whole grain bread, skins, celery and dried fruit and peel as found in cakes and as healthy snacks
My being healthy is being confined to root vegetables but in moderation and that have to be cooked until soft and without the skin. High fat products such as batter and butter, meat ‘ red meat is beneficial’, products containing gelatine as is found in some yogurts, pork pies and jelly-babies. This is my keeping healthy
I used to smoke 5 cigarettes a day and when I stopped my Crohn’s would flare up. At one uncontrollable hospitalised episode of Crohn’s, 4 weeks into a 7 week stay, i was asked to start smoking again. It is known that something in cigarettes can, in some people, reduce the severity of a flare up. I didn’t start smoking again, for the obvious reasons and wouldn’t advise anyone else to smoke. But they did have to remove my colon. This is my keeping healthy.
In hot weather I became dehydrated, one of the functions of the colon is to take the water from ones food, and as such made sure I drank more water than usual but this didn’t seem to be working. When admitted to hospital for dehydration I was told that I was drinking to much water, without the colon the extra water I was drinking was flushing water out of my system. This is common in those without a colon and/ or with a shortened small intestine.
I am now limited to 2Lt of fluid a day, this includes all fluids such as coffee, tea and water. 1Lt of my 2Lt of fluids has to be made up of 1Lt of water that has added to it half a teaspoon on bicarbonate of soda, 6 teaspoons of glucose powder and 1 teaspoon of salt, this being drunk throughout the course of the day. This too is my keeping healthy.
By keeping to this healthy diet and being as active as is possible I can maintain my periods in-between my Crohn’s flare-ups as to what is recognised as being for me keeping to a healthy lifestyle.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has a slightly different healthy living aspect to the usual, a friend of mine is not allowed to eat anything at all. His food is from a big bag that he is connected up to each night and is gradually pumped into him while he sleeps, something that was also my new healthy, but for me only for a short period of time. I would like to hear what your different being healthy consists of?
Vision Board (of sorts)