Health is wealth

The first time I came across this phrase was when I was studying at Kalantiaw Elementary School in Project 4, Quezon City, in the mid ’60s. “Ang kalusugan ay ang ating kayamanan,” one teacher would say from time to time. That phrase has stuck with me all these years.

We need to live healthy lives. In my 65 years of living, I’ve realized that most people take their health for granted. When we are in our 20s or 30s, we don’t think much about the state of our health. We think we are immortals. We tend to abuse our bodies by eating a lot, not exercising, and sleeping late. We are young and we are quite strong. We don’t easily get sick.

It is only when we get older that we realize the true value of our health. This is one paradox of life. It is only when we are about to lose our health that we begin to appreciate its real value. Health is really wealth! With the high cost of hospitalization, by just staying healthy and not getting sick, you are already saving a lot of money.

Who are the people more health-conscious these days? Those in their 50s, 60s, or 70s. Or those who are sick. In 2009, I was talking to a friend who had just started his dialysis treatment, and he said that dialysis treatment had become a booming business. He would go to a center with 16 dialysis machines and it was always full.

So please don’t wait till you get your senior citizen’s card before you start becoming more health-conscious, or only when you are stricken with a major illness. Start right now. And for younger people, begin while you are still young. Start when you still can do something about it. Don’t wait for the last minute. The last two minutes are only good for an exciting basketball game.

We need to take care of our health so that our health will take care of us. We need to make simple decisions today that will have a long-lasting effect on our overall health. We should not just entrust our health to the medical practitioners. We should be more proactive when it comes to our health. We should take responsibility for our own health condition. It is not the doctors or the nurses who are responsible for the state of our health.

Also, we should do something about our sedentary lifestyle. In the olden days, our ancestors would work hard in the farm or at sea. Banat talaga ang kanilang katawan dahil sa kanilang trabaho—sa pagsasaka o pangingisda.

In the olden days, they lived an active life. If they had to take a bath, they had to fetch water from the community well. If the women had to wash clothes, they needed to walk to the nearby river and do their washing there.

And since fast food had not been invented yet, they ate more vegetables, fruits, and grains. The simple formula for living then was more work, less eating.

Ngayon binaliktad natin — less work, more eating. We sit in our airconditioned offices and do work on our computers. With the proliferation of buffet meals and bottomless drinks, we eat a lot.

We need to go back to the original formula — less eating, more work. And that means doing more exercise like walking, stretching, running, swimming, or even household work.

Let’s do something drastic about our lifestyle — the way we eat, the way we live. Doctors are now saying that major diseases that affect today’s generations are caused more by sedentary lifestyles and not by genes.

According to the latest study of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute of the Department of Science and Technology, “two in every five adult Filipinos, or 37.2 percent, are overweight and obese.” This was disclosed at the Obesity Awareness Online Forum held on Sept. 24, 2020.

Following the protocol of staying at home, more families are now consuming more junk food or foods that are high in calories but low in nutrients. And given the popularity of sedentary living, the combination of these two factors will lead to more obesity.

Just this week I came across a Tibetan proverb: “The secret to living well and longer is—eat half, walk double, laugh triple, and love without measure.”

This is another way of saying eat less, work more. So, are you proactive when it comes to your health? How do you keep yourself healthy?

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Josil C. Gonzales, 65, seeks to live a more active life — physically, mentally, and spiritually.