Breaking The Cycle Of Poor Health In Your Family Starts With You

Thursday, July 28th, 2011 at 11:09 pm

Diabetes, high blood pressure, renal (kidney) failure and being overweight are all health conditions that “run in my family”.

Both my mother and my grandmother (her mother) were ill from each of the aforementioned things prior to their unfortunate deaths. For my mother, her renal failure occurred during her hospital stay. My surviving aunts and some other relatives suffer from one or more of these conditions as well. But the point is…there was and is a pattern….a vicious cycle.

Now many people say and believe that diseases are hereditary and are passed on from one person to the next in the same manner that facial features or eye color are. I’m not a medical expert and I do realize that there are SOME things that are genetic…but in more instances than not, things such as what I named above are not necessarily passed on from person-to-person within a family due to genes, but due to identical or similar DIETARY (as well as lifestyle) HABITS.

When I first heard someone say this some years back, I had to really sit and think about it because I had never thought of it like that before. Then once I did, I actually proved the theory right…at least in my own family. I sat and I thought way back to the days when my great-grandmother was still alive and I visualized her kitchen, her refrigerator, her pantry, her cabinets and what she cooked. Then, I allowed my mind to take me to my mother’s kitchen, etc. and pondered on what she cooked…how we ate back then. Then did the same with my grandmother and my aunts.

I was astonished to realize that in each instance, pretty much the same types of foods were being prepared! Wow!

Therefore, I made up my own mind to make some changes in that imagery…to break the cycle not only for myself, but for my husband and my children, especially! So far so good. I am currently 40 years old at the time of this writing and am blessed to not have any of the health challenges my family members had when they were my age. Is the potential there? Yes! But with prayer, grace, and lifestyle/dietary changes, I am breaking the vicious cycle… the “curse” of illness for myself and my family and you can too!

So I challenge you to, right now…today, consider any and everyone in your family who suffers from the same health issues and diseases as one another and then visualize their eating habits, etc. And if YOU’RE experiencing the same challenges with your own health, match up your eating habits with theirs, see if there is a match and make a conscious decision and effort to make the necessary changes to break the cycle even if only making small, gradual changes! When you KNOW better…DO better!

To Your Health & Well-Being,