Having a passion in our lives is important for our emotional and physical health and happiness, with every increasing year. My passion is preventive health, for me it’s a matter of life and death.

I have been interested in health and wellness since my grandmother told me of her interest in Native American herbal folk medicine. In her young adulthood, during the Gold rush years, she became a folk doctor in Alaska, since there were few traditional doctors during those days.I went on to become a chiropractic physician specializing in acupuncture and nutrition for 30 years. Now I am an author writing about what I know: best…health.

While I believe it’s critical to get the best possible health care, we need to spend more time, energy and money preventing health problems rather than treating them. We Americans need to make prevention a priority.

We already know what we need to do: Eat and drink a better quality of food, whole foods, not over-processed, adulterated foods. Exercise or have a daily workout routine, be more physically active; Keep away from tobacco products. Keep our weight down; you have a mirror and can see what needs to be done. Unfortunately, most of us do not think about those things having to do with our health until after we are paying the doctor bill if we survive to write the check.

The United States spends more on health care than any other nation in the world. Even then, that only allowed us to rank No. 10 in the world as far as life expectancy. Here we are a decade later, and we’re down to No. 42 on the life expectancy list.

Last year, at Emory University, a study found that about twice as many Americans over the age of 50 are diagnosed with cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, cancer, or diabetes as our European counterparts. This year (2008) saw the American Stroke Association reporting that women in America are twice as likely to have a stroke as European women. American men are more than 60 percent likely to have one as compared to European men.

Researchers attribute these dramatic differences to the Europeans lifestyles and better prevention models. It seems that through the ages we have helped our European bothers, and they have helped us in times of need: war, economically and politically. It certain looks like this is another time of need in America…Health.

All to often we see prevention being neglected in our treatment-oriented and inequitable society, Medicaid, Medicare and few insurance companies pay for preventive care. Three major risk factors for stroke, obesity, diabetes and smoking, are all usually preventable. More older Americans use tobacco, and almost twice as many are obese. The lowest stroke rates were found in southern Mediterranean countries, home of the healthy Mediterranean diet. And speaking of lifestyle, most Europeans walk or exercise, twice as much as Americans, and have twice the vacation time as well.

According to a recent New England Journal of Medicine article, while genetics, social circumstances and health care play a role, the best opportunity we have to improve our health and live longer is our personal lifestyle behavior. Taking advantage of that opportunity isn’t so difficult. Longer vacations and physical activity can be fun. Eating the right things, like fresh fruit, vegetables, fish, olive oil and wine aren’t bad either!

Please send the author any questions or comments about the above article to the following address: bamashogun@aol.com or visit www.alternative-concepts.com or www.gulfcoastnewspapers.com