How to live healthy

I have spent a large amount of time lately thinking about health. This is an ongoing preoccupation I have had since highschool I guess, when I first considered going vegetarian. I was not allowed. I did switch about two years out of school though, along with my brother and his then girlfriend, who introduced me to all sorts of vegetables. Further down the track I gave up milk. This can be a big social issue, explaining yourself to family and friends. I felt the need to have the answers to the regular questions like "How do you get enough protein/calcium/iron/insert any current misconception about the health of the standard diet"? No one ever asked about the anorexic looking vegetarian, as I gained weight during this time. Moved home, studied nutrition for a while, but was too unmotivated/intimidated to take the exams. I also found that the textbooks relied somewhat on what I perceived to be outdated information. Got a job at Jenny Craig as a consultant. ( I had lost the weight by this time) I was too opinionated for that job, and didn't agree with all the advice I was asked to give. I felt people should be taught to follow their instincts with their food. If you are physically hungry you should eat something! While living at home I tried feeding my Dad with vegetarian food. He has been unable to work for many years with an un-named disorder. With medication the big priority for his psychiatrist, Dad was unwilling to play around with food in case it altered his results. This frustrated me, as I felt sure he could make improvements in his life if he regulated the sugars going into his body. This may have been the turning point for where I began to perceive food as the basis for wellbeing. I began to read books on all types of diets for curing just about anything, cancer, ADD/autism, depression, weight-loss. This has continued for many years up till this current day. My vegetarianism ended after conceiving my first child, when I craved meat. Wheat-free began after my second child, which seemed to cure me of dermatitis and persistent sinus problems. I bought a whizz bang juicer only to discover it set off my blood sugar, I have since learned to control that by using the whole fruit, or by adding some fats to the drink. My newest phase is to drink green smoothies every day for lunch, which I discovered reading the Steve Pavlina blog. The more I delved into nutrition and helped myself, the more frustrated I was that I had taken so long to get this information. Why didn't a doctor tell me about blood sugar when I was young and used to faint? Why didn't anyone work out I felt sick if I drank a big glass of milk with dinner? Why do they still show us the outdated food pyramid? Is it a conspiracy? Do doctors want us reliant on them and the pharmaceuticals, so they make more money? Are the pharmaceutical companies feeding doctors so full of drug info they can't think of anything else? I'm still not 100% sure about some of the big boys in pharmaceuticals, but I think the doctors really think they are doing their best. Most people go to a doctor wanting a quick fix. Something to make them feel better. Someone or something else made them sick, and someone else will fix them. So why are we surprised? Most of their time in medical school is spent teaching them how to fix your ailments as quickly as possible, with a little nutrition study integrated along the way. Our capitalist system is based on supply and demand. They are giving us what we ask for. I read a quote somewhere that said if our doctors don't become nutritionists then nutritionists will become our doctors. Maybe if we start asking for this information, they will spend more time learning about it? Maybe there just isn't enough money to be made from it. Scientists looking for cures for cancer and other such disorders are probably in it for the right reason too, but their direction of research is surely limited by who is funding them. I think that somehow, we all need to go back to being responsible for our own health, with access to information from unbiased studies. I thought about having health studies in schools, but I worry that politics would get in the way. Meat and Dairy corporation, nutritional supplement companies, Soya people, no soya people, diet drink people, too many people with vested interests could sway the curriculum. Then you would have to retrain all teachers or put new ones in each school. Maybe blogs are the way? People sharing their own experiences and success....or failure. My own experience then??? Listen to your body, observe patterns, and assume you can always do better. As animals we are bound to the same biological laws as other animals. I wonder what David Attenborough would advise? If you're thinking about it, some tribe or some person has probably done it before, so learn from their efforts, and look out for any vested interests or bias that may taint their documentation. Trust yourself, and stay healthy.