PAUL CURRAN, from Newcastle, who is an accredited health coach, and an engineer by profession, will be writing a bi-weekly health column in Down News.
As a father, a student, teacher, musician and fitness fan, he brings all his talents to the fore following his desire to make a difference to the lives of others. He works in a small team of health specialists.
Paul suffered a severe and unexpected illness in 2008. This was a turning point for him in his life as he took stock of where he was going – it was a point of reflection. He now has developed a unique method of how to achieve better health and wellbeing through a system where he helps his clients understand and use their personal skills and passions in their place of work.
Paul said: “This ‘Big Picture’ perspective helps whole organisations to integrate their efforts, develop their culture and increase productivity in a sustainable way.”
Check out his website at: www.actoncentredhealth.com
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Food Bites: Get In Shape By Eating The Right Food
As the dark evenings approach, we humans show our animal side by preparing for hibernation.
Meal sizes grow, metabolism slows and it can become a struggle to both lose weight and to keep it off. But if you know what to do it can be very different. Now is an excellent time to rustle up some new ideas for your plate.
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Paul Curran, health coach.[/caption]
Every fortnight I will bring you some suggestions for nutritious additions to your menu aimed at optimising your health naturally. Hippocrates (circa 377BC), considered the father of medicine, reputedly said: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”.
Even then it was recognised that health is largely determined by diet. This fact has become obscured, however, and it’s too easy to eat a ready meal or fast food to ease our busy lives. We all know deep down that such habits are slowly harming us. To complicate matters there is great confusion around which foods are healthy or unhealthy. I want to clear some of the fog for you to make your choices clearer.
In addition to food choices and basic nutritional information I will use this column to raise awareness of health related issues that affect us all. We each have our unique health challenges but collectively we are increasingly exposed to environmental factors that threaten everyone. I hope that this column will stimulate thought and debate on some of the issues of our time.
I see the process of achieving optimum health as having three essential elements like a three-legged stool.
- Stop getting sick
- Remove the toxins that are keeping you sick
- Repair and rebuild your body with nutrition building blocks.
Many causes of illness are immediately obvious to us, but others are counter-cultural and may even seem downright strange. Just as many of our habits are hard to break, getting rid of accumulated toxins is also difficult, and in the modern environment it becomes an ongoing task.
Whenever we get cut, bruised, break a bone or are recovering from surgery we know that the body heals itself through a continual process of renewal. Much of this work gets done quietly while we sleep, but the process never stops so there is a constant demand for the materials needed for the job. Imagine trying to build a house without proper bricks or timber or with different grade materials and having these delivered to the site at irregular intervals. Many workers would abandon the job in disgust but the body has no choice but to make do and mend with whatever it can gets its hands on – or its teeth into.
Through this column I’ll help steer you to building materials you can depend on and help you organise your ‘internal logistics’ to ensure they’re available when you need them.
Now’s a good time to work toward looking great this Christmas – and for the rest of your life! I hope you’ll follow these ideas and share your thoughts.
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