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A healthy body can make for a healthy mind

It was a popular saying a while back: "You are what you eat."

I was never too sure about that. As I sat eating my eighth piece of bacon for breakfast, I may have felt rather like a pig, but I was not really afraid of waking up the next morning with a flat snout and hoofed feet.

Despite the seeming ridiculousness of that statement, though, there is a kernel of truth there. Much more than we imagine, our physical, emotional, spiritual and relational health is affected by our diet. And, we can add to that list the air we breathe, the neighborhood we live in, the season of the year, the temperature, the humidity and the amount of exercise we get.

Let me give you an example. A few years ago I noticed that I was getting dizzy spells while driving for my job. I was more than a little scared and called a doctor friend of mine for some advice.

Talking over the phone, we got onto the subject of diet. She asked me what my eating habits were like when I was out driving.

I like restaurants. It turned out that I was making six or seven stops a day, a cola here, a cup of coffee there, but seldom any real food. That was all my friend needed to hear.

She put me on a caffeine-free diet for a couple of weeks and, you guessed it, no dizzy spells. It seemed I was overloading my system with that drug and getting dizzy spells because of it.

As I tried to cut back on caffeine, I found myself getting grouchy, irritable and less alert. I had been using caffeine as a stimulant to pick me up and now that I was cutting back, I was paying the consequences.

It is amazing - and alarming - what we are rediscovering about the effects of various foods, chemicals, activities and more on our emotional, physical and spiritual well-being. To name a few:

• Too much processed sugar (what we get in most packaged food) can cause violent mood swings and severe depression.

• Eating certain vegetables may inhibit some cancers.

• A little alcohol may be beneficial to many people, but regular abuse of alcohol permanently damages brain cells and results in definite personality change.

• Dairy products both add cholesterol to our diets, which increases the chances of high blood pressure (and accompanying tension, nervousness and anxiety) in some people, and provide calcium, which we think lowers high blood pressure.

• People who live in crowded city neighborhoods are regularly more anxious, more depressed and more prone to violent behavior than people who live in less-crowded suburbs and towns.

• The winter months show a marked increase in suicide attempts, use of mental hospitals and entry into counseling. This is especially true in January and February (remember "cabin fever".)

• High humidity often results in decreased alertness and dulling emotional sensitivity.

• Regular exercise has been proven to contribute to a positive self-image, more stable emotions, a reduction in anxiety and depression and overall mental health.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Actually, if we think about it, most of what I've written seems pretty obvious. We probably aren't all that surprised that so many factors affect our physical, emotional, spiritual and relational health. Often, though, on a day-to-day basis, we aren't aware of how some of these factors may be influencing how we are feeling, and how we are relating to our friends and family.

Be aware of how your own health is affected by what's going on in your life. Look at your diet, your exercise habits. Do factors like temperature, the weather, or humidity seem to make a difference? Ask those around you for their observations.

Maybe we aren't exactly what we eat. But who we are, and how we get along with others, is influenced by a variety of factors we aren't always aware of. Being more aware of how we live our lives, we can be healthier people physically, emotionally, spiritually and relationally.

• Dr. Ken Potts is on the staff of Samaritan Counseling Center in Naperville and Downers Grove. He is the author of "Mix Don't Blend, A Guide to Dating, Engagement and Remarriage With Children."

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