A dirt life may be a healthier life

I'm not sure about you, but I have been ready for warmer weather for a while now. I have been patiently waiting for the weather to be consistently in the 70 degree range, rather than the high heat of the mid-summer season.

Yes, some of this is due to the reduced likelihood of my loved one falling due to ice and snow. However, that is not the only factor to consider when it comes to falling. While falling and all the encompassing aspects that surround an elderly person falling is an important topic of discussion that will be covered in the future, this post will focus more on the topic of Spring.

Last week, I had the privilege of attending a women's luncheon in which the guest speaker talked about their relationship with food and gardening. Their primary focus was their history with gardening, which is fairly recent, timeline-wise. I found it remarkable that this person found a personal connection to gardening and chose to make it a focus of her life.

More markedly, however, was her recognition to the effects of eating poorly and poor food choices that she recognized after having her children and wanting healthier options. It made me think about when people, in their own personal journeys, really start to consider what is in their foods and their health.

I grew up gardening and helping my family in their large gardens throughout the summers. My one grandmother always said that she "never knew that we were eating healthy; we just knew that we ate what we grew because we were poor, so we always grew our own food." Fortunately, that grandmother lived into her 90's and did a beautiful job managing her health through food. Looking throughout history and human health, especially in blue zones across the globe, you will consistently find that the healthy, elderly adults are growing their own food and making healthy choices. You will also find that poorer countries whose citizens have no choice but to grow their own food are healthier because they are growing their own food.

Our Western diet and our Western diet influence on what depicts "wealth" is not really healthy. In the last decade, there has been a serge in diet-related health issues, such as cardiovascular disease, cholesterol and high blood pressure that correlates to the Western diet. In the US, the onset of Early Onset Alzheimer's that is correlated to poor lifestyle and diet choices is significantly increasing, and has been increasing since the mainstream of processed foods, over the years.

I am not a dietician or a nutritionist, but I do have a decade in healthcare and disease, along with a lifetime of understanding how food impacts our personal health through my own journey with diet mentors in childhood. The amount of processed foods that exist on grocery store shelves is alarming. The amount of coupons that exist for reduced prices of only those processed foods, but not the healthy options, is equally alarming. Over the last 18 months, the cost of food for our family has steadily increased, especially for healthy options. However, we still prioritize the healthy foods over the processed foods.

When I began the search for assisted living facilities for my dad, I had many discussions about food and lifestyle related causes of Early Onset Alzheimer's. What you eat is extremely important. So many cases are now popping up with people in their late forties to early fifties due only to lifestyle. This includes a diet that consists primarily of processed foods. An interesting aspect of my dad's case, aside from his tbi, is that he did not drink alcohol. The major catalyst for him was his food choices and lifestyle. For others, it is alcoholism, which is another aspect that can be prevented earlier in life through diet choices.

While we live in a society that focuses on our ability to produce around the clock work and to wear our stress and unused PTO days like a badge of honor, it is important to note that we need to listen to our bodies and not be proud of how much stress we place on ourselves as well. Stress is not good for us. It raises cortisol levels, can cause disruptions in our hormone balances in the long-run, and can create significant changes within our bodies and our children's bodies (when pregnant due to blood and DNA exchanges in utero) for the future generations. It is something to manage and be in control over, and our food choices also have a correlation that should be considered.

How often do we use food as an escape? How often do we reach for a preferred snack when we are stressed? When we do want to snack or binge, how often is it on something processed?

When I was graduating college, I was offered a chemist position at a potato chip factory. I also considered chemist positions at major retailer factories for very artificially fragranced manufactured popular hygiene products. All I could think about was how unhealthy the ingredients were that I would have to use on a daily basis for the purposes of a job. I also thought about family members that would request these items from me for free, if I did take any of these jobs, and how uncomfortable I would be even bringing these home. I could not do it. I refuse to purchase those items to this day and opt for more organic and locally made alternatives.

I am a huge advocate for simpler ingredients, and that includes foods that are not processed or highly processed. I understand how much a lack of time, money, and resources can impact our food choices when we have the pressure and stress from those limits.

However, someone with a reduced capacity to understand how their food choices is limiting or catastrophically impacting their Early Onset Alzheimer's is not going to have the ability to make wise decisions when it comes to food. My dad was always worried about money because he could not remember how much he had, so he limited himself to a poor quality diet. When I took over his care, I could not really turn his diet around, even when my husband and I took him grocery shopping when he still lived mostly independently, until he could no longer make the cognizant decisions surrounding food altogether. He would argue with us about sugar, claiming that sugar was bad, especially naturally occurring sugars in fruit. Yet, he had no issue including candy and sugary sodas as primary staples in his daily routine for well over three decades.

Interestingly, the craving and need for sugar is an indicator of Alzheimer's, especially when it appears to be insatiable and uncontrollable. Researchers on cognitive and memory decline and Alzheimer's has consistently been finding a correlation in sugar cravings for a long time now. It will be interesting to learn if there is a connection for causation and what we can learn in the future. I could go into how sugar is unnecessarily added to many processed foods and subsidized within the food industry and how processed foods bypass our bodies' natural ability to control hunger through insulin receptors, but I digress.

As I tend to our gardens, dig in and prepare for another season of my family growing and eating the foods we raise, I am reminded of what my grandparents taught me when it comes to growing food. I am also reminded that we are teaching the next generation how to care for their minds and bodies as they grow through gardening. Right now, they do not appreciate the amount of dirt and digging that we are actively doing, but they genuinely enjoy walking outside and being able to eat anything they want when the food is available. It is healthy; it is unprocessed, and it has been passed down for several generations at this point.

While my dad was unable to appreciate or understand diet and nutrition, we have learned the impact of what an unhealthy diet and lifestyle can do to individuals, even when exercise is included, through his struggles. My dad did regularly exercise, but it did not counter the effect of his overall lifestyle and diet.

With that, we have reinforced the great importance of balance, finding ways to be happy, reducing stress, staying active, and eating healthy food. I hope everyone can learn from this as well to live life to the fullest. As I am reminded by my grandmother's words, which are coincidentally reinforced by health researchers, some of the habits of the poor when it comes to growing food are the healthiest. So if you are a gardener life myself, happy gardening! I wish you the best.

Regardless, eat well and enjoy your day!