YOUR management of wellness probabilities is the key to a healthy life.

Avoiding pain, suffering and premature death are a matter of avoiding illness probabilities — that is the likelihood of eventually suffering from a disease and why.

Think of the probabilities like a tabletop (life) with funnels (risks) inset in the surface. There are also multiple marbles spinning all over the table.

The width of the opening of each of these funnels is dependent on your choices and lifestyle. Better choices will reduce the diameter of related funnels, and worse choices will increase the related widths — increasing your chances of falling in.

Some choices will make the opening so large that your probability of falling in is great, and others will make the opening so small that the marble simply will not fall in.

Yes, genetics can greatly increase or reduce the probabilities, but it is your lifestyle and choices which will reduce or increase your chances.

Factors that will affect health probabilities

1. Micronutrients

Vitamins, minerals and antioxidants are necessary for sustaining life.

Without the essential vitamins you will get sick and die. Without sufficient regular quantities, your chances for infection, cardiovascular disease, neural diseases, and much more, will increase significantly.

Continuing research is showing that regardless of some benefits, vitamin supplements are not as effective or safe as natural sources. It’s better to have two to three servings of dark green leafy and varied coloured vegetables, and one or two servings of fruit, spices, berries, peas, beans, or nuts than depend on supplements.

2. Avoid sugars, additives and processed foods

If you love comfort foods and overindulge in them, know that sooner or later they will come with a price, which could range from aches and pains to inflammation, cancer, autoimmune illnesses, heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, blindness, stroke, nerve death, dementia, and many more.

You may be realising that younger and younger people are suffering and dying from diseases once connected to ageing. Your observations are accurate. Younger men and women are dying from heart disease and cancer.

Avoid sugary drinks, including fruit drinks and alcoholic drinks, sugary foods and even an excess of the natural sugars found in fruits, berries, honey, etc.

Any more than 25 grams of sugar per day will increase your probability of several deadly diseases — to put that into perspective, that is less sugar than is found in one medium banana and two teaspoons of honey.

3. Manage your macros

Your macronutrients are essentially any nutrient you can recognise on contact. Most people can identify proteins, carbohydrates (complex — ground provisions; or simple — flour, sugar, etc), oils, and water on sight.

Balance

The successful healthy balances of macros vary significantly, but a safe rule of thumb, for most of your meals, is:

• 50 per cent vegetables;

• 25 per cent protein (relatively little to no red meat);

• 10-15 per cent carbs and 10-15 per cent oils.

Portion sizes

There are many individuals who state that they do not indulge in snack or fast foods, and proudly say that they only indulge in natural foods. However, excessive calories and improper proportions are proven to cause illnesses and early death, even from natural foods.

Keep your servings light, your waistline can be your guide.

4. Balance your microbiome

Even when you have done all of the above perfectly, there is still a potentially deadly gap in your nutrition, known as your microbiome or healthy gut bacteria.

These are the good bacteria, which exist in your gut and work with you to keep you alive and healthy. Imbalances in the microbiome have been connected to intestinal diseases, bleeding, cancers, dementia, depression, obesity, heart disease, and more.

Sadly, many societies have raised children to turn their backs on foods known to improve healthy gut flora (bacteria). Processed foods, antibiotics, preservatives, all destroy our good flora and elevate our damaging flora.

It is on us to consciously replenish our gut flora with probiotics, (foods with good bacteria), and prebiotics (fibre which the healthy bacteria feed on). Start looking for probiotic foods, such as sauerkraut (fermented cabbage), pickles, meso soup, cottage cheese, Greek yogurt. Make them a regular part of your diet.

Don’t be unadventurous or scared of them, these can make the difference between life and death.

Make the changes before it is too late

All these nutritional factors must be covered to avoid serious illness. You may have the perfect macro balances but insufficient micronutrients and that one factor will leave a set of disease probabilities wide open.

If you are overweight there is a good chance that you need to make important dietary changes. However, it does not matter if you are slim or not, if you are fit or not, if you slip up with any of these factors you are widening the probability funnel of many diseases, simply by missing one factor or another.

Other lifestyle changes, including exercise, are also important for your total well being. However, even if you have all the fitness factors, any weakness in your nutrition will result in your body failing at some point.

Make the changes today. Change is a process, you may try it alone or get help from a proven system, in any case, your life may depend on it.

Fitz-George Rattray is the director of Intekai Academy, which is focused on helping people live a healthy lifestyle through nutrition and weight management. If you are interested in losing weight or living a healthier lifestyle, give them a call at 876-863-5923, or visit their website at intekaiacademy.org.