Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin

Al­though we are all aware that we can­not func­tion at out best un­less our phys­i­cal and men­tal fac­ul­ties are in good work­ing con­di­tion, most of us take our health and well­ness for grant­ed. Of­ten times we don't pay at­ten­tion to the needs of our bod­ies un­til it be­comes ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary, or too late.

–Health and well­ness sem­i­nar on Sep­tem­ber 20-22, Car­ol Quash,

T&T Guardian, Au­gust 16

Imag­ine 50,000 peo­ple through­out the Caribbean be­gin­ning the "Hands Across the Caribbean" New­start walk at 7 am in 25 coun­tries, ex­tend­ing from St Croix in the North to Guyana and Suri­name in the South. Imag­ine thou­sands march­ing, drilling, drama­tis­ing, chant­i­ng and dis­play­ing their aer­o­bic skills.? Imag­ine thou­sands em­brac­ing healthy lifestyles. The theme of this re­gion­al fes­ti­val will be "Take Charge of Your Health." In each is­land, to­tal health and well­ness will be cel­e­brat­ed. In T&T, the walk will be­gin at 7 am at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah. It is re­al­ly Hands and Hearts Across the Caribbean. This his­toric event is spon­sored by the Ad­ven­tist Health Min­istries De­part­ment of the Caribbean Union Con­fer­ence and CHRPI. Many or­gan­i­sa­tions will form a rain­bow coali­tion, guar­an­tee­ing the suc­cess of this lifestyle ac­tiv­i­ty in­clud­ing Po­lice Youth Clubs, Em­manuel Com­mu­ni­ty, Path-find­ers, Mas­ter Guides, As­so­ci­a­tion of Coach­es, Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean, Caribbean Health Foods, Com­mu­ni­ty Hos­pi­tal, Love­un­til Foun­da­tion etc.

What is the New­start pro­gramme? Who or what is CHRPI? New­start is a for­mu­la for a com­pre­hen­sive healthy lifestyle and con­sti­tutes a pro­found at­tack against car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases, obe­si­ty, di­a­betes, and hy­per­ten­sion. New­start rep­re­sents nu­tri­tion, ex­er­cise, wa­ter, sun­shine, tem­per­ance, air, rest and trust in God. New­start in­volves the phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, so­cial, psy­cho­log­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al di­men­sions of the in­di­vid­ual. CHRPI is the Carib-bean Health Re­search and Pro­mo­tion In­sti­tute and is the co-spon- sor of Hands Across the Carib-bean.

Hands Across the Caribbean in­volves youth and adults who will dri­ve the pos­i­tive lifestyle mes­sage in a dra­mat­ic and dy­nam­ic dis­play of a vast range of tal­ents and skills. It har­monis­es with the Caribbean Well­ness pro­gramme and mo­ti­vates youth to get in­volved in an enor­mous res­cue mis­sion de­signed to save the fam­i­ly. Al­most every day we are con­front­ed with bizarre, bloody, beast­ly pic­tures of youth in the re­gion killing and be­ing killed. Youth smok­ing, drink­ing al­co­hol, fight­ing as they fol­low neg­a­tive and dan­ger­ous role mod­els in the homes as well as in the com­mu­ni­ty. Stress, tears, fears, para­noia, schiz­o­phre­nia, de­pres­sion, sui­cide are con­tribut­ing to a de­creas­ing lev­el of hope. But now we have Tar­get 50,000 and Hands Across the Caribbean.

If we do not use the youth in pos­i­tive, ex­cit­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, they will be in­volv­ing in trag­ic, high-risk, neg­a­tive ac­tiv­i­ties. There­fore, Hands Across the Caribbean will be­gin on Sep­tem­ber 19 and con­tin­ue through­out the week in schools, com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, church­es, sport­ing clubs, par­ent as­so­ci­a­tions etc. Junk food, dis­cos, poor nu­tri­tion, promis­cu­ous be­hav­iour, porno­graph­ic jour­nals, col­laps­ing fam­i­lies, wild Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tions will not pro­duce role mod­el youth and sta­ble homes. So let us use our cre­ative abil­i­ties to con­struct a new so­ci­ety through re­build­ing the fam­i­ly and es­tab- lish­ing the fam­i­ly al­tar. Let us mo­ti­vate our youth to make the best choic­es so that they could ex­pe­ri­ence re­al hap­pi­ness and not the il­lu­sion of hap­pi­ness. If we look at the lat­est fig­ures from World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion, we should be shocked. But the shock should not pro­duce paral­y­sis; it should pro­vide the cat­a­lyst for ur­gent ac­tion.

Ex­am­ine the fol­low­ing in­for­ma­tion:

* We have ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,600 mil­lion over­weight adults (old­er than 15) on plan­et Earth.

* There are at least 400 mil­lion obese adults.

* By the year 2015 there will be some 2,300 mil­lion over­weight adults, and more than 700 mil­lion obese in­di­vid­u­als.

* In 2005 there were at least 20 mil­lion chil­dren younger than five who suf­fered from over­weight.

Tim Arnott, Dr Hans Diehl, Prof Aileen Lud­ing­ton and Jorge Pam­plona have pro­duced a sim­ple health em­pow­er­ment strat­e­gy ti­tled To­tal Health–8 Nat­ur­al Reme­dies. As a gift to the na­tion the Caribbean Health Re­search and Pro­mo­tion In­sti­tute presents the pack­age:

* Pure air. Pure air and the habit of breath­ing cor­rect­ly as­sure the body of a suf­fi­cient sup­ply of oxy­gen. It is ad­vis­able to ven­ti­late all rooms of our homes reg­u­lar­ly.

* Sun­light. We should be ex­posed to be­tween 15 and 30 min­utes of sun­light every day, prefer­ably dur­ing the morn­ing hours. Sun­light helps in the pro­duc­tion of vi­t­a­min D in the skin and de­stroys in­fec­tious agents in the en­vi­ron­ment. It al­so con­tributes to in­creas­ing the lev­els of sero­tonin in the brain, which helps to im­prove one's spir­it and fight de­pres­sion.

* Ab­sti­nence from harm­ful sub­stances. Cof­fee, cig­a­rettes, al­co­holic bev­er­ages, and drugs al­ter the func­tion­ing of var­i­ous or­gans of the body and pre­dis­pose us to ill­ness.

* Prop­er rest. Sleep sev­en to eight hours a night. Take va­ca­tions, ded­i­cate time to recre­ation, en­joy a healthy pas­time.

* Ex­er­cise. Walk at least 30 min­utes a day. Do ex­er­cise out­doors: jog­ging, swim­ming, gym­nas­tics, bi­cy­cling.

* Nu­tri­tion. Com­bine foods so that they con­tain all the nu­tri­ents: car­bo­hy­drates (50 per cent of what we eat); fats, es­pe­cial­ly of veg­etable ori­gin (30 per cent); min­er­als and vi­t­a­mins. Bal­ance meals so that they in­clude seeds, grains, veg­eta­bles, fruit, and nuts.

* Wa­ter. Ap­ply it ex­ter­nal­ly through dai­ly baths. Drink a suf­fi­cient amount of wa­ter (be­tween six and eight glass­es, be­tween meals).

* Trust in God. Cul­ti­vate faith in God as a heav­en­ly Fa­ther who is in­ter­est­ed in the big or lit­tle prob­lems that we face dai­ly.

Let us keep it sim­ple and keep it nat­ur­al. It is amaz­ing that the com­mu­ni­ty and even our lead­ers do not give ad­e­quate at­ten­tion and em­pha­sis to the health sta­tus of our cit­i­zens.

Sher­ine Mun­gal, one of the found­ing ed­i­tors of the Caribbean Health Di­gest, makes a sig­nif­i­cant point on this is­sue that should con­cern every or­gan­i­sa­tion in the re­gion: "There has nev­er been an event in T&T com­plete­ly ded­i­cat­ed to health and well­ness, and we the pub­lish­ers of U–The Caribbean Health Di­gest are sim­ply de­light­ed to make this in­ter­ac­tive ex­po­si­tion ac­ces­si­ble to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. It's all in keep­ing with our main ob­jec­tives to cre­ate health­i­er peo­ple through knowl­edge and ed­u­ca­tion. Af­ter all, what's more im­por­tant than our health?"

Re­al na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment must in­clude the em­pow­er­ment of our youth to make pos­i­tive choic­es. There­fore, any at­tempt to pro­duce lifestyle change must in­volve be­hav­iour mod­i­fi­ca­tion. This is the chal­lenge we must ac­cept in our re­gion. We en­cour­age you to sup­port Hands Across the Caribbean.