This is the first health book I read that is more personal and has a big why in it on doing his craft. Dr. Didoy Lubaton found his calling to heal others. He is a medical doctor but before he became like one, he is already a nurse. From that perspective, he got more hands-on experience with his patients. He chose to practice the path less traveled by medical professionals.

This health book is a road map for having a holistic approach towards a healthy way of life. It illustrates how to treat illnesses from the root cause because today’s mainstream medical practices only deal with the symptoms of the disease.

Here are the essential health tips that I learned from the book:

1. Causes of illness and how to treat them. There are 2 causes of illness, they are toxicity and deficiency. Toxicity simply means that our body has too much of something that should not be in our system like processed food, too much alcohol, smoking, anger, fear or unforgiveness. We can remove sweating, urinating, bowel movement, exhaling, remove negative feelings, forgive, let go and let God.

Deficiency on the other hand, is the lack or shortage of things within us like lack of nutritious food, poor water intake, lack of exercise, lack of love or trust. To treat this, we need to nourish ourselves with food and activities that our body will thank us for. We need to eat nutrient-rich foods like fruits and vegetables, exercise regularly, enjoy the environment outside, spending time with good and positive friends and reading a book.

2. Healing start with our thinking. When we think negatively on an event it will become stress within us and may build up to become a disease. Our brain controls all the toxic stress that comes to our lives. The problem is, it does not know if it is a threat or not. So if our mind is bombarded with events that we take negatively, then it will build up and become a disease later.

He discussed the concept taught by Jack Canfield, Events + Reaction = Outcome. There are events happening in our life that we cannot control whether it is negative or positive. Our reaction to these events will dictate the outcome. That is why we need to be careful with our reactions. The outcome of our health is affected by the reaction we show regarding our eating habits.

3. Sleep and Rest are important. Taking enough sleep helps a lot in having a healthy body. Less sleep will make us sleepy during our waking hours resulting to less productivity. He taught the concept of 10-3-2-1-0 Rule of Sleeping. 10 hours before we sleep, no more caffeine. 3 hours before sleeping, no more eating and drinking. 2 hours before sleep, no more work. Instead of working, we can write our things to do list for the next day. 1 hour before, no more gadgets. It advisable to spend time with our love ones during this time. O means once the alarm in the morning wake us up, do not press the snooze button, get up and be active.

Rest on the other hand, is having time to stop in the busyness of life and recreate our self. We can achieve this through vacation, having a quiet time or deliberately finding time to be in an airplane mode of life.

4. Use the food hierarchy. I learned the importance of including in our diet the majority of fruits/vegetables because they are nutritious and easily digested within 30 mins to an hour. Fish is said to be digested within hours and meat within days. “We are what we eat”, having more nutritious food in our diet will deliver great results in our health.

5. Drink water every hour. Drink every hour except during meals. This method can hydrate our body for the whole day. Our body do not work like a fuel tank which we just fill in once and we are off to go. It should be hydrated even though it can cause us to go to the toilet regularly. This is great for the body since it helps with the detoxification of chemicals from our system.

6. Power of relationship. The secret to a happy and healthy life is all about relationship. He described this in the word EXTRA: Express, eXtend, Time, Response, Accept. The 5 Love Languages of Dr. Gary Chapman can help in assessing our needs for expressing our feelings. We can use Words, Touch, Gifts, Time and Service to show our love. He emphasized also the importance of time to grow relationship. We need to make a list of untouchable schedules for our love ones.

7. Surrender to God. He said that sickness has a purpose and if all fails, God never does. Surrendering means that we allow God to embrace us and receive his love, grace and forgiveness.

Our body, soul and spirit are one. One affects the other. Being healthy is not just about being sexy and bodily fit. It also involves other aspects of our life like our finances, spirituality, our relationships with our family and the community. For us to be healthy, we need to have a balance.

This is a great book for those seeking a holistic approach to a healthy life not only focusing on the symptoms but treating the root cause of ailments. I am excited to for next book.