Responsibility

A balanced diet with respect to quality and quantity, moderate exercise and supplementing one's nutrition are the three pillars of health. Nothing, however, will happen until you choose to take control. Central to this realization is the fact that no one can do this for you. In other words, you control your health and wellness more than any doctor or dentist.

The founding principle of your control is the fact that you have the 'freedom to choose' for yourself.

STIMULUS >>> FREEDOM TO CHOOSE >>> RESPONSE

The size of your “Freedom to Choose” space between “stimulus” and “response” is to a large degree yours to determine. Sometimes genetic, environmental and present circumstances make that space very small, but it still exists.

Imagine you wake up in the morning to realize that you slept through the alarm. That is the stimulus or stressor. Now you are free to choose how to respond. If it is your day off, you would probably choose to respond with a relaxed smile and no physiological body response or sign of stress. If it is a working day, you might jump out of bed, heart racing, blood pressure rising, skip breakfast, the free radicals would be going off like fireworks and you would have oxidative stress. Your body responds with inflammation. The stimulus of sleeping through the alarm was the same in both cases. Our choice of response was totally different.

To change, you must first realize that this 'freedom to choose' space exists and that you can control it. One of the most obvious signs of not realizing it is there is blaming. When we blame, we give away our power. Your boss's fault, your parent's fault, the doctor's fault, the government's fault or the weather's fault all serve to shrink your "freedom to choose" space.

Smoking, poor diet, lack of exercise, nutritional deficiencies and excessive drinking are choices we make that will shrink our "freedom to choose" space. A balanced diet, moderate exercise and quality multivitamin/mineral/antioxidant supplementation to insure adequate nutrition are choices that will expand your "freedom to choose" space. The choice is yours.

Will you make changes in your life based on what you have learned from Dental Currents? Will you use it to help yourself and others expand their "freedom to choose" space and their health? You could encourage them to enrol in Dental Currents through our website at www.dentalhealth.ca This is a complimentary service from Dr. Ken Southward's dental team. We will automatically enrol you in our monthly update of topical health issues.

We end with the same paragraph that we started with— The purpose of Dental Currents is to provide our dental clients with up-to-date, helpful information so that they will be better able to accept responsibility for their dental health. While your dental team may act as your coach, it is you who must actually play the game. Dental Currents is about what you can do for yourself, rather than what we can do for you.

For more information, you may link to the index page of our e-book, The Simple Secrets to Better Health and all the previous monthly updates.