“Ask not what your health care can do for you, but what you can do for your health care.”

Yes, this is modification of the famous lines spoke by President Kennedy at his inaugural address. But medical self-care needs to become a larger part of our health care practices to reduce improper use of the health care system. None of us like the continually rising cost of health care insurance that continues to take away from our paychecks.


How prevalent is this improper use?

• According to many national survey’s Americans are guilty of utilizing the health care system unnecessarily. Studies show that up to one-third of all Emergency Room visits and regular physician office visits are unnecessary.

What does this improper use cause?

• It increases wait times for care in the ER or increased days to get into and see a physician.
• Increase health care costs, which leads to increase health insurance premiums.

What can you do?

1. Many illnesses can be managed easily and effectively without medical intervention. Unfortunately everyone can get an illness or injury at times, but your body is built with its own defense and repair system to handle many of these problems. Improve your health care knowledge on what will get better on it’s own in time and simple home treatments you can do on your own.
2. Improve your health to decrease severity and frequency of illnesses and injuries. Through proper diet, exercise and stress reduction you can greatly decrease risk of getting an illness or injury and recover quicker if you do get one.

Is snacking needed or is it bad for me?

Snacking is an optional dietary requirement. While many myths and mix-ups are surrounded around snacking such as:

• You need to eat every two to three hours to keep your metabolism revved up.
• Snacking will help keep your blood sugar levels steady.
• Snacking will lead to increase weight gain.

All of these often heard points are simply not true, but misinterpretation of true facts.


Eating more often does not boost your metabolism. It is stated that by eating more often in the day you prevent your body from going into “starvation mode”. During “starvation mode” your body adjusts its metabolism to slow down to conserve energy and burn fewer calories. While this might have partial truth to it, your body does not go into starvation mode after only a few hours without food.
Your blood sugar naturally rises after a meal and then slowly falls back to baseline as the glucose is taken up by the cells of the body for energy. Having this natural rise and fall of blood sugar is natural and good for you (as long as it does not fall to low). This is why to measure your blood glucose level you are to not eat for 12 hours to see what its baseline is. Going more than 3 or 4 hours without food for a healthy non-diabetic individual is not harmful for you.

Snacking will only lead to increase weight gain if it adds to increase overall calorie intake for the day based on your metabolism needs. If you eat less for your regular meals to compensate for the snacking calories then you will not gain weight.

Snacking is fine to do as long as it doesn’t lead to increasing your overall calorie needs for a day and is made up of healthier foods. But it is not required either for a healthy diet.