Tag: information

Careful what you eat

Most restaurants are not designed for your health.

Their priority is profit, not nourishment. Menus are dominated by the cheapest inputs: industrial seed oils, factory-farmed meat, refined sugar, and chemical additives. Research has consistently linked these ingredients to chronic inflammation, obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hormonal disruption, and cognitive decline.

The food system is not built to heal you.

It is built to maximize return on investment. Companies make money by producing food that is cheap to manufacture, engineered for cravings, and designed to keep customers coming back. They are rewarded for addiction, not for nourishment.

What you spend is a choice.

Money poured into fast food, processed snacks, and energy drinks could be used to buy whole, nutrient-dense foods that support strength, immunity, and longevity. For example, people often spend fifty dollars a week on energy drinks packed with sugar, caffeine, and synthetic additives. Studies show these products increase cardiovascular stress, disrupt sleep, and cause energy crashes. That same money could be spent on ceremonial matcha and raw honey, which provide sustainable, natural energy. These decisions define whether the body moves toward vitality or toward decline.

Decline has been normalized.

Most people never break free from convenience culture. Advertising and social conditioning keep them hooked on foods that damage long-term health. As a result, widespread problems such as obesity, fatigue, and insulin resistance are treated as normal aging when in reality they are largely preventable.

Supermarkets reinforce the cycle.

Research shows that more than half of packaged foods in U.S. supermarkets are ultra-processed. These products are strongly linked to weakened immunity, hormone disruption, chronic inflammation, and reduced lifespan. Heavy consumption of ultra-processed food is a key driver of chronic disease.

Pharmaceutical profits depend on this.

Emergency medicine is life-saving, but when it comes to chronic disease, the incentive structure changes. Prevention through nutrition and lifestyle is inexpensive, while lifelong treatment of symptoms brings in billions. This system rewards management, not resolution.

Marketing hides the reality.

Food corporations normalize addictive, low-quality products as everyday staples. Pharmaceutical companies position treatment as the only solution. Together, this creates a feedback loop: one industry fuels disease, the other profits from its consequences.

The system will not nourish you.

That responsibility belongs to you. If you want clarity, strength, and long-term health, you must take control of what you consume. Breaking the cycle of processed food and convenience culture is the only way to reclaim vitality.

Every bite matters. Every sip matters. Every purchase matters.

Your choices are a vote: for vitality or decline, for independence or dependence, for health or disease.

Childhood Mental Illnesses

Dr. Ovidio, Pediatric Neurologist, warns about a silent tragedy unfolding in our homes today.

There is a silent tragedy unfolding in our homes today, and it concerns our most precious jewels: our children. Our children are in a devastating emotional state!. Over the past 15 years, researchers have gifted us increasingly alarming statistics about an acute and steady increase in childhood mental illness that is now reaching epidemic proportions:

The statistics don’t lie:

• 1 in 5 children has mental health problems

• A 43% increase in ADHD has been noticed

• A 37% increase in teenage depression has been noticed

• A 200% increase in the suicide rate in children aged 10 to 14 has been noticed

What is going on and what are we doing wrong?.

Children today are being over-stimulated and over-gifted with material objects, but are deprived of the fundamentals of a healthy childhood, such as:

• Emotionally available parents

• Clearly Defined Boundaries

• Responsibilities

• Balanced nutrition and adequate sleep

• Movement in general but especially outdoors

• Creative play, social interaction, unstructured play opportunities and spaces for boredom

On the other hand, these last few years have been filled with children of:

• Digitally Distracted Parents

• Forgiving and permissive parents who let children “rule the world” and be the ones who make the rules

• A sense of entitlement, of deserving everything without earning it or being responsible for getting it

• Poor sleep and unbalanced nutrition

• A sedentary lifestyle

• Endless stimulation, technological nannies, instant gratification and absence of dull moments

What to do?

If we want our children to be happy and healthy individuals, we need to wake up and get back to the basics. It’s still possible! Many families see immediate improvement after weeks of implementing the following recommendations:

• Set limits and remember that you are the captain of the ship. Your kids will feel safer knowing you have the control of the helm.

• Offer children a balanced lifestyle full of what children NEED, not just what they WANT. Don’t be afraid to say “no” to your kids if what they want isn’t what they need.

• Provide nutritious food and limit junk food.

• Spend at least one hour a day outdoors doing activities such as: cycling, hiking, fishing, bird/insect watching

• Enjoy a daily family dinner without smartphones or technology distracting them.

• Play board games as a family or if the children are too young for board games, let them lead their interests and let them be the ones who rule the game

• Involve your children in some task or household chores according to their age (folding clothes, sorting toys, hanging clothes, unpacking groceries, setting the table, feeding the dog, etc. )

• Implement a consistent sleep routine to ensure your child gets enough sleep. The timetables will be even more important for school-age children.

• Teach responsibility and independence. Don’t overprotect them against any frustration or any mistake. Making mistakes will help you develop resilience and learn to overcome life’s challenges,

• Do not carry your children’s backpack, do not take their backpacks, do not take them the homework they forgot, do not peel their bananas or oranges if they can do it by themselves (4-5 years). Instead of giving them the fish, teach them how to fish.

• Teach them to wait and delay gratification.

• Provide opportunities for “boredom”, because boredom is the moment when creativity awakens. Doesn’t feel responsible for always keeping the kids entertained.

• Do not use technology as a cure for boredom, nor offer it to the first second of inactivity.

• Avoid the use of technology during meals, in cars, restaurants, shopping centers. Use these moments as opportunities to socialize by training the brains to know how to function when they are in the mood: “boredom”

• Help them create a “jar of boredom” with activity ideas for when they are bored.

• Be emotionally available to connect with children and teach them self-regulation and social skills:

• Turn off phones at night when kids have to go to bed to avoid digital distraction.

• Become an emotional regulator or coach for your children. Teach them to acknowledge and manage their own frustrations and anger.

• Teach them to greet, to take turns, to share without anything, to say thank you and please, to acknowledge the mistake and apologize (don’t force them), be a model of all those values you instill.

• Connect emotionally – smile, hug, kiss, tickle, read, dance, jump, play or crawl with them.

Article written by Dr. Luis Rojas Marcos, Psychiatrist.