By George Gichuki
One of the most significant ways of preventing the onset of diseases is taking the right food. The mantras : let food become your medicine or medicine will become your food, you are what you eat and food is your best medicine etcetera are currently dominating presentations of health professionals in the mainstream and social media among other platforms. As a matter of fact, preventive care as a means of checking the onset and spread of diseases is better and by far more cost effective than curative care. Taking a balanced diet is a key component of curative care which also includes check-ups and immunization programmes.
This campaign continues to gain traction due to the rising cost of treatment in the country today , as cases of life threatening diseases ( like diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular ) increase. Many households have been forced to pay an arm and a leg in order to settle the huge medical costs incurred by their ailing members. Some have even been forced to travel abroad to seek specialized treatment and this has come at a huge cost. In the process, they have conducted fundraisers which have left their friends and relatives with heavy financial burdens. This often happens at the curative care stages of the diseases in question. In that regard, there is need to pay more attention to preventive care since it is friendlier and cost effective.
Nevertheless, the popularization of preventive care through different media platforms needs to be taken with a lot of caution. Pseudo health professionals are making a fortune from innocent people seeking preventive care by selling to them fake healthy food concoctions and offering misguiding advice. Against this background, we need to go back to our roots. Our forefathers used to grow and take healthy food and little wonder, few of them were attacked by life threatening diseases. They would for instance boil ( as opposed to frying) their food which was not only pocket friendly, but also healthier.