Health & Nutrition aboard To keep us appreciating our voyage! When we started our voyage in 1984 little did we realize that our lifestyle was suddenly to be much more healthful than living a sedentary life in Europe or in the USA! In the last years, we have become more and more involved in our own health and decided to take some easy steps to insure a long cruising life ... in good health! Dennis Richards says “ Health is our choice! ” .. why not aim to live healthy for 100 years ... Perhaps we can share his goal ... anyone wants to join us to become the oldest cruisers?? Ever wonder why 70 yr+ cruisers seem so agile & live a very active lifestyle? We met Robert, 93 year young French sailor cleaning the side of his boat for hours ... what an inspiration! Reminds me the story of the 70 yr-old lady cruiser who decided to hire a diver to clean the bottom of her boat. When the diver finishes the job, she offers him a drink and explained that when she was younger, she used to do that chore herself! The diver looks at her and tells her that now that he is in his 80’ he doesn’t clean as many boats either! Part of our health is related to the physical activities we have in our daily life. People working in a office from 8-to-5 have so little physical activities as they sit most of their day ... in front of a desk, in the car, in front of TV, ... They often have to create exercises like walking, running, gym machines, ... in their free time if they want to keep in shape. When cruising on a sailboat, you don’t need to invent exercises ... no matter what you do, you will end up doing a lot more physical activities than you ever did living ashore! You will walk to go shopping as you won’t have a car ... you may lug jugs with water, fuel or gasoline ... you will be pulling halyards, sheet lines, anchor chain, ... you will be climbing in and out of dinghies, companionways, ... you might even climb up to the top of your mast once in a while. Plenty of bouncing up and down on passages to move our lymph around too! How can we resist not exercising in the clear blue waters in some anchorages ... swimming, snorkeling, scuba diving, kayaking, ... How can we not hike to the top of mountains with fantastic vistas ... or to swim in pristine waterfalls and walk white sandy beaches? Another part of our health is related to what we breathe. No smog and air pollution like in traffic jams and polluted cities for us! Unless we live right in a marina in the center of a big polluted city, the air we’ll breathe will be much less polluted in most of our cruising grounds. We have spent over 12 years in the Pacific and the atmosphere was so clear! When we sail in the oceans, we get to breathe pure air! Another part is the light we are living under. We don’t spend 8-hour days under fluorescent lights or other artificial lights but spend plenty of time in nice sunshine that helps our body produce vitamin D ... Contrary to what we often hear about staying away from the sun, now science shows that to expose our body for a limited time each day to the sun, is actually very beneficial to our health! That time varies depending of our skin color and could be as little as 20 minutes per day to 1 hour or so. Make sure you are using high quality sun tan lotions as many do cause skin cancer (even tho they claim to protect us from cancer!) Yet another part is radio waves and other waves (besides water!), we are bombarded with. A friend of ours that worked on Sat Com systems on cruise ships told us over 2 decades ago already, that the future major health problems will be due to all theses rays we are subjected too. In cities, we get exposed to electric radiations (domestic power and power lines), microwaves from mobile phones and ovens,, and plenty more waves from remote controls, wifi, electronic sensors, micro-transmitters, TV, phone and more. Luckily for us cruisers, we get exposed to lot less of these waves in remote anchorages and at sea. DC is less toxic than AC too. Even if we do use technologies on board, we do not have a microwave oven and we shut down our 110vac when not used ... we keep our mobile phone away from our body and turn it off when we have no coverage. So lets keep this in mind when we connect more and more electronics in networks on board! A major part of our health is related to what we ingest. We drink much purer water if using a R/O watermaker or distiller than city water treated with fluoride, chlorine and other harmful chemicals. Hopefully we favor fresh fruit drinks with the fresh fruits we can find. Coconut water is so healthy! We are always happy to trade in the islands for coconut water, coconut meat, young coconut sweet meat ... Unless we only eat pre-packaged food (frozen foods, canned food, ... ) adulterated with pesticides and chemicals or genetically modified to please consumers in 1st world nations, we will eat much healthier foods while cruising around the world. Our nutrition should be composed of less processed foods and more fresh foods like fresh caught fish, lobsters bartered with locals, fresh fruits and vegetables that grew wild or without all usual modern fertilizers! If you are not aware of what you are eating, you might want to watch movies like “The World according to Monsanto” or “Food Inc” or “Forks over Knives” “GMO’s revealed”.... Most sailors sleep more than landlubbers because often we are not exposed to so much artificial light after the sun goes down. What a pleasure for the mind to watch the sunset, the end of another nice day cruising! How many sunsets are you looking at when you live in a city? Sailors, like native islanders who still live without electricity (or sparse lights) sleep longer hours and our body’s circadian rhythm is more in tune with nature! Mental health seems to be generally quite good amongst cruisers... especially amongst couples cruising. Solo-circumnavigators spending weeks at sea by themselves might have tough times due to solitude. But again, too many people live in solitude in the middle of a busy city!  Modern life stress is generally absent as we experience freedom and great pleasure in meeting diverse cultures and so many nice people both ashore and as fellow cruisers. But we have to make sure the sailing life style does not create it’s own stress. Some cruisers impose themselves with strict time tables or try challenges too big... resulting in stress! If you plan to go around the world, take it one step at the time and remain flexible in your schedule. The best passages often happen because you took some time studying the wx bulletins and you have a good understanding of wx pattern. To live with the sea we must tune ourselves to nature, not modern, technological men’s artificial schedules. Remember, it’s not arriving that matters but enjoying the journey to get there that counts!   SAILING LIFESTYLE WELLNESS A lot of our pains are related to mis-alignment of our bodies. Pete Egoscue explains in a straightforward and easy way to understand his concept. It only takes about 20 min/ day of easy, not strenuous “e-cises”. Your health problems might be related to food allergies! Dr Keith Scott- Mumby, in his 35+ years of medical practice helped thousands of patients who suffered from so many different types of physical & mental ailments. Few would have guessed that the cause of their problems was food allergies. In his book,  he give us a method to test ourselves! A great book about general health and how to prevent disease! All diseases have simple explanations and cures once their true cause is known. Dr Hulda Clark describes the causes of both common and extraordinary diseases and gives specific instructions for their cure. A simple way to help your immune system fight most pathogens on Earth! Jim Humble explains in his latest book, how MMS can help us all. From simply disinfecting our water supply to treat ourselves from malaria to most diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, mold & fungi. A must in your 1st Aid kit onboard! If you think you have too many health issues to start or continue cruising ... read this book to learn many ways to overcome your health issues using no drugs or surgery ! Dennis Richard shares with us how he came to feel like 20 when he is over 70. Hi own true story tells how he reversed over 20 different serious health conditions. A must-read book to learn how to take charge of our own health   Raymond Francis explains clearly and simply how there is only 1 disease, 2 causes and 6 pathways to health. You may be surprised that we have many mis- conceptions about health! Wellness videos