Feeling fit and well is within everyone’s reach, if you take charge of your health and have a balanced approach to nutrition and exercise.

Welcome to your new weekly health page, and a declaration that, as a registered nurse, I have a certain bias towards people taking charge of their own health. It’s not the ‘‘run to the doctor as if it is a repair shop’’ type of health, or ‘‘they claim red meat is bad for you but I never saw a sick-looking tiger’’ kind of health, but more like the ‘‘98 percent of what ails us we can sort out for ourselves’’ kind.

Like many of you, my life has been decided mostly through an array of experiences ranging from working in places including the remote Chatham Islands, as Canterbury’s talkback nurse on 3ZB (now NewstalkZB) for eight years, as a nurse in general practice and as an airline cabin attendant. I could observe and listen to health stories as vital sources of learning.

As one of eight children, I learnt plenty from a mother who preferred that we swallow good food rather than medicines, except for cod liver oil. Out of date? Not so. For me it has remained a fundamental, along with a daily swim all year round to my local beach – without a wetsuit. The neighbours think I’m mad but I don’t remember when I last had a cough or cold. My last stay at home with influenza or a cold was in 1970.

It seems everyone wants the same thing – good health without high cost. Of course they also want answers as to when to go to the doctor, what to do if we can’t afford it, what about colds and flu, the best foods to eat and whether feeling down is the same as mental illness.

This page will give you a mix of health information, tips to guide you, questions to see what you already know and up-to-date research. There will be an opportunity to learn about subjects relevant to your life and you can let me know what they are. Because health is all about having a good quality of life, of course it’s important to have a good laugh and once in a while eat or do something we know is not always good for us.

Someone said, ‘‘Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon’’. That basically sums me up.

(Published in the Sunday News, 31 May 2009)

More everybody MYHEALTH columns from Barbara Docherty

Barbara Docherty is a registered nurse and clinical lecturer at the University of Auckland School of Nursing, and writer for the everybody.co.nz website. The opinions contained herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the publisher or sponsor. Copyright UBM Medica (NZ) Ltd.