Can Healthy Diets Damage Your Health?

Posted on: Feb 16, 2024 | 3 mins | Written by: HDFC ERGO Team

Can Healthy Diets Damage Your Health?

The taste of pizza, burgers, biryani, and cold drinks is amazing, but their regular consumption can adversely affect your overall health. That’s why we are taught about the importance of a healthy diet since childhood. A lot of diseases are related to lifestyle choices like smoking or drinking often. On the contrary, when you introduce dietary changes like controlling the intake of sugar and salt, you can see positive changes in your overall fitness level. Also, it might sound weird, but consumption of a healthy diet can become a cause of a health issue if it’s not balanced.

Definition of a healthy diet

A healthy diet contains vitamins, minerals, and nutrients essential for good health and proper functioning of the body. It must have a variety of foods from different food groups in the recommended proportion to meet an individual’s nutritional requirements and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.

Here’s what a healthy diet should have:

• Vegetables & fruits: These are rich in vitamins, fibre, minerals, and antioxidants, which are essential for maintaining good health.

• Dairy products or alternatives: Dairy products are rich sources of calcium and vitamin D, which keep our bones strong and healthy.

• Healthy Carbohydrates: It is important to include carbs in your diet, like whole grains (oats, quinoa, etc.), whole wheat, brown rice, legumes, and millets.

• Protein: Some good sources of protein are beans, legumes, fish, poultry, lean meat, nuts, and seeds.

• Fats: Healthy fats help the body to absorb fat-soluble vitamins and improve heart health.

• Low intake of sugar: High consumption of sugars can lead to obesity and increase the risk of diabetes.

• Fluids: Drinking at least 8-10 glasses of water a day is essential to keep the body hydrated and help in the overall functioning of the body.

Importance of nutrition & diet

When your diet has the essential nutrients needed for your body, it functions properly. Our immunity and blood circulation improve, and we stay protected from illnesses and diseases like diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. For overall health, well-being, and longevity, it is vital to have a balanced diet that has the proper nutrition and calories. It is essential that you take care of your health through diet, regular exercise and maintaining good sleep hygiene. However, matters of health can be unpredictable, so ensure you get a health insurance to safeguard yourself from the expenses due to a medical emergency or get a family health insurance for your entire family.

Benefits of a healthy diet

• Weight management: A healthy diet contains the necessary nutrients that help in maintaining the body weight. Proper weight makes you less likely to suffer from obesity and other health problems.

• Disease prevention: A healthy diet strengthens our immunity and protects us from chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

• Improved energy & mood: We get energy from the foods we consume. Proper nutrition consisting of proteins, healthy fats, and carbohydrates provides the energy our body needs for our daily activities. It also regulates blood sugar levels, preventing fatigue and tiredness. If you have a deficiency of nutrients, you are likely to have low energy and irritation.

Risks of an unbalanced healthy diet

Sometimes even with the best choices you can go wrong. Some so-called healthy diets like keto, Atkins, Paleo that promise weight loss, control over sugar levels or even improve your heart health, can make you go to an extreme, eliminating essential fats, vitamins and minerals from your diet or making you have excess of one or the other macronutrients. This unbalance isn’t healthy. This could lead to various problems like low bone density, low haemoglobin, lack of sleep or other health issues. Sometimes lack of essential nutrients in your diet can lead to weakness and illnesses that could necessitate a hospitalisation. This is why you need to make sure that your diet is balanced with both macro and micronutrients. Here are few things that can go wrong if your diet is unbalanced in nutrients.

• When your diet lacks essential nutrients, it can cause deficiencies, leading to various health problems. For instance, a low-fibre diet will lead to constipation and other digestive issues.

• Inadequate nutrition will weaken your immune system, making you vulnerable to infections and diseases.

• A diet lacking nutrients, like vitamins A and C, can cause skin issues like infections, dryness, and premature ageing.

• Poor nutrition can cause hormonal imbalance, leading to irregular periods, infertility and other disorders.

Conclusion

A healthy diet consisting of nutrient-rich foods is a must to stay healthy. A diet lacking in essential nutrients can lead to health problems, and having a health insurance policy will come in handy in case of an emergency.

Disclaimer: The above information is for illustrative purposes only. For more details, please refer to policy wordings and prospectus before concluding the sales.

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