Karla Ibarra
February 22, 2015
English 201A
Health is Wealth We all know the popular saying “health is wealth”. By health I do not mean the absence of physical troubles only, but the state of complete physical, mental and social well being. The loss of health is the loss all happiness. Working at a clinic has taught me a lot several things, such as different diseases, how you can prevent them, and how to take good care of yourself. Good health depends on several things, such as fresh air, sunlight, exercise, eating healthy, and not smoking. I currently work at the Community Health Center in Cambria, and I could not believe how many people have vitamin D deficiency, vitamin D comes from the sunlight, and all these people have a nice beautiful ocean basically in their back yard, and they prefer to take a generous amount of vitamin D units per day instead of taking 30 minutes out of their day to go on a walk at the beach, or even just around their neighborhood, they would be getting their daily dose of Vitamin D, and their exercise for the day. At the clinic we see a lot of geriatric patients, and I do understand why they wouldn’t be able to go on walks everyday single day, just because the weather is always so unpredictable, and they are more prone to get sick, but then we have the younger patients that are very obese, and have so many medical problems, like diabetes, high cholesterol, and thyroid issues. All these problems could be controlled with exercise, it does not mean you will completely get rid of the disease but it will keep you stable or even lower your levels, because once you find out have something wrong with you the last thing you want is to get worse. A good diet is the key too everything, knowing what to eat and balancing your diet will really help you out a whole lot. Growing up I didn’t care about anything that I ate, especially since I have always been very slim, and I would just eat whatever I wanted and I wouldn’t see myself gaining weight, so I never really watched what I ate, and to make matters worse I hated drinking water. Since my dad would drive me to school and pick me up almost everyday, I would ask him to take me to either McDonalds, Starbucks, House of Bagels, or my favorite was Cregors which is a deli that is in the corner of 6th and Spring street in Paso. I loved that place they had the best chimichanags, chicken strips, potato wedges, and the popular biscuits and gravy, if you noticed all these foods are fried and not healthy at all but I didn’t care its not like I was watching my figure, and my dad would not say anything to me about my eating habits and he would obviously take me and provide money for me to buy all these unhealthy food. Until one day I started getting very bad stomach aches, and heartburn which was weird to me since I had never felt heartburn in my life, and I was in class and I was feeling very nauseous, then we went out for nutrition and I went to go buy a Gatorade and I immediately went to go throw up I could not keep anything down, so my mom ended up picking me up from school that day and took me to my pediatrician Dr. Nave, turns out I had gotten sick off of the chicken strips I had gotten from Cregors that morning. Since my mom decided to tell Dr. Nave about my unhealthy eating habits, Dr. Nave decided to give my mom a lab order so I can go get blood drawn. The next morning my mom took me to the lab in Templeton before school so I cant get the labs done, getting blood drawn had never really scared me, so I while I was there I didn’t think much of it and I was not nervous or scared at all, and I really didn’t think there was anything wrong with me. A week later I had a follow up appointment to review the labs, turns out I was pre-diabetic, at the time I didn’t really know much about diabetes, but Dr. Nave and my mom we’re really concerned especially since we had a lot of family history of diabetes. After Dr. Nave briefly talked to be about the things that