To Salt or Not to Salt? or is it more than just that?

In managing Alex's health, we have to frequently visit with his oncologist and a team of brain tumor coordinators.  They are a Godsend, no doubt.

Yesterday, we did our "day @ the doc's" thing and learned quite a bit.

Did you know, that people with saga's (medical term for tumor) typically have elevated blood pressures?

I didn't!!!

That little tidbit brought me to the conclusion, that diet is SUPER important not to mention exercise.

We are pretty health conscious here in the Armstrong household.  We eat a lot of veggies and fruit, I cook with little to no added salt, etc.  But I often do cook with canned ingredients, and we all know that they do have a BUTT LOAD of sodium and if you use like, cream of anything, you are getting another butt load of saturated fats.

So how do I combat this with Alex and still have delicious, healthy meals that we all will love and that don't cost so much?  I just can't do the Wholefoods grocery bill.  I just can't.

I know one thing I will be doing is try to incorporate the DASH diet, I learned about from WedMD, into our new lifestyle change.  It is pretty common sense stuff, but I am really going to have to focus. Here's another link about DASH that I really like.  And you are probably thinking, what in the world is DASH...Well it stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.

So that is step 1 in our efforts to get Alex to understand how to take care of his health.

Step 2...exercise.

I love exercising in the morning.  It is hard and I don't necessarily like it when I am doing it, but the feeling at the end, WOW!!!  I get so much energy and my mental state goes from, "I don't think I can do this" to "I can do so much more."  Alex is really good about getting in some type of exercise, be it basketball, soccer, etc, but I think we are going to notch it up a bit.  He's agreed to join me in my running effort. 

I think this is awesome.  I would love for him to run with me in the Turkey Trot this year.  He is such and inspirational kid.  And I am so glad that Heavenly Father, thought of David and me and felt that we deserved such a wonderful person to be in our lives.  I love that kid so much.

I am excited about this new change coming our way.  I know that we will all benefit in so many different ways health-wise and spiritual.