When it comes to our health, we all have a duty to ourselves to keep it in the best condition we can. It's easy to let things go over time, life takes over and we all get bogged down with the mundane. Before we know it we're two stone heavier, struggling to breathe and walk at the same time and we just can't shift that nagging cough.



Many people wait until problems begin to surface before they start looking to change things. If you really want the stark truth pointing out, try filling in a health insurance form! That'll open your eyes! When you realise all the little niggles add up to much increased premium, you'll soon want to start doing something about it.

But what to do? Some people prefer the route of prevention better than cure. The best way to do this is in moderation. Regular exercise and sensible, regular meals is the way to go as well as moderate alcohol consumption and avoiding health obstacles such as smoking. The last two will certainly reduce health insurance premiums.

Even the bigger supermarkets have caught on to the money making way of preventative medicine. Vitamins, minerals and all manner of weird and wonderful things bought up from the depths of the sea are packaged up with instructions that encourage us to smear them on, swallow them and insert them into orifices that are bound to make us feel one hundred times better.

But does all this really do us any favours and more to the point, in our every day worries, can it reduce our health insurance premiums?

I was advised to take iron supplements when my doctor told me I had anaemia. I bought some off the shelf at a local drug store that said they fulfilled my daily requirement for iron. When I checked with the doctor they were actually over 40 times less than what I needed!

Studies have been carried out into the effect that taking extra vitamins can have on us. Many of them are apparently useless and we would be better off getting what we need from our food. In fact, taking supplements that are not recommended by a doctor can actually do more harm than good.

It has been found that taking Vitamin E supplements might possibly be raising our risk of lung cancer. This is a disease that kills one Briton every 15 minutes and therefore too high a risk to counter balance the good extra vitamins could give us. There is also a similar risk in taking Vitamin A.

The risk of lung cancer in those taking the vitamins increased by 28% and this gets worse for smokers. The studies have also found that taking multi vitamins does nothing to reduce our risk of the disease either. In fact, added vitamins that do not come from food can lead to dangerous overdoses and can also interfere with prescription medicines.

Preventative ways of looking after our health is always better than trying to deal with a problem once it has begun but natural ways will always beat artificial. The problem with many people is that it is once they have become ill that they wish they had taken out health insurance, particularly when they look at the difficulties currently being suffered by the NHS.

So, the general advice is to eat well, move plenty, drink in moderation if you have to do it at all and don't smoke. If you follow these simple rules, health insurance companies will love you forever!