Health By Choice, Not Chance

Column by Dr. Hans Diehl and Brenda Kaneshiro

Consciously or unconsciously, most people make sacrifices of some sort.  Unfortunately, they often sacrifice certain important areas of their lives in order to gain the transitory pleasures of wealth, power, status, or fame.

Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls—work, family, health, friends, and religion.  You are trying to keep all of them off the ground.  You will soon realize that work is a rubber ball.  If you drop it, it will bounce back.  But the other four balls—your family, health, friends, and spiritual life—are much more fragile.  If you drop one of these, it will be scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered.  It will never be the same again.  You must strive to balance all parts of your life.

This balance and how to keep it is one of the things that is emphasized in the sixteen-part course called Coronary Health Improvement Project, or CHIP for short.  This program is held in over four hundred locations around the world and was introduced on Molokai in February 2010.  During the course, participants learn from Dr. Hans Diehl, founder of CHIP, via DVD lectures.  Each night local CHIP Directors Sheila Awai and Denny and Brenda Kaneshiro provide tasty food, discussions, activities, and interaction, bringing the information to a personal level.  As of today sixty-five people here on Molokai have graduated and are part of the CHIP alumni.

On behalf of the Molokai CHIP alumni, we want to share with you some of the things that are allowing us to be healthy by choice, not by chance.  Here’s what one CHIP alumnus, Annette Pauole-Ahakuelo, has to say:  “The CHIP program was truly life changing for me.  We were not told what we could or could not do.  We were simply educated about how our lifestyles can cause or reverse various conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. I realize now that I needed this information decades ago.  When I was admitted to Queens Hospital this spring with a life-threatening condition, I learned would not have made it had I not made the changes I did.  I attribute my existence today to CHIP.”

This column will appear monthly as a means to share helpful and healthful information.  It is not intended to replace medical advice or treatment.   Questions about symptoms and medications, general or specific, should be addressed to your physician.

CHIP is made possible on Molokai through our sponsors: Molokai Seventh-day Adventist Church, Na Pu’uwai Native Hawaiian Healthcare System, Kualapuu Market, Friendly Market Center, Misaki’s, Take’s Variety Store, Hayaku Gas & Go, and Kumu Farms.

Our next full session will be held at the Molokai Seventh-day Adventist Church early 2012.  If you are interested in finding out more about CHIP or would like to be contacted when more information is available for the next session, please email CHEC@iglide.net or phone 808-558-8204.