Today I want to talk about the main factors of good health, 10 simple things that you can do for your health today. We will explore what those 10 simple things are. Look at how we can achieve them and what we can do to prolong our life. Therefore, allowing us to live our lives, not just in good health but in our best health.
Generally our health and overall wellbeing is maintained and strengthened by a combination of some key important factors. The outcome of healthy living isn’t something that just happens to us, much as we might like to think! Healthy living is a series of habits, daily actions and lifestyle choices, that are all geared towards self care and maintenance of a desire to be living well and with purpose.
Each of the 10 simple things that I will talk about, are well within our control. Which is the good news. We can make the changes that we need, anytime that we want
Creating Daily Habits to Help You Welcome Health into Your World
Creating daily habits that allow us to not only make good choices may be challenging in the beginning. But with time, focus, and a sense of tapas or discipline when we start to make these small lifestyle changes, we immediately feel the benefits of them and want more of that good stuff. Which naturally then makes a habit more likely to stick. More on habits and reprogramming our approach to things in another article coming soon 😉
All of the factors that make up good health are all within our control. You and you only get to choose what you eat, how often you move your body, how many hours of sleep you get etc.
So you can literally choose to be healthy through the choices that we make on a daily basis. Which allows us to feel empowered enough to start to make those baby steps towards fine tuning our lifestyle to the better.
So, let’s look at those 10 simple things that you can do for your health more closely.
1) Movement and Regular Exercise
It only takes 20 to 30 minutes of regular exercise on a daily basis to keep us fit and healthy. Finding something physical to do and committing to it will help reduce your heart rate. And in doing so also decreases the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Exercising strengthens muscles and increases bone density, and reduces the risk of you getting osteoporosis later in life. It also improves lung capacity and aids proper breathing, so it is super important for our physical and mental health.
A huge plus to doing regular exercise is it improves your mental health, reduces stress, helps you sleep better and improves your mood! A win win on so many levels!
How can I add movement into my day?
Take some time to think about how you can sprinkle pockets of movement into your day! Consciously choose to sit less, commit to standing more, and walk more. Find opportunities everywhere to move! What sets your heart on fire movement wise? Gardening, dancing with your children, hiking, house work. Taking up running as a new hobby, entering a race to have a focus to work towards. Dare I even say YOGA? There are chances to move everywhere when we make it a regular habit!
2) Nutrition – Food You Eat Matters
Nutrition, our diet, is one of the most important factors that determines our health. The quality of the food we eat—and most importantly, the nutrients it contains—is what determines whether we simply survive, or thrive.
Eating a healthy diet not only helps us to maintain a healthy weight and steers us away from a multitude of lifestyle diseases, it also help to keep the central nervous system in check. It might be surprising to learn that 70% of our immune system is dependent on our gut microbiome. Healthy gut bacteria prevent crowding of harmful bacteria in the intestine. They produce lactic acid to stop their growth & work integrally with our immune system.
How do I create a healthy diet?
The ideal human diet consists of real, nutrient-filled, whole foods and eliminates or reduces processed foods, where possible. Food provides carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins antioxidants and minerals essential for our bodies. We should be eating foods that are full of nutrients not foods made of empty calories. A healthy diet and lifestyle also results in a better immune system function!
3. Hydration – Drinking Lots of Water
We can survive approximately three weeks without food, however we can’t go without water for more than 7 days! This highlights for us how important water is for our well being. We should be drinking eight glasses of pure water a day in order to keep hydrated and maintain good health. This might be more depending on our daily movements, and climate in which we live.
Water aids healthy digestion, it keeps our cells hydrated and functioning properly, and it flushes toxins out of our bodies. It is thanks to water that our bodies are able to absorb vital nutrients from food.
How to ensure you get enough water?
Work out how much you need for your height, weight, climate and set alarms in your phone to remind you to drink!
4. Plenty of Sleep
Sleep plays a vital role in enhancing your mental health, physical health, and safety. A full night’s sleep is vital as it gives your body some time to regenerate and recharge. You should be aiming to get no less than seven hours of sleep per night. Something that so many of us seem to struggle with on a continual level.
Your body needs this amount of time to take care of its metabolic functions, like repairing damaged cells, recharging tired old cells and getting rid of toxins. Sleep helps the central nervous system work properly.
Moreover, a regular sleep schedule aids in learning and remembering information much more easy and convenient. Consistent lack of sleep can have quite a serious effect on your physical and mental health and wellbeing. We must try to obtain adequate amounts of rest everyday in order to minimize the stress levels which can in turn affect our immunity.
How to create a good sleep rhythm?
It can be helpful to create a calming nurturing bedtime routine. This can include things like reducing your exposure to artificial lights through your evening, eating sleep enducing foods for dinner, moving away from social media, reading a book. All of these things can create a sleep friendly environment.
5) Stress Management
When we’re stressed, the body produces stress hormone corticosteroid or cortisol which decreases the body’s ability to fight against infections. Which can make you more susceptible such as heart disease, diabetes and automimmune diseases. So many of us assume or accept that stress will be a natural part of our day to day lives. We ignore the symptoms which come from stress without realising the longer term effects.
We need to make time to restore a sense of balance in our lives, our minds and bodies, through healthy systems and routines. It is natural that we will have our ups and down in life. So where possible, we do some ground work before stress arrives into our world. Or, even better, in advance of when we know we enter a stressful period of time. This enables us to meet the stress from a place of balance rather than depletion.
How to find stress relief?
Having a positive mental attitude. Adopting things such as a daily gratitude practice. Having daily rituals to start and end our days with calmness and mindfulness all help us. These practices, which encourage calmer states of mind, can actually change our body chemistry.
6) Sprinkling a Regular Meditation Practice into your Day
Meditating is a smart way of calming and soothing your nerves. Nerves are responsible for the functioning of voluntary conscious responses and involuntary responses. Meditation help regulate your heart rate, blood pressure levels, breathing rate and calming all other sympathetic nerves.
Neuroscientific studies find that meditation increases blood flow, reduces blood pressure, and protects people at risk of developing hypertension. People become less likely to get stuck in depression and exhaustion. Then more generally are better able to control their behaviour.
In our modern fast lives we don’t always know how to pay proper attention to what we are doing. So we miss whole parts of our lives, experiences, and easily get caught in over-thinking
How can I find a meditation practice?
You can start by simply paying attention to your thoughts, feelings and body sensations to become directly aware of them. This is a great step towards being able to better manage them. And helps you to find peace in a modern fast world.
7) Taking Care of our Nervous System
The nervous system is one of the crucial parts of the human body. It is responsible for reacting to both, internal and external stimuli through a number of physical actions and for carrying out many vital bodily functions as well. These typically include, taking care of digestion, beating of the heart, responding to pain, regulating breathing, emotions, body temperature, maintaining body’s posture and even strengthening the body to survive the day-to-day pressure and enjoy a better quality of life.
Everything your body does is connected in some way to your nervous system. It tells your heart to beat, it tells your lungs to breathe. Our nervous system controls the way you move, the words you say, and how you think and learn. It also controls your senses and memories.
How to keep our nervous system healthy?
To avoid suffering from any CNS diseases and conditions, it is essential that you adopt smart ways to keep it healthy and in shape. Exercising daily, sleeping well, eating well, getting enough vitamin D in the form of sunlight, meditating, drink green tea, walk barefoot are all examples of how you can help! A very similar list to the 10 simple things you can do for your health outlined in this article! So an easy win.
8) Expose Your Body to Sunlight – Get Out in Nature Daily!
Studies have shown us that sun reduces the risk of suffering a broad range of health conditions. It is one of the best ways of fortifying the health of the central nervous system. Exposing yourself to the sunlight every morning for about 10 minutes is enough to boost your body’s nervous system. And at the same time, obtain enough vitamin D
How to make time?
Add the new habit of getting outside into part of your existing routine to be sure that it sticks. For example when you drink your morning tea, coffee, coconut take a moment to step outside into the garden to enjoy drinking it. During your lunch break at work, commit to walking around the block. Set an alarm to wake up with the sun, and go outside to watch the sun rising and set a positive intention for your new day.
9. Happy Hormones
Second to last but not least, happiness is really important to have a healthy lifestyle.
Happiness also leads to a better function of immune and digestive system. It helps with better sleep, better appetite, and also prevents you from getting into anxious cycles. It is very important that you actually enjoy every day of your life. That you do what you love, are surrounded by people you like, and you feel your purpose in life.
How can I activate my happy hormones?
Happy hormones include dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins. You can build good supplies of these by getting outside often. Moving your body often and daily through exercise. Laughing with friends, cooking a good healthy meal, and enjoying stress relievers like yoga, meditation, hot bath, or listening to music.
10) Educate Yourself
Education means taking time to learn how to fill yourself up with knowledge on how to stay healthy.
Education is probably the most important primary health care factor as every other factor we have considered depends upon it. When we understand the benefits of implementing these 10 simple things you can do for your health, the how’s and why’s of doing certain things then we are much more likely to make changes to our habits that welcome these new healthy pathways and routines into our existing world.
How can I educate myself?
Reading this article is a good start of your self study journey! Listen to popular podcasts , read books, articles in magazines on the topics of health and wellness. As you learn more, make sure that you share your learning. People empowering other human beings!
I hope that this article is useful for you to begin to implement these 10 simple things you can do for your health in this brand new year. Please share below in comments how you find actioning these, and the effects you find in your life as a result.
