What is the exact definition of healthy living? Some people find the attempts to define the term as silly and wasting time. They say many people already know what healthy and living are.
Actually, many people are still unclear of what is healthy living all about. Healthy living is not just eating right and exercising, In fact, it’s how to live a healthy life by incorporating proper lifestyle elements into all aspects of your life.
Healthy Lifestyle
That said, it refers to living up your life holistically towards bringing about harmony and balance to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. In other words, healthy living is living your daily life by adopting a healthy lifestyle.
To live healthily, one small conscious effort at a time is all you need to begin the journey towards achieving your goal.
Since healthy living has to do with taking care of the entire you, taking responsibility and making smart health choices starting today and continue in the future may help you achieve the true wellness.
Here are some great simple tips to healthy living by which I hope to help those who want to get started.
Eat A Healthy Diet
Acquire basic diet/nutrition knowledge. Use your common sense to choose the right types of foods to eat.
Eating a diet of whole, nutritious foods rather than unhealthy processed foods is one of the most basic health principles and you should place it as a top priority – you are what you eat.
Moderation is a key towards achieving balanced physiological needs.
Avoid Sweetened Drinks
Many types of sweeteners are used to sweeten foods and drinks, including table sugar, artificial sweetener, and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Replace sweetened drinks with plenty of pure water such as spring water (In Asia it is known as mineral water).
Many processed and junk foods contain high grains and sugar levels, which have unhealthy calories that increase your insulin levels. Ultra-processed grains used in the making of these foods are high glycemic index food categories. They accelerate the aging process and increase your risk of chronic degenerative diseases such as obesity, coronary heart disease, and diabetes.
Avoid All Genetically Engineered Foods
Genetically engineered (GE) foods not only less nutritious than organically-grown foods, but they are also thought to pose many health risks. It is said that most processed foods you buy from the farmers market or groceries stores contain GE ingredients, which have not undergone long-term safety studies.
Many natural living advocates have voiced their concerns over the ‘unknown’ long-term effects of taking these foods.
Some of the GE foods that can be easily obtained from many grocery stores in the US, including, soy, corn, canola oil, cottonseed oil, alfalfa, Hawaiian papaya, sugar from sugar beets, some varieties of zucchini, and crookneck squash.
Note: It is understandable that this part is hard for some people to fulfill.
Optimize Guts Flora
Balanced guts flora or guts microbiota not only contributes benefits to the intestines but also imparts many benefits to other systems such as modulating the immune system and the brain and exerting some impacts on the liver function.
Eating well-balanced nutritious diets, avoiding processed foods, taking fermented foods, avoiding antibiotics and other modern drugs, doing regular physical activities, and managing stress may help keep microbiota diversity in proper balance.
Consume Healthy Fats
Polyunsaturated vegetable oils are processed seed oils such as soy oil, corn oil, and safflower (high linoleic) cotton seed oil are all easily oxidized when heated. They are also said to easily turn rancid during storage.
Consuming healthy fats such as butter, clarified butter, coconut oils, animal fats, palm oil, olive oil, eggs, avocados, and nuts are thought to help keep your lipid profile in balance and exert other health physiological benefits as well.
Avoid Smoking
Cigarettes are made of tobacco that contains nicotine, which is highly addictive. Not only that, smoking increases your risk of many diseases such as hypertension, lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Avoid smoking is the best way to get well-balanced health.
Eat plenty of Raw Foods: Fruits and Veggies
Fruits and veggies are loaded with many beneficial phytonutrients, including carotenoids, polyphenols, bioflavonoids, and stilbenes, all of which act as antioxidants, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer. They are also loaded with both soluble and insoluble starches which are beneficial for efficient digestion and balanced microbiota diversity.
Exercise Regularly
Regular exercise is said to contribute many health benefits such as regulating healthy blood pressure, blood sugar, and lipid profile and maintain good physical and mental health. Right types of exercise can even prevent (or low down) protein wasting.
Optimize Vitamin D Levels
Vitamin D, responsible for hundreds of epigenetic actions, is synthesized from cholesterol in the skin by the help of ultra-violet B from sunlight.
This antioxidant vitamin is popular for its role in calcium metabolism and bone health. Its newly discovered roles in recent decades, including roles in mental health, blood sugar regulation, the immune system, and cancer prevention.
In conclusion, getting an appropriate amount of sunshine, using natural therapies instead of taking statins, and eating modest amounts of healthy fats are thought to help achieve better vitamin D levels the body.
Limit Toxin Exposure
Living in modern days expose you to many types of toxins such as air pollution, cleaning chemicals, car exhaust, food preservatives, and second-hand cigarette smoke. Limit yourself from all these toxins by finding solutions/alternative to each source of toxins is a better way to live healthily.
Get Plenty of Sleep
Naturally, you are designed to sleep at night, during which time melatonin level are high. Getting 6-7 hours of sound sleep every night are thought to help maintain good health and reduces your risk of many diseases.
Manage Your Stress
Stress, especially chronic (long-term) stress is bad for your health. There are many things you can do to relief emotional stress such as doing exercise, deep breathing, and hypnosis. Going to a beach, gardening, tending pets and watching movies are some of the activities that might help reduce your stress.
New Beginning
The info I briefly discuss in the article is just the tip of the iceberg, an introduction to more info regarding preventive medicine and natural/holistic health and healings I would write in future.
