Everyone deserves to live a healthy life. Health forms the foundation for a happy and a productive life. Taking care of your body and mind should be the two most important things you do each day.
If you don't have good health, you can’t imagine enjoying your life, let alone have a thriving career. Taking care of your health is for the long term, and there are no shortcuts to good health. Aside from the supplements and health apps and devices, you have to make a conscious effort to incorporate healthy habits into your lifestyle
Inundated with life’s other tasks, like work, studies, business etc., it is easier to neglect one’s health. Maintaining good health requires that we make up time for it each day, so that among our various life responsibilities we don’t end up neglecting our most precious resource: health.
Here are a few tips that you can incorporate to maintain good health:
Eat nutritious food
A good diet helps boost the immune system, which in turn helps us stay healthy and fight infections like colds and flu. We should eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables (at least five portions per day), lean meat, fish, eggs, beans, and lentils to help protect against infections.
Eating well is one of the most significant things you can do to make sure you stay healthy as you age. Your body needs nutrients to combat disease, heal faster, and maintain energy levels.
Depending on your dietary restrictions and lifestyle choices, getting in all the nutrients you need can be challenging. If you have been following the same diet for years and are looking for a healthy change, you can try the organic prepper, which provides pesticide-free, gluten-free and 100% organic food.
By choosing to eat healthy, you will be solidifying your immunity against common diseases. Proper nutrition can help you lower your cholesterol, reduce high blood pressure, and help maintain a healthy weight.
A healthy diet consists of all the food groups — fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean protein sources (such as fish and lean beef), and low-fat dairy products.
It's also important to choose foods that are low in saturated fats, sodium (salt), sugar, and cholesterol.
Maintain a healthy weight
Maintaining a healthy weight can help you reduce your risk for chronic diseases commonly associated with overweight and obesity. Eat nutritious foods, drink plenty of water and avoid eating too much saturated fat, sugar, salt, and alcohol.
Your weight changes with time, but if it's consistently higher than the average for your height and body type, it can have a negative impact on your health. If you're overweight or obese, losing even 5% of your body weight can improve your health.
Exercise Regularly
Exercise is important for maintaining good health no matter what age you are. However, exercise can be extremely important for old people because it helps them with maintaining bone density and muscle mass.
Regular exercise strengthens the muscles and bones and helps reverse the loss which sets upon them in old age. Even if you don't engage in rigorous exercise, simply walking or gardening to stay active can help improve your overall health.
Regular exercise is extremely important for good physical as well as mental health. Exercise helps in strengthening the immune system and makes your body resistant to various diseases and illnesses. Exercise also helps in burning calories which counters obesity and other weight-related problems, like diabetes and cardiac problems.
Set realistic goals
Weight loss is more about making long-term lifestyle choices and sacrifices than about exercising for an hour or two a day and thinking the goal to be achieved. However, your weight-loss goals shouldn’t be overly ambitious.
If you're trying to lose weight, limit yourself to a sensible weight-loss goal of losing one to two pounds per week. If you're not overweight, aim for shedding no more than a half-pound per week.
Make small changes
Small changes can add up to big results over time. For example, instead of adding sugar in your coffee or tea, try honey instead; switch from butter or margarine to light spreads, and, for the dessert, opt for the low-fat yogurt rather than getting ice cream.
- Try to eat 5 portions of fruit and veggies a day.
- Keep active – walk, cycle, or run instead of taking the bus or driving to work or school.
- Don’t smoke and avoid smokers’ company to prevent passive inhalation of smoke– it can give you cancer, asthma and make your skin older and wrinkly.
- Drink plenty of water, especially in hot weather or when you’re playing a sport.
Sleep
Sleep is another important contributing factor to good health. It’s the body’s reboot system, and lets us recover mentally and physically.
You need to get your 8 hours of snoozes in during the night for you to feel better, refreshed, and focused during the day. Lack of sleep leads to fatigue and irritability throughout the day.
Optimum sleep also helps our body repair and recover. There is strong evidence to suggest that resting fully can help you stave off infection.
Maintain relationships
Relationships are a big part of life, and everyone has many relationships in their lives, like family and friends, colleagues, and neighbors, they can fall back on for support, encouragement, and social and emotional wellbeing.
Relationships are closely related to our mental health. Good relationships lead to happiness and health and bad ones are linked to depression, anxiety, and poor health.
Our relationships can be considered the most important factor in determining our happiness.
But how can we maintain good healthy relationships? Healthy and open communication is an important part of maintaining healthy relationships with others.
Communication is your ability to express yourself, ask for what you want, talk about your needs, state your opinions clearly and remain open to feedback from others.
The key to healthy communication is listening without judgment and without trying to change the other person’s mind.
Conclusion
It's important to remember that prevention is better than the cure. Your health is dependent on the lifestyle and habits you lead and practice daily. As we age, maintaining health becomes even more important. The above-mentioned tips will help you find and adopt newer health-promoting habits.
Isreal olabanji a dental assistant and public health professionals and has years of experience in assisting the dentist with all sorts of dental issues.
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The content is intended to augment, not replace, information provided by your clinician. It is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Reading this information does not create or replace a doctor-patient relationship or consultation. If required, please contact your doctor or other health care provider to assist you to interpret any of this information, or in applying the information to your individual needs.