Simple Tips to Boost Your Health

There are so many simple things you can do to enhance your health that don’t require much money, any money at all and keep you away from the doctor.

Healthy people make more healthy choices each day than unhealthy people. Your health isn’t entirely under your control, but you still have a lot of influence on the matter. Simple habits, repeated consistently, can make a big impact to your health in a positive way.

Use these strategies each day and reap the healthy benefits:

Be active. Active people are healthier and live longer. That doesn’t mean you have to spend all day at the gym. It just means that you can’t spend all day sitting around. Get moving - your body will be so glad you did!

● Have some activities planned each week that require you to think and move. For example: Plant a garden. Volunteer. Walk around the park. Take a dance class (or my favorite, just dance around the house)! Join a Badminton Club. Start Yoga.

Drink more water. Too many people fail to drink enough water each day. There are a lot of options more exciting than water, but water is what your body requires. Over half of your body weight is water, so drink more of it and skip the other beverages 90% of the time.

● Some healthy options, such as green tea and watery fruits like watermelon, will help hydrate you as well.

Get sufficient sleep. Over one third of the adult population fails to get enough sleep. In a society that prides itself on working harder and getting less sleep than the next person, it can be challenging to make sleep a priority. However, getting enough sleep - 7 to 9 hours for most adults - will strengthen your health.

Manage stress. Stress is one of the primary obstacles of good health. It detracts from the amount and the quality of your sleep. The hormones and other chemicals produced during stress are damaging to the mind and body.

● Find relaxation practices that work for you and use them each day. Healthy options include meditation, listening to soothing music, taking part in hobbies that make you happy.

Be sociable. With very few exceptions, everyone needs to have some social contact to stay emotionally healthy. How much social contact is needed varies greatly from one person to the next.

● Find the right level for you and ensure that you’re maintaining it.

This doesn’t mean you need to add hundreds of ‘friends’ to your Facebook account but to have a small handful of close friends you can trust and rely upon is likely to be enough.

Keep your brain active. In today’s world, it’s easy to fall into the trap of mindless internet surfing, watching TV, and playing mind deadening games on your phone. Do something that challenges your brain.

● Playing chess, sudoku, crossword puzzles, and other mentally challenging games can be a great way to keep your brain healthy and sharp. Reading a book you enjoy will give you some down time too.

Eat real food. Real food is anything you can buy and consume in its natural state. Fruit, vegetables, nuts, meat, and beans are examples of natural foods. Eat what your body was designed to eat, and you’ll be much healthier.

● Cookies, chips, cereal, sweets and other processed foods are full of chemicals that are bad for your health.

Drop unhealthy habits. Your health isn’t just influenced by doing the right things - it’s negatively impacted by unhealthy habits. Smoking, overeating, staying up too late, drinking, and eating a low-quality diet are a few examples of bad habits that can harm your health.

You don’t have to exercise for hours, drink magical protein concoctions, or limit your diet to be a healthy person – we’ll leave that to the professional athletes who are pushing and stressing their bodies to the limit, probably not the best thing to do for good overall health. Do the simple and relevant things and good things will happen. Good health can be a simple matter.