Healthy lifestyle tips

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For a healthy lifestyle start your day off with a nutritious breakfast. You will be less likely to crave fattening snacks and will give your metabolism the energy boost it needs to accomplish tasks throughout the day.

Stretching and breathing exercises can have many healthy lifestyle benefits including reduction of stress and anxiety. Stretching relaxes the muscles and releases built-up tension. Breathing helps to calm the nervous system and focus the mind but you must learn how to do them correctly to get the positive benefits.

The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook

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We all want to maintain healthy, happy and productive lives. Here are a few tips for keeping your body and mind healthy by taking some simple, positive steps toward a healthy lifestyle.

Get a good night’s sleep

Getting a good nights sleep is crucial. It allows to body to regenerate and the mind to process the information of the day and put that information into long term memory.

Most adults need between six and eight hours of sleep to avoid fatigue, irritability, and the concentration and short-term memory loss that is often associated with sleep deprivation.

Disturbed sleep patterns can be caused by a number of factors

• Illness (short term or long term)

• Stress and tension

• Poor nutrition

• Environment not conducive to sleep (hot/cold/light/noise)

• Irregularity of sleep patterns (shift work, too many late nights or broken sleep, sleeping during the day)

• Chemical imbalance (hormones/environmental toxins in the body)

• Stimulants before bedtime (caffeine, alcohol, nicotine)

Take time to learn some deep relaxation techniques. Short-lived bouts of insomnia are usually nothing to worry about, but chronic sleep loss can contribute to health problems that can affect metabolism, mood and cardiovascular health. Getting fewer than five hours on a regular basis results in higher levels of fibrinogen - a blood-clotting protein that can slow the blood flow to your heart. After only four hours of sleep for six consecutive nights studies have shown that our ability to process blood sugar can be reduced by 30 percent - a level close to diabetics. Bottom line get a good nights sleep.

Exercise

The body needs physical exercise on a regular basis and is essential for health and well-being. Recent studies have shown that exercising slows down how fast the cells DNA ages in individuals who exercise.

Maintaining the body in a state of fitness and good health is an ongoing process. Some people like to schedule regular times at the gym, but for others this not practical because lifestyle, type of work done, and other factors. This can lead to not getting as much exercise as needed.

One of the easiest ways to increase activity is walking. If you are unfit or have not exercised for a while set out to reach a daily goal of 10,000 steps. The average healthy adult takes between 6,000 and 7,000 steps a day just going about their daily routine. You only need to add an extra 2,000 steps per day to reach your 10,000 steps goal. Slip on a comfortable pair of shoes and to count that many steps clip on a step counter and start walking.

An active body keeps the brain active too. Adding more exercise to your routine such as a brisk daily walk (thirty minutes a day, five days a week) can make learning easier, as well as improving your memory due to the positive effect on the hippocampus area of the brain. The hippocampus is important for learning and memory and helping the brain create new cells.

The brain needs stimulation and variety. There are many simple fun activities that will give the brain a daily workout such as doing a crossword or jigsaw puzzle. Jigsaw puzzles of 500 pieces or more require fine visual judgements as you rotate the pieces and shift your attention from the small piece to the larger picture not to mention the reward of finally finishing it.

Drop the myth that we only use 10 percent of our brains as found in many self-help books. We use all of our brain, all the time even while reading this page the brain is the processing information received, keeping the body functioning and a numerous activities you are not consciously aware of. To help keep the memory sharp and the brain functioning strong make it a point to learn, see or do something new each day.

Nutrition

It is predicted that food will take on an increasingly important role in the prevention and cure of many health problems and diseases as we learn more about how different nutrients interact with the body cells, tissues and organs within the body.

To maintain peak physical and mental well being the body requires a full range of essential nutrients from several food sources including fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, lean meats, fish and shellfish and healthy oils such as olive oil.

Eat a wide variety of these foods every day to give your body the best chance of consuming the nutrients and other health promoting compounds it needs for good health.

Meals don't have to be complicated to be healthy and remember that good nutrition and regular physical activity go hand-in-hand for a healthy lifestyle.

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