Some people seem to visit their doctors every week, while other people live a healthy, happy life with only an occasional check-up or minor medical problem. There are several things you can do to avoid spending more time than necessary at the doctor’s office.
Changing your diet, exercising and managing stress are the main ways you can improve your health, feel more energetic and increase your lifespan. There are other things you can do to feel better, and it won’t cost you much money. Practicing a healthy lifestyle is less expensive than going to the doctor.
Here are 11 of the best ways you can live healthier and avoid regular trips to the doctor’s office or hospital.
Eat More Vegetables
Most people have an easy time eating apples, pears, grapes, and other fruit. Eating your veggies seems to be much harder for both kids and adults. The most powerful antioxidants (phytonutrients) are contained in leafy green and orange or red veggies.
Carrots, broccoli, spinach, kale and Brussels Sprouts are just a few of the high-antioxidant veggies you should eat to fight inflammation and disease.
Eat raw, stir-fried or steamed vegetables. Fresh produce is best, but you can also warm up frozen vegetables, as they are more likely to be preservative-free than canned vegetables.
Add More Fish to Your Diet
Eat more foods containing Omega 3 fatty acids. Omega 3’s fight cardiovascular disease and may even reduce depression. You should eat shrimp, herring, salmon, sardines and other cold water fish a few times a week instead of relying on fish oil supplements to get EPA ( animal-based) Omega 3's.
Add ground flaxseed to oatmeal, groat or cereal, or eat walnuts, spinach, or kale to get more ALA, or plant-based, Omega 3s.
Exercise Every Day
Exercise daily, from ten minutes to 60 minutes, to reduce the effects of aging and ward off heart disease and other chronic problems. Walk, jog, ride your bike or dance. Any moderate to strenuous physical activity, when performed regularly, will add years to your life- and help you look and feel younger.
Get Your Zzzzzzz’s
Get seven or eight hours of restful sleep a night. If you have a lot of stress at work or home, try to reduce it any way you can (within reason). Meditate, do yoga or drink herbal tea to help you sleep well and reduce or eliminate stress.
Keep your bedroom dark at night. Pull window shades all the way down, or use blackout blinds. Don’t use your Smartphone as an alarm clock or watch TV for a few hours before going to bed.
Manage Stress
Stress management is usually mentioned after diet and exercise as a way to improve your health. In today’s hectic 24/7 work world, stress in commonplace even in the simplest jobs.
A report cited by Everyday Health showed that one-third of all respondents experienced stress at work. Millennials and Generation Z-ers had even more work stress than Gen-Xers, with the percentage of affected respondents rising to 44 percent.
- Try to change your work hours, duties, or talk with your supervisor about ways to make your work environment less stressful. If the situation isn’t resolved, you should look for a new job or transfer to another department. In the meantime, try one of the following methods to better cope with stress:
- Take a break. This could mean taking a vacation, a day off work, or a longer lunch hour. Take time to do what you enjoy, or just relax. You’ll feel more energetic, and get in touch with your real desires and thoughts instead of focusing on a toxic environment.
- Exercise or take a walk. Physical activity releases hormones called endorphins into the opiate receptors in your brain to calm you down and give you a subdued sense of well-being. Endorphins also have an analgesic, or pain-killing, effect, so exercise will reduce your physical aches as well.
Keep a Journal
Keep a journal. You can use a fancy leather or fabric bound journal or a spiral notebook, whatever is easiest for you. (Some people use scrapbooking journals and include artwork or photos with their writing.)
Choose a quiet place and time so you can collect your thoughts without interruption. You should use your journal to reflect on your daily life and brainstorm ideas to change things for the better.
You shouldn’t show your journal to anyone. A daily journal is therapeutic, but you can also use it to explore your creativity by writing poems, drawing or jotting down ideas for movies or TV shows. Some experts believe that creativity is the key to happiness.
Meditate
Learn how to meditate. Meditation isn’t a complicated process just for gurus and New Age aficionados. Find a quiet room and sit in a comfortable chair or on the floor. You don’t need to sit cross-legged.
Close you eyes and breathe deeply. Release all extraneous thoughts as they come to you until your mind becomes calm. You can play soothing, instrumental music to help you clear your mind and concentrate on your breathing. Start out by devoting five minutes a day and work your way up to fifteen minutes or more if you have the time.
Do Yoga
Yoga is another relaxing technique for calming your nerves. It also makes you more limber and improves circulation. There are yoga postures, or asanas, to help every part of your body, including the Garland Pose and Cobra Pose for back strength.
Choose Your Friends Wisely
If you want to be healthier, stay away from people who smoke, drink alcohol to excess,or eat junk food all the time. Spend time with health conscious friends who exercise, eat right and have good attitudes.
Spend time with friends who are positive and make you happy. Reassess your friendships with people who don’t share your interests or values. Avoid pursuing friendships with anyone who has a toxic or critical personality. We can’t choose our family (or even our co-workers), but we can choose our friends.
Ditch Soda and Alcohol
Avoid drinking soda. A can of Coca-Cola has nine and 1/3 teaspoons of sugar. The daily RDA for sugar is nine teaspoons for men, and six teaspoons for women.
Even diet soda has been shown to make people gain weight instead of lose weight over time. Replace soda with filtered water, green tea, herbal tea or black tea. You can also drink small amounts of milk, coffee, and fruit juice each day.
It’s important to stay hydrated by drinking the right amount of water for your needs. Most experts recommend eight 8 ounce glasses of water a day, but your needs may vary.
Eliminate or reduce alcoholic beverages from your diet. According to the CDC, moderate alcohol consumption is defined as one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men.
If you do drink, red wine is the healthiest choice. It contains resveratrol, an antioxidant that may lower inflammation and “bad” LDL cholesterol.
Take a Wheatgrass Supplement for Better Health
Eliminate processed and junk food from your diet and follow the suggestions above to be healthier, reduce stress and keep the doctor away.
Enhance your diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish and organically raised beef and poultry with a wheatgrass supplement from Wheatgrass Love. Zeal O2 is designed to help you burn fat and lose weight safely and naturally.
Happy Girl has a blend of herbal ingredients along with wheatgrass to keep you emotionally balanced and handle stress better.
REVV Natural Energy Supplement is a tasty chocolate mint wafer. It contains wheatgrass, choline, B-complex vitamins and L-taurine to give you more energy without the sugar in energy drinks. Read more about Wheatgrass Love products here.
