A sound physical and mental health is the state of being free and well from illness and sickness in the body and the mind. A sign of wholeness in your body and mind is shown in your vitality and high energy level to accomplish any task or goals. Taking control of your well being is of utmost importance because the soundness of your body and mind is your most valuable asset. You can improve or maintain your personal wellbeing by practicing some common sense and a few self help techniques.
· Eating right and getting adequate Nutrition
Getting proper and adequate nutrition is important. Your body requires fresh food and lots of water. Fresh food, vegetables and fruits provide nutrients, enzymes and are water rich. They act as your body cleansing agent to eliminate waste. Other than consuming lots of water rich food, you need to feast on a healthy combination of food to help you with your digestive system. Too little water rich food – having too much food consisting of carbohydrates, proteins and high fat food and consuming beyond moderation are among the causes of weight problem and low energy. When you are dieting or working on weight gain or loss plans, you need to watch your nutritional intake so that it will not give you an adverse effect.
· Physical fitness and exercise
Aerobic exercise and other forms of moderate to vigorous body movements improve physical fitness and the soundness of the mind. Your brain and other internal organs will function effectively when you choose to engage your body in activity. Regular and organized exercise like walking briskly or gardening affects your brain mechanism. Activities involving cardiovascular fitness help you avoid depression and other mood and personality disorders and enhance your wellbeing. Having regular exercise outdoors provides you with sufficient sunlight and plenty of fresh air.
· Rest and recreation
You need to make it a daily habit to sit quietly and relax you body and feel calm inside. Sufficient rest includes getting sound sleep. It helps you reduce stress and allows your body to renew. Regardless of your time pressures, you need to take a break and practice the habit of making your own leisure time for rest and recreation.
· Managing your emotions
Handling your emotions promotes good mental health. Women who are going through menopause may experience mood swings due to sleep disturbance caused by hot flashes. Negative emotions will affect your thinking and show up in the form of illness and ailments. The ability to manage your emotions will allow you to maintain a positive self-image and esteem yourself as worthy. Your optimism and physical vitality will soar and allow you to grow in your relationship and career. Suppressing your emotions worsens illness and disease in mind and body, while releasing them helps you improve your well being.
· Balanced refined breathing and meditation
Focusing your attention on your breathing quiets your mind. A quiet mind permits creativity and helps in the healing process from stress and other disturbing thoughts. Refined slow breathing promotes a complete balance between your body and mind and allows you to focus within, relax and contemplate.
Breathing affects your emotions. Rapid heart rate causes muscle tension and high level of stress and is hazardous. Practicing simple breathing exercise three times a day will relax your mind and influence your body to function effectively.
· Living a healthy lifestyle and practicing good and clean habits
Creating quality relationships and having worthy goals to live for help you become robust and wise. Living with good morals and behaviors that are aligned to your personal values can enrich your mind, body and spirit. Make it a habit to emphasize on your personal hygiene. Cultivate habits that encourage you to avoid infections and improve your general wellbeing. Avoid excessive toxic food and drinks like coffee and alcohol that can affect your wellbeing. Stay away from cigarettes. Quit if you are indulging in that habit. Smoking shortens life expectancy. You can create personal healthy lifestyle by making conscious choices. Taking control of your health will result in more energy, mental alertness, enthusiasm, creativity and improved personal growth, success and wisdom. The inability of balancing your life will show in major afflictions like heart disease and cancer. Give yourself the life you deserve. Read, ask questions and gather information that will help you avoid fatigue and improve your vitality, energy and life itself. Practice the common sense practical actions that are within your control.
14. SIMPLE AND STRATEGIC STRESS BUSTERS
Stress can kill. Take it as a mantra. Most of the killer diseases prevalent today have been directly or indirectly linked to sustained physical, emotional and mental stress.
Stress has been shown to increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases (the leading cause of death among humans), diabetes, cancer, arthritis, etc.
Obvious signs that stress is getting the better of you include:
- Insomnia (inability to fall asleep), or waking in the middle of the night and staying awake till dawn;
- Palpitations – irregular heartbeats such as a racing heart or skipping a beat;
- Cold sweats – excessive sweating especially on the palms, foreheads or soles of the feet for no apparent reason;
- muscle spasms – feelings of tightness in the muscles of the neck, or back shoulders;
- Headaches – persistent headaches that don’t seem to get better with pain killers;
- Mood swings – sudden feelings of irritability, depression, anger, helplessness etc;
- Fatigue – a constant feeling of tiredness, lack of concentration, forgetfulness, loss of libido.
If you have some or all of these symptoms, then you should act now. See your healthcare provider for a consultation. Moreso you can try these self help strategies.
- Don’t take work home or take home to work.
- Take time to make a transition from a cue part of your life to the other.
- Spend time in your car to decompress before entering your office or your home.
- Watch less TV. Avoid violent or depressing movies. Opt instead for comedies, cartoons and jokes. Watch the Discovery Channel. Look for humour in every situation. Learn to laugh at yourself and don’t take the world too seriously. Listen to music that will relax your nerves – Instrumental, classical and jazz are good choices.
- Use Aroma therapy. Have flowers put in your office and home. Spray perfume into the air. Light a scented candle. Fragrances can help to reduce anxiety.
- Get a pet – maybe a dog, cat etc. Activities like these have been used to lower blood pressure and increase longevity.
- Choose to be happy. Being happy is a decision that is entirely within your power to make.
- Take charge of your life. Let people around you know your likes and dislikes.
- Tackle your challenges with a positive volition. Worrying will never make things better.
On a significant note, laughter is indeed the best medicine. There are benefits that can be derived from laughing heartily several times a day.
The biggest pay off seems to be a relieve of tension followed by a relaxation of the skeletal muscles. Laughter has a beneficial effect on all the body systems such as the respiratory system, cardiovascular system, central nervous system, endocrine system and immune system.
Laughter releases endorphins, the body’s natural pain killers, thus producing a general feeling of euphoria or well being. Little wonder that in ancient Greece, hospitals were built next to amphitheatres to help cure the patients.
Stress constricts blood vessels, increases heart rate and blood pressure and increases the sugar levels in the blood. Studies have shown that laughter reduces levels of the stress hormones and adrenaline, and in effect reduces the constriction of blood vessels.
Laughter also provides a good cardiovascular workout. It also forces us to inhale and exhale more forcefully, thus cleansing the lungs of stale air and making room for fresh clean life oxygen to permeate our body cells.
The moment you give a good laugh, all hardness yield, all irritations and resentment slips away and a sunny spirit takes their place.
So the next time you feel stress creeping up on you, take a break and roar in laughter, be happy and find excitement and amusement
Thursday, September 25, 2008
REDUCING CHOLESTEROL NATURALLY
We must have all heard that high cholesterol can kill us. Most physicians react by reaching for their prescription pads. Drugs to lower cholesterol especially the statin drugs, are among the most commonly prescribed drugs on the market. Unfortunately, like all drugs, they come with side effects. We would be much better off if we take control of our cholesterol without resorting to drugs. Fortunately, there are ways to do just that.
· The first step is a healthy life style. You already know it, but exercise is part of it too. Exercise has so many benefits – maintaining function, controlling weight, lowering blood pressure, fighting depression, etc – that, if it were a drug, it would be a blockbuster. Most people look for a pill instead of making healthy choices and taking action. Don’t be like them. Exercise is the best way to stay healthy.
· Diet is next. Reduce the saturated fat in your diet and absolutely avoid fat. Nutritionists have vilified beef and other red meats because of their saturated fat content. That is a valid point for most beef, but grass-fed beef is a different matter. That is because naturally, cattle eat grass. Feed them grain, and their meat changes drastically. The total fat increases. Even worse, the ration of omega-3 (the healthy fat associated with fish) changes from 4:1 to 20:1. And that is not good. If you are a meat eater, switch to grass fed beef. Be sure your diet is high in fiber. Five to ten grams of soluble fiber a day lowers the cholesterol by 5%. Oatmeal is a good source of soluble fiber. Also, soluble fiber supplements are available now. As a bonus, soluble fiber can also be taken as a weight loss aid. People who take a serving of soluble fiber in 8 oz of a calorie free liquid 30 minutes or so before every meal tend to eat less. They lose weight without changing anything else.
· After reducing the bad fat, the next step is to increase the good fats. Almonds and nuts are a good way to do this – they both lower cholesterol. Nuts are very calorie dense, but ideally, the saturated fat calories you eliminate from your diet will more than make up for adding them to your diet. Other good fats include omega-3 fatty acids. These are the fats found in fish, as well as in flax seeds. Adding them to your diet helps lower triglycerides. I suggest using both. Eat fish such as salmon once a week and take a fish oil supplement daily (2 – 4 grams a day – more if your doctor recommends it). Also, grind up 2 tablespoons of flax seed every day and have it on cereal, mixed in yoghurt, or any other way you enjoy it. Grind it fresh and don’t heat it – the oil spoils easily. I recommend the whole flax seed rather than just the oil because of the benefits of the fiber and other nutrients in the whole seed. Garlic or garlic supplements are another cholesterol-lowering addition you can make to your diet. If using fresh garlic, let it sit for 5 minutes or so after chopping, before you cook with it. Heat destroys enzymes activated by chopping that form beneficial compounds in the garlic. If you use a supplement, take 600 to 1200 mg a day divided into 2 or 3 doses. Taken together, these recommendations will not only lower your cholesterol, they will contribute to your overall health and vitality. No statin drug can make that claim.
· The first step is a healthy life style. You already know it, but exercise is part of it too. Exercise has so many benefits – maintaining function, controlling weight, lowering blood pressure, fighting depression, etc – that, if it were a drug, it would be a blockbuster. Most people look for a pill instead of making healthy choices and taking action. Don’t be like them. Exercise is the best way to stay healthy.
· Diet is next. Reduce the saturated fat in your diet and absolutely avoid fat. Nutritionists have vilified beef and other red meats because of their saturated fat content. That is a valid point for most beef, but grass-fed beef is a different matter. That is because naturally, cattle eat grass. Feed them grain, and their meat changes drastically. The total fat increases. Even worse, the ration of omega-3 (the healthy fat associated with fish) changes from 4:1 to 20:1. And that is not good. If you are a meat eater, switch to grass fed beef. Be sure your diet is high in fiber. Five to ten grams of soluble fiber a day lowers the cholesterol by 5%. Oatmeal is a good source of soluble fiber. Also, soluble fiber supplements are available now. As a bonus, soluble fiber can also be taken as a weight loss aid. People who take a serving of soluble fiber in 8 oz of a calorie free liquid 30 minutes or so before every meal tend to eat less. They lose weight without changing anything else.
· After reducing the bad fat, the next step is to increase the good fats. Almonds and nuts are a good way to do this – they both lower cholesterol. Nuts are very calorie dense, but ideally, the saturated fat calories you eliminate from your diet will more than make up for adding them to your diet. Other good fats include omega-3 fatty acids. These are the fats found in fish, as well as in flax seeds. Adding them to your diet helps lower triglycerides. I suggest using both. Eat fish such as salmon once a week and take a fish oil supplement daily (2 – 4 grams a day – more if your doctor recommends it). Also, grind up 2 tablespoons of flax seed every day and have it on cereal, mixed in yoghurt, or any other way you enjoy it. Grind it fresh and don’t heat it – the oil spoils easily. I recommend the whole flax seed rather than just the oil because of the benefits of the fiber and other nutrients in the whole seed. Garlic or garlic supplements are another cholesterol-lowering addition you can make to your diet. If using fresh garlic, let it sit for 5 minutes or so after chopping, before you cook with it. Heat destroys enzymes activated by chopping that form beneficial compounds in the garlic. If you use a supplement, take 600 to 1200 mg a day divided into 2 or 3 doses. Taken together, these recommendations will not only lower your cholesterol, they will contribute to your overall health and vitality. No statin drug can make that claim.
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