Health Hints to Help You Adapt to Your Enviroment

What is this thing called health? Simply a state in which the individual happens transiently to be perfectly adapted to his environment.

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American Mercury, 1930

September 16, 2012 -  How does one adapt to one’s environment to maintain one’s health?   You may find these hints useful.

1)      No matter how old you get,  keep moving – walk, get up and down, go round and about.

2)      Park a block away from your destination – go the rest of the way on foot.

3)      When given the choice, between the elevator and one to two flights of stairs, take the stairs. 

4)      At the supermarket,  buy fresh foods  at the periphery of the store – the inner aisles contain mostly processed foods full of carbs, sweetened, salted, and preserved by chemicals.

5) When taking your blood pressure or having it taken, take three deep breathes and exhale slowly,  this breathing maneveur will lower your systolic pressure by 10 to 10 points and may prevent you from being labeled as having hypertension, which  30% of Americans are said to have.

6)      Be leery of foods “free” of cholesterol and fats; they are loaded with carbs and sugar to make them taste good enough to eat.  

7)      Eighty percent of low back strains and pains get better without surgery. 

8)      Low carb diets with plenty of fruits, veggies, nuts, olive oil, and  glasses of red wine work wonders when it comes to increasing longevity.

9)      If you are a mild diabetic,  you can get off drugs with weight loss and steady exercise.

10)      Excess weight increases odds of cancer and heart disease. Go to Internet, enter BMI (Body Mass Index) calculation based on your height and weight.  If your BMI is over 30.4, you are overweight, if it’s 40 or more, you are  morbidly obese.  Lose weight if 30 or more, consider bariatric surgery at 40.

11)   An aspirin a day helps keep the doctor away.

12)   Be happy, be optimistic, be philosophical, and cultivate a social support system of friends and relatives.

Tweet: Staying healthy as one can  requires following a simple set of rules and a positive mindset.