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| Health Tips |
Six Ways to Improve Your Health
“Health is not simply the absence of sickness
Healthy Behaviors
• Don’t smoke
• Eat a healthy diet
• Maintain a healthy weight
• Exercise regularly
• Drink alcohol in moderation
• Get adequate sleep
These six healthy behaviors are known to positively influence health.
Which healthy behaviors are most important?
• Don’t smoke
• Exercise regularly
• Maintain a healthy wieght
• Mederate alcohal
• Sleep
• Maintain healthy diet
We hear more about certain behaviors than others. We know that being at a healthy weight, eating right, and regular exercise are important. If you smoke you should quit. You might say that being at a healthy weight is most important, because it relates to a few of the other factors.
The truth is that these factors have a cumulative effect on health. One factor doesn’t outrank the others. Researchers looking at these factors say that what’s important is that you have a combination of these behaviors, not that you pick the most important one and focus on that. A person may be at a healthy weight, but if he or she smokes, doesn’t exercise, has a terrible diet, drinks too much and doesn’t get enough sleep, overall health will suffer. On the other hand, an overweight person practicing several of the other behaviors may experience increased wellness, despite carrying a few extra pounds.
1:- Stop Smoking
• Tobacco is most preventable cause of death in US.
• 1/3 of all cancer deaths related to smoking cigarettes
• Risk factor for lung cancer. Associated with other types of cancer
• Increased risk of heart disease and chronic lung disease
• Quitting the best gift you can give yourself and loved ones
According to the Surgeon General, quitting smoking is the single most important step a smoker can take to improve the length and quality of his or her life. As soon as you quit, your body begins to repair the damage caused by smoking. It's best to quit early in life but even someone who quits later in life will improve their health.
According to a recent study, quitting smoking can show health benefits in as little as a few weeks. This study showed that college students who smoked and did not have chronic respiratory illness coughed less and had fewer respiratory symptoms within weeks of quitting smoking. This means that quitting will benefit your health in days, not decades.
Quitting will also improve your finances. Cigarettes are expensive. If a pack costs $5.00, smoking one pack per day adds up to $1,825.00 each year.
2:- Healthy Diet
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| Healthy diet |
Balancing Calories
• Enjoy your food, but eat less
• Avoid oversized portions
Foods to Increase
• Make half your plate fruits and vegetables
• Make at least half your grains whole grains
• Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk.
Foods to Reduce
• Choose foods with lower sodium
• Drink water instead of sugary drinks
Reach and Maintain a Healthy Weight
• Extra weight increases risk of:
• Type 2 diabetes
• Hypertension
• Heart disease and stroke
• Some types of cancer
• Sleep apnea
• Osteoarthritis
It’s been well-established that carrying extra weight has a negative effect on health. Even if you haven’t been diagnosed with the conditions on this slide, you likely know that extra weight affects how you feel, or your sense of well-being.
We often think of the increased chronic disease and cancer rate that comes with being overweight. But carrying extra weight also increase risk of sleep apnea and osteoarthritis.
3:- Healthy Weight
• Small weight loss matters a lot
• 5-15% of body weight can improve health
There’s good news! You don’t have to lose a ton of weight to see health benefits.
Studies show that a small decrease in weight can help reduce risk of chronic diseases like diabetes. If you’ve already been diagnosed with diabetes, losing as little as 5% of your body weight can help you manage blood sugar levels.
For example, a person weighing 200 pounds will see health benefits from losing as little as 10 pounds (5% of 200 pounds). Of course, losing more weight to reach the healthy BMI range offers additional health benefits. The main point here is that losing just a little is helpful, and a good jump-start if your goal is to lose more.
Where you wear your weight matters
You may have heard people described as having a pear-shaped body, or a body shaped like an apple. When it comes to health, where you wear extra body fat makes a difference.
All fat is not created equal.
Risk for disease, like heart disease, increases when extra fat is carried around the mid-section (like an apple). In comparison, fat carried in the hips and lower body (like a pear) is associated with lower risk.
It’s often said that it’s what’s on the inside that counts. That is absolutely true, even with where you carry extra body fat
Some people may be carrying hidden fat. Some fat you can see—this is called subcutaneous fat. But there is another, more dangerous type of fat—visceral fat—which is underneath the muscle, surrounding your organs.
Carrying extra fat in the belly puts you at increased risk for diabetes and heart disease. But studies suggest that exercise, even if you don’t lose any weight, can help to reduce this risk by reducing inflammation (obese people have higher levels of circulating inflammatory markers, like CRP—C-reactive protein—which are produced and secreted by fat tissue. The inflammation triggers the diseases associated with metabolic disorder, like diabetes and heart disease).
You can literally look slim but be fat on the inside. Stress can be a factor affecting storage of this visceral or internal fat in the body.
Visceral fat is harder to lose than subcutaneous fat.
Subcutaneous—on the surface; fat you can pinch
Visceral—on the inside; “invisible” or “vicious”
4:- Exercise
• 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity
• Strength training at least 2x per week
• Balance exercises for senior adults
The minimum exercise recommendation for adults is 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity each week. If you exercise vigorously, 75 minutes weekly is required. You can break the exercise requirement down into chunks as small as ten minutes. As long as the cumulative amount over the week adds up to 150 minutes, you’re in good shape (no pun intended!).
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| Daily exercise |
In addition to exercises that increase your heart rate (aerobic), you also should try to strength train at least twice a week, performing strengthening exercises for each major muscle group. These exercises might involve dumbbells, ankle weights, stretch tubes or resistance bands, or even your own body weight. Exercises like squats, lunges, and push-ups are examples of moves using your own body weight for resistance. Strength training is often referred to as resistance training.
If you’re an older adult (those age 60 and older are usually said to fall in this category), balance exercises are also important. These exercises will help to prevent falls, and the broken bones and disability that often result from falls. Examples: walking heel-to-toe and standing on one leg.
5:- Don’t drink too much
• Why?
• Increased risk for certain cancers
• Liver, esophagus, throat, larynx
• Cirrhosis
• Immune system problems
• Brain damage
• Moderate use isn’t harmful for most adults
• Up to 2 drinks per day for men
• One drink per day for women
• Standard drink: 12-oz beer or wine cooler, 5-oz wine, 1.5-oz of liquor
6:- Sleep
• 7 to 8 hours a night for most adults
• Negative health effects for:
• Oversleeping
• Too little sleep
Sleep affects your health in a big way. There is some evidence suggesting that people eat more when they are sleep deprived, meaning that not getting enough sleep can lead to weight gain.
Most adults need 7 to 8 hours a night for the best amount of sleep, although some people may need as few as 5 hours or as many as 10 hours of sleep each day.
Sleeping too much has been linked to negative health effects, like depression and heart disease. Multiple studies have found that people who sleep nine or more hours a night have significantly higher death rates than people sleeping seven to eight hours a night. No specific reason for this correlation has been determined.
Too few hours of sleep can weaken the immune system and cause memory problems and depression.
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