Simple Tips That Could Prolong Your Life
Living a healthy life
In this hub you will find some tips that could help to make your life a little longer.
Firstly, I don't guarantee that the advice here will make you live healthily and happily to a hundred, however, with some simple and inexpensive lifestyle changes, you could improve your chances of avoiding an early grave.
One of the most basic things to do is to change your diet. The phrase 'you are what you eat' is absolutely true. The materials that your body uses for growing, generating energy, repairing damage comes from where? Thin air? Of course not, it comes from your food. So if you eat rubbish your body will not be getting all that it needs. A good diet can go a long way towards a long and healthy life.
So what does it need? Carbohydrates and fats for energy, proteins for growth and repair, fibre to ensure toxins are eliminated, vitamins and minerals for good health. Oh, and water too. But more importantly, they need to be there in the right proportions too. So if all you eat is fast food or prepared meals, OK, you probably get most of the nutrients but not in the right proportions. Odds are, you will get too much fat and not enough fibre, vitamins and minerals ...
The human body needs antioxidants too, they help to keep cancers and heart attacks at bay by mopping up the free radicals in your system, A tasty and efficient way to get these is to drink green tea or oolong tea. Both are high in antioxidants. Bright coloured fruit and veg include these vital components of your diet too.
Reducing stress can help to prolong life too. Too much stress is a contributory factor to high blood pressure (along with bad diet) which in turn can lead to strokes and heart disease. It is not always so easy to reduce stress in this day and age. There always seem to be deadlines to meet but hey, so what if a report is late, it's not going to kill anyone. So learn to handle stress. One trigger for stress is having too many jobs to do and not knowing where to start or what to do can be a real nightmare. List them and tick them off as they are done. That way, you have acknowledged the jobs that need doing and have tangible evidence that you are doing them. That can help to calm your subconscious as you feel more in control.
If you are a student, as an essay, dissertation, thesis or other project deadline looms, that can be really stressful. Manage this by planning your strategy well ahead of time and sticking to smaller deadlines during the task. Then near the end, proofreading your work is an essential step, but get it done by someone else - having a fresh pair of eves can help sift out the silly mistakes that you might otherwise miss so you will probably feel more calm when it comes to handing in your work. These put you more in control and being in control of a situation is usually less stressful than being controlled by the situation.
Take control of your emotions. When your emotions are controlled by others around you and by events outside of you, you feel out of control. That is a sure fire trigger for stress. So if someone or something makes you angry, accept that anger is fine and manage that anger. Use the energy positively. If you are angry about something someone has said, reflect, it may be true ... and whilst you are reflecting, you will probably find that your anger subsides. Make a concious decision as to whether to be angry back or not, a state of anger increases stress which is not a good thing. The same goes for other emotions, take control of them for a more relaxed life. But I admit, that is easier said than done!
Get your work-life balance right. If you work hard then you need to play hard, take as much time out for leisure as possible if you have a high powered job. If you have plenty of cash, don't be frightened to pay people to do clean your house or hire decorators. That way, you get the time to relax and hopefully will be able to enjoy your wealth longer! Physical exercise is essential to humans, we evolved from hunter-gatherers who roamed for miles each day. Our lifestyle is a tad different now but without exercise, the human body begins to atrophy and various diseases can take hold as your resistance is low. It is said that cycling can prolong your life by up to 10 years, but you need to make the effortto feel the benefit. To get you inspired, here are some cycle routes in the Peak District to entice you out onto your bike!
It is never to late to start. You don't need to make big changes (unless you smoke or drink heavily of course) to reap the rewards.
