[With the current economic climate in America, we’ve decided on a different format for our October Monthly Newsletter in hopes this will offer some helpful advice for the coming months and years.]
Wow. What a ride.
Economic meltdown. Crumbling Wall Street. The most watched presidential campaign in recent years.
Things are going to be interesting in the next few months and years.
But while everyone is talking about finances, taxes, politics and the economy, we want to quickly talk about something else far more important . . .
Your health.
Consider the following about healthy people compared to their unhealthy counterparts.
Healthy people:
- Handle stress more effectively
- Are less prone to infection and illness
- Spend less money on health care (and who knows what is going to happen to our health care)
- Miss fewer days at work
- Are more protective at work
- Earn more money
During uncertain times, what is more important – your health or your finances?
As far as we see it, if you don’t have your health, you don’t have much. In fact we’d be willing to be that toward the end of one’s life, many people would wish for better health over having more money.
So with that being said, here are a few tips to improve your health for the coming months and years. (And by the way, because of our economic times, all of these tips are f.ree.)
Physical
- Limit sugar intake – Sugar suppresses the immune system. Cut it out as much as possible. A little sugar in your morning coffee is one thing, but drinking sodas, eating cookies and snacking on candy bars is something else.
- Get adequate sleep – Poor quantity and/or quality of sleep have been implicated in chronic diseases such as diabetes, as well as being a major drain on health care costs. Aim for 8 hours a night in a dark, quiet room.
- Exercise – We are designed to move. Imagine two different bodies of water – a stagnant pond and a flowing stream. The pond has algae, mosquitoes and looks murky. The stream is flowing, clean and clear blue. Which would you rather be? To be the stream, move every day. It doesn’t matter what you do, just move. Better yet, aim to break a sweat every day. If you’re working hard enough, that can mean only a few minutes every day.
- Manage insulin – In excessive amounts, the hormone insulin contributes to a number of health issues including hormonal imbalances, inflammation and it is a major contributor to many chronic diseases. The three best ways to manage insulin are exercise, stress reduction and eating small, frequent, protein-based meals throughout the day.
Mental
“If you want to know where your mind has been, take a look at your body today.”
Meditation – Unfortunately, we rarely take the time to quiet down our minds, yet it is more important than ever. In fact, there is some evidence that meditation actually changes our brain anatomically. Simply put, certain neurons and areas of the brain become better equipped to handle our sensory experiences, which is one of the ways regular meditation helps us to handle stress.
There are hundreds of ways to meditate, and there are some good books on it, but you can start by simply spending anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes a day with your eyes closed, in a peaceful environment watching your thoughts and attempting to quiet your mind. A good way of starting is simply to focus on your breath. If you find your thoughts wandering away from your breath, simply notice it and re-focus on your breath again.
The busier you are in your life, the more important quieting the mind becomes.
Emotional
Emotional Freedom Technique – This technique, originated by a man named Gary Craig, can be a valuable way of relieving stress and in helping to remove excess emotional baggage we’ve been carrying around. Though you can do it on yourself, it is often more effective when facilitated by a practitioner.
It’s too complicated to cover here, but we’ll likely be offering a short video on this in the next few days.
Spiritual
Our spirit is one of the most important aspects of our self, yet many people seem to focus on it the least. Here are a few of the many things we can do to nourish the spiritual part of ourselves.
Five minutes of happiness – While happiness could fit in the “Emotional” category, we feel that pure happiness is a spiritual principal. We recommend setting aside five minutes every day to practice happiness. This may mean being consciously happy towards a stranger, or simply sitting quietly for five minutes and experiencing everything you are happy for.
Be in the now – Wherever you are right now, everything is perfect. Anxiety comes from thinking about the future, while regret comes from dwelling on the past – neither of which are in this present moment. Negative emotions cannot exist in the present moment because what we are angry about is what someone did in the past or might do in the future. Pure joy only happens in the present moment. Think about when you saw a sunset and were completely enraptured by it. There was nothing else going on but the present moment.
Spend one minute each day focusing on the present moment in all its perfection. Feel the breeze on your face, the shoes on your feet or to smells in the air. It doesn’t matter what you do, just BE. After all, we are human BEings.
Summary
There are obviously many more things you can do for your health, but we wanted to provide you with a few cheap and easy tips that you could start to include in your life today.
The next few years ought to prove to be interesting, but you owe it to yourself, your loved ones, your country and your world to be happy and healthy . . . now more than ever.
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Enjoy a happy and healthy month of October.
