Stack healthy habits to protect your greatest asset
Credit to Author: Canadian Immigrant| Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2023 15:00:46 +0000
Our daily choices matter. As our lives unfold and habits are formed, the choices we repeat ultimately define our health, performance and happiness. They determine how well we age and the quality of our remaining years. Yet many are unaware of the healing influence hidden within daily routines. I work with patients every day whose health struggles are rooted in their regular patterns and unhealthy habits, leaving them vulnerable to a host of chronic degenerative diseases that, upon diagnosis, are often accepted as the typical aging experience.
Longevity experts predict that over 80 per cent of chronic diseases are lifestyle driven. Simply put, our choices control our disease risk, often independent of the genetic hand we have been dealt.
When we stack healthy habits, we activate our healing potential, strength and hope. Stacking unhealthy habits puts our bodies on the defensive and promotes inflammation and disease precursors. Changing habits can be challenging, but the evidence shows that the effort is worth it. Wellness must be practiced as rituals, interwoven into our lives with intention or what I like to call “the art of taking good care.”
As a starting point, let’s look at sleep as an example. One-third of Canadian adults are not getting enough sleep. Over half report poor sleep quality, meaning they fight fatigue most days. Trying to compensate for lost sleep or substitute a good night’s rest with an extra cup of coffee doesn’t work. There is no shortcut to our need for rest. Sleep is vital to good health and impacts every tissue, organ, and system in the body. In sleep, we tap into our body’s healing potential and support cellular repair. Neglecting this reset leads to burnout and accelerates aging and disease risk.
Diet is another powerful tool we can use to advance our health. Our diet directly impacts the elasticity of our blood vessels, the durability of the cartilage in our joints, the structural integrity of our muscular and skeletal systems, our mental health, and the speed and accuracy of our immune response and healing potential. We are what we eat.
This means that it is important to avoid eating on the go and indulging in fast food and sugary snacks, with little thought to the nutritional value or meal timing of the foods. Diet needs to include essential nutrients, which will help avoid weight gain, low energy and mood, and health issues such as back pain and headaches.
Focusing on nutrient-dense foods and practicing mindful eating, making informed choices, can improve metabolic health, provide greater energy, and make it easier to maintain a healthy body weight.
Our patterns of daily movement can also be used to boost health. When we challenge our range of motion, balance, coordination, and strength by moving often and incorporating a variety of different types of movements, we improve our ability to move well and slow the aging process. ‘Use it or lose it’ is a hard biological truth.
Moderately paced activity each week can improve sleep quality, energy levels, insulin sensitivity, creativity, short-term memory and cardiovascular health. It is never too late to get started with a fitness routine and learn how to safely introduce activity at a pace that aligns with your age and ability.
Embrace the art of taking good care and begin to craft a winning formula for self-care by turning healthy habits into hard-wired wellness rituals. Prioritizing sleep, making informed dietary choices and using the food you consume as a therapeutic tool, engaging in regular physical activity and resistance training, practicing stress resiliency and mental fitness, and including more play in your life are all powerful wellness rituals that will help you protect and improve your greatest asset—health. Each day offers an opportunity to make choices that will advance your well-being. Get started with this journey today.
Choose wisely, live well, and thrive.
Dr. Dwight Chapin is the team chiropractor for the Canadian pro-football team, the Toronto Argonauts, co-owner of a large multi-disciplinary health clinic, lead clinician for injury prevention for The Globe and Mail employees, and author of the book Take Good Care: 7 Wellness Rituals for Health, Strength & Hope. More at www.7wellnessrituals.com.
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