How can you improve your health as you age?
Improve Your Health as You Age in 4 Simple Step
A person’s health is monumentally important. Not only does your health contribute to the longevity of your life, but it also determines your quality of life to a major extent.
Therefore, you need to take care of yourself, and while that sounds simple, it’s often anything but. The modern human lifestyle often distracts from healthy living, so it falls upon the individual to make better choices in order to live the healthiest and happiest life possible. Here are a few tips that can help you take control of your health.
Vitamin Supplements
A key component of living a healthy life is making sure that your body has all of the ingredients it needs to repair itself and function effectively. While much of this is accomplished using the foods you eat, it can be difficult to create a diet that presents you with all of the necessary vitamins and nutrients that your body needs; you may not even know what all of them are. Likewise, you may be dealing with a medical condition that makes it more difficult to absorb certain nutrients, and that makes it much harder to keep all of your needs met.
However, vitamin supplements exist to suit just about any need. Vitamin C is a common supplement, because of its overall importance to health. As Well, D and B12 are also common deficiencies that supplements can help treat. There are numerous multivitamins, as well, that can provide an assortment of vitamins. A multivitamin like greens powder can help boost your immune system with a plethora of ingredients. Unlike many other substances, having too much of one vitamin has no negative effect other than waste, meaning that if you overdo it, you won’t suffer any ill effects.
Dieting
One’s diet is more intuitive to manage than the levels of certain vitamins within your body. But, it’s not a walk in the park necessarily. For example, a previously mentioned vitamin deficit was that of b12, which is commonly found in meats. Despite meat being a central part of the average meal, some people still don’t naturally obtain B12 all that well from meat, meaning that they need to seek additional intake of this vitamin. However, learning that information can take quite a long time.
Unexplained Fatigue
Unexplained fatigue is a common symptom, but that’s a common symptom across numerous medical conditions. On the other hand, dieting can be complicated by changes in your lifestyle. What kinds of food you eat and in what amounts should change with your level of activity so that the amounts of each nutrient that remain in your body approximate the recommended daily values. This ensures that the nutrients your body needs for energy and maintenance are always present, and preferably not in excess.
Too much of anything is theoretically bad for you, but the worst offenders are sugars, carbs, and fats. While the occasional sweet treat is what makes life worth living, sugar-rich foods should be eaten sparingly. Likewise, carbs are the body’s preferred energy source, but excess carbs contribute to weight gain more than the average nutrient, meaning that your carb intake should match your energy requirement. The calories in, calories out philosophy should be your guide on this matter.
Fitness Trackers
It may seem silly to many, but fitness trackers are a phenomenal way of conquering the counterintuitive nature of fitness in the modern era. Fitness trackers like Fitbits keep track of several factors that can greatly inform your lifestyle to produce the best possible results. The mechanisms it uses to provide this data are a heartbeat sensor and pedometer and uses these mechanisms to make a fairly accurate guess as to how many calories you burn a day, in addition to your heart rate at any given time and the number of steps that you take in a day.
These devices can also intuit how restful your sleep was the night before. As mentioned above, burning more calories than you ingest in a day is a great way to regulate nutrients in the body, especially troublesome ones like carbs. In addition, there is a scientifically recommended number of steps a person should take in a day to maintain a baseline level of fitness, that number being 10,000. Even the sleep tracking function is pertinent to your health, but it’s more illustrative than corrective.
Sleep Schedule
Sleep has a massive impact on one’s health, and most people aren’t sleeping properly. Sleeping the doctor recommended 6-8 hours a night is important in terms of getting enough sleep, but that’s only part of the equation. Sleeping at consistent times is also important, as it helps your body sleep more soundly and therefore restfully. This is because of the body’s circadian rhythm, an internal clock by which your body prepares to sleep and to wake up from sleep. An erratic schedule means that your body can’t figure out how to sleep effectively.
Improving one’s health is an important goal, but it can be complicated at times. However, these tips will help you master the basics of a healthy lifestyle while leaving you room to grow.
What steps do you take to stay healthy? Leave your comments at the bottom of this page.
Paisley Hansen is a freelance writer and expert in health, fitness, beauty, and fashion. As well, when she isn’t writing she can usually be found reading a good book or hitting the gym.
What is a good supplement for collagen for aging?
Sleeping is my biggest challenge. Even with sleeping pills I wake up several times a night. I don’t feel rested anymore.
The goal of 10,000 daily steps is an arbitrary number, never validated by scientific studies. Originally it was part of a marketing campaign for a pedometer. It is helpful to set a personal goal that is greater than your usual routine, whether 5000 or 7500 daily steps, that you can reach most days. When you are consistently reaching your goal (5 out of 7 days), try to increase that number by small increments, perhaps 10% at a time over several weeks. Be sure to drink plenty of water and stretch your legs, hips and back after your walk!
Retired Medical Writer