Live a Healthier Lifestyle with These 10 Little Changes

We’re all looking for ways to live a healthier lifestyle. Some of us just don’t know where to begin. A lot of us get lost in the day-to-day. We cling to things that we know work and are willing to ride the status quo until the wheels fall off. Complacency might help you glide through life, but it won’t help you Thryve through it. Here are some little changes you can make to live a healthier lifestyle.

Why Live a Healthier Lifestyle?

Even healthy people can benefit from living healthier. Unfortunately, a majority of us don’t fit into the “healthy people” category. One out of three adults is considered overweight 1.

Much like every business expects an increase in profit every year, you should make changes to improve your overall wellness. Always strive for better. Take what you learned in one year, incorporate into your routine, and then come up with new goals the next.

Living a healthier lifestyle isn’t an end result. It’s an ongoing process that takes effort. However, once you fully integrate these healthy lifestyle changes, they will no longer be changes. They will be a part of your fabric and become second nature. From there, you’ll find new ways to live a healthier lifestyle to try.

10 Ways to Live a Healthier Lifestyle

If you want to live a healthier lifestyle, you must make alterations to what you’re currently doing in your daily routine. Some of these changes are going to be monumental, such as switching to a healthy gut diet plan. Others are small alterations that will be rather easy.

We want to help you live a healthier lifestyle. However, we can’t force-feed you sweet potatoes and inject you with probiotics. All we can do is find ways to make these things more appealing to you so that you can easily adapt them into your wellness regimen. Here are some small changes that can make big differences for those who want to live a healthier lifestyle.

Cut Down the Screen Time

We are hooked to our screens. So much so that our addiction is already altering future generations. Thanks to too much screen time, Our children are evolving to have changes to their biological structure.

Younger generations are beginning to sprout bone spurs (exostosis) at the back of their skull 2. Experts believe 18-30 year-olds are experiencing these changes due to staring down at smart devices for a majority of the day.

The analysists stated,

“The higher numbers of individuals with EEOP in the 18-30 age group out of all cases examined raises concern about the future musculoskeletal health of this population and suggests a potential avenue for prevention intervention through posture improvement education.”

– Scientific Reports via Nature

Furthermore, our dependency on smartphones is hurting our mental health. One study found a direct link between phone addiction and depression 3.

Our gut health and mental health are connected through the gut-brain-axis. Therefore, excessive screen time can impede our mental state, ultimately altering our gut biome.

Look at your smart device and see how much screen time you do. Shave a half-hour off every day.

Read More Books

Need something to fill the void of less screen time? You did just pick up 30 extra minutes. Try picking up a book. Reading is a lost art, and it’s a real travesty.

There are many reasons to read. The most important is that reading is mentally stimulating. This activity stimulates muscles in your brain, sparking different regions. Reading can cause connections between memory recall, emotions, and creativity.

In addition, reading educates you. While we like to unwind with fiction, try to throw in a wellness book every now and again. The more you know about your body and how to live a healthier lifestyle, the more likely you are to follow through with advice.

Switch Up Your Protein Once a Week

Variety is the spice of life. It’s also crucial to live a healthier lifestyle. A primary reason that society is overweight is due to its dependency on omega-6 fatty acids.

Omega-6 fatty acids are found in red meat and dairy products. While they are necessary for vital functions, we consume too many of them. To live a healthier lifestyle, you must tip the fatty acid intake scale in favor of omega-3s.

One analysis of the omega discrepancies noted that humans evolved with a 1:1 ratio 4. We now hover around a 17:1 ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s. That would knock anyone off a seesaw. Experts noted we can still have more omega-6s than omega-3s, just a lot less than what we’re doing.

They noted,

“A ratio of 2-3/1 suppressed inflammation in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, and a ratio of 5/1 had a beneficial effect on patients with asthma, whereas a ratio of 10/1 had adverse consequences.”

– Biomed Pharmacother.

What’s alarming is that consequences begin at a 10:1 ratio. Since we’re at 17:1, that explains why chronic illness is running rampant across the West.

Make sure you are getting organic, free-range, and hormone-free meat sources. Otherwise, your body has to contend with pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones. These will inevitably wreak havoc on the systems of those who want to live a healthier lifestyle.

Go on a Vacation

You work hard. It’s time to play hard, too. If you want to live a healthier lifestyle, you need enrichment. Don’t spend your hard-earned money on another device. Invest in an experience.

Many of us forgo vacation time. There are 768 million wasted vacation days every year 5. We don’t even staycation. Instead, we go to work and let the employers exploit our donated time.

Find work-life-balance. Look at your calendar and schedule a vacation. At least start actively looking for spots and daydreaming. These sorts of activities will give you things to look forward to and make life seem to have more meaning.

Get an Essential Oil Diffuser

This tip is one of the easiest ways to live a healthier lifestyle. You don’t need to do anything. The diffuser does all the work!

An analysis of this scent interpreter stated,

“The olfactory system provides numerous functions to humans, influencing ingestive behavior, awareness of environmental hazards and social communication 6.”

– PLoS One

When we inhale essential oils, volatile molecules named terpenes trigger neural tissues in our olfactory bulb. These influential phytochemicals are able bypass all other systems and communicate directly to the brain. That’s why many find essential oils useful in improving mood, immune system, and sleep patterns.

Get to Know Your Cosmetics

We probably don’t realize how many toxins are in our cosmetics. One study found that we put 515 synthetic ingredients onto our skin on a daily basis 7. How do you know which one these are? They’re usually the names you can’t pronounce.

There are fillers, like the parabens family, that are endocrine disruptors. Synthetic ingredients are a huge influence on the rise of infertility. Parabens also bad for the environment. These synthetic molecules are not breaking down in our water supply and ending up in the stomachs of wildlife 8!

Parabens are a small example of all the problems hiding in our beauty items. So, get to know your labels. Learn a bunch of toxic beauty ingredients to look out for and take notes. When you run out of this item, try to find a replacement more conducive to living a healthier lifestyle.

Walk More

We sit 6.5 hours per day 9. That’s on top of the supposed eight hours of sleep we’re supposed to get. So, sedentary time in a 24-hour period is almost 15 hours. 62.5% of our time is spent not being active!

Find more opportunities to get up and move. Go for laps around the building at work. Walk or bike to a get-together with friends. Do whatever you can to get more active.

While moving about your office is a nice change of pace, try to take that stroll outside. We need more sunshine in our life. Sun is our primary source of Vitamin D.

Vitamin D is an essential vitamin that regulates many of our gastric functions. That’s why Vitamin D is one of the best supplements for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). So, going walking more will help you live a healthier lifestyle by improving fitness, Vitamin D intake, and gut health!

Swap Out Your Oils

Look at labels for hydrogenated vegetable oils. These are the lowest quality oils you can purchase. They’re like the baby carrots of oils. It’s just the leftovers. That’s why vegetable oils are used in everything from fried foods in fast food joints to potato chips in the snack aisle.

Research shows that those who follow a Mediterranean Diet have a longer life expectancy 10. One of their dietary staples is extra virgin olive oil. So, we need to act more like them with the types of oils they use.

Some of the healthiest oils for cosmetics, salad dressings, and cooking include:

• Coconut Oil
  
• Medium-Chain Triglycerides (MCT) Oil
  
• Avocado Oil
  
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  
• Ghee
  
• Grass-Fed Butter
  

Find a high-quality fruit oil that’s not in a plastic bottle. Make sure the product is cold-pressed oil and not extracted with the use of solvents. You’ll notice the difference in taste and how you feel.

Meditate

With less screen time, you’ll have more me-time. The ultimate form of self-care is to try meditation. Meditating allows you to unplug from the hectic chatter in your life. That’s why studies show meditation helps lower stress 11.

Meditation helps gut health, too. When you meditate, you channel inward. Your mind will find areas of your body that feel “off.” By working on your intuitiveness, you might recognize a red flag long before your next checkup.

Starting a meditation practice can be difficult. So, start off with five minutes for a couple of days. Sit up straight and focus on your breaths. Every few days, start tacking on an extra minute. Work your way up to 15 minutes of meditation.

Get a Get Test

“Father of Medicine” Hippocrates said it best, “all disease begins in the gut.” Our gut biome is home to trillions of cells. While most of them work in unison to help us live a healthier lifestyle, they sometimes need help.

A lifetime of diet choices, inactivity, and toxic beauty ingredients can do a number on your beneficial stomach bacteria. In turn, inflammation sparks up, destroying the gut lining. This chain of events allows for pathogenic intestinal flora to set up shop in your microbiome.

Figure out who these buggers are. Get a gut health test. From there, we can determine which probiotic bacteria you need. With those results, we can offer you a custom probiotic supplement that will help you live a healthier lifestyle!

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