By Beth HooverStudy after study has confirmed that healthy living and exercise can increase your life expectancy. However, it is perhaps more important that they can also improve the quality of your life, particularly during the later years. After all, it is not enough to simply survive for a long time. We want to actually live, possessing good health and remaining active for the entire term.
The greatest single action you can take to improve both the length and the quality of your life is to give up tobacco, especially cigarettes. Smoking takes years off your life, increasing your risk of cancer, osteoporosis, heart attack, and stroke. It can also have significant impact on how well you live. Respiratory problems can leave you unable to walk to your mailbox without gasping for air, or tied to oxygen just to breathe normally.
Exercise and proper diet are also important and often the benefits are so inter-dependent that it is difficult to rank one as more critical than the other. Exercise helps with weight control, but it is beneficial to the respiratory and cardiovascular systems as well. Yet a diet high in fat and cholesterol can undo many of its benefits by leading to clogged arteries and other circulatory issues.
Those at risk for osteoporosis would do well to establish an exercise program. There is no need to join a gym or buy expensive equipment unless you want to do so. Walking is an excellent exercise, and can be done by anyone. If you have been sedentary, start slow. If your limit has been walking down the driveway to the mailbox, tomorrow walk as far as the end of your next door neighbor’s property. Then gradually increase the distance by one house. Before you know it, you will be walking around the block, and then farther.
Proper diet and exercise can reduce your risk for adult onset diabetes. The overwhelming majority of diabetics diagnosed as adults are overweight and led sedentary lifestyles. Many times, diabetes can be controlled simply by losing weight, following a sensible eating plan, and increasing activity levels.
Healthy living and exercise are crucial to having a life that is the best it can be. Goals of increased energy levels, fewer illnesses, and extra years to enjoy your family are best reached by taking steps early. However, it is never too late to make changes that can have significant benefits.
Common sense health is necessary for you to look and feel your very best. Do you believe that? If so, which healthy living health guidelines do you follow?
Or maybe, like most people, you’re confused about how to be healthy. For great guidelines for healthy living click the link to CommonSenseHealth.com.
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