Health and Lifestyle
HEALTH AND LIFESTYLE
Introduction:
A healthy lifestyle is best described as a balance between our physical and mental health.
Good nutrition, daily exercise, and adequate sleep are the foundations of healthy living. A healthy lifestyle keeps you fit, energetic, and at reduced risk for disease. According to WHO (World Health Organization), Healthy living is a way of living that helps you enjoy life to its fullest. Health is not just about avoiding a disease or illness. It is about physical, mental, and social well-being too.
When you adopt a healthy lifestyle, you provide a more positive role model for other people in your family, particularly children. You will also create a better environment for them to grow up in. By helping them to follow a healthier lifestyle, you will be contributing to their well-being and setting an example that they can follow now and in the future.
Maintaining a Proper Diet:
Consuming a healthy diet throughout the years helps to prevent not only malnutrition in all its forms but also a wide range of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and conditions. However, increased production of processed foods, rapid urbanization, and fast-moving lifestyles have led to a shift in dietary patterns. People are now consuming more energy-rich foods, fats, free sugars, and salt/sodium, and many people do not eat enough fruits, vegetables, and other dietary fibers such as whole grains.
The exact make-up of a diversified, balanced, and healthy diet will vary depending on individual characteristics (e.g. age, gender, lifestyle, and degree of physical activity), cultural context, locally available foods, and dietary customs. However, the basic principles of what constitutes a healthy diet remain the same.
Exercising:
Calories accompany the nutrition in food. Your lifestyle should support a constant healthy weight for normal daily activity. You should always do muscle-strengthening exercises, such as weight lifting, along with aerobic exercises, such as walking or running.
Regularly practicing yoga can help to improve your health by increasing flexibility, and strength, and reducing the symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress.
Studies show that exercise can treat mild to moderate depression as effectively as antidepressant medication — but without the side effects! As one example, a recent study done by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that running for 15 minutes a day or walking for an hour reduces the risk of major depression by 26%. In addition to relieving depression symptoms, research also shows that maintaining an exercise schedule can prevent you from relapsing.
Exercise is a powerful depression fighter for several reasons. Most importantly, it promotes all kinds of changes in the brain, including neural growth, reduced inflammation, and new activity patterns that promote feelings of calm and well-being. It also releases the ‘happy hormone’ A.K.An endorphins-which are powerful chemicals in your brain that energize your spirits and make you feel good. Finally, exercise can also serve as a distraction, allowing you to find some quiet time to break out of the cycle of negative thoughts that feed depression.
Sleeping:
Daily metabolism perpetuates the decline and rejuvenation of cellular tissue and the body’s self-repair takes place when you are asleep. Memory consolidation and appetite regulation also occur during this time of reduced physical activity. Seven to nine hours of sleep per night is considered optimum for most individuals for a healthy lifestyle.
An internal “body clock” regulates your sleep cycle, controlling when you feel tired and ready for bed or refreshed and alert. This clock operates on a 24-hour cycle known as the ’circadian rhythm’. After waking up from sleep, you’ll become increasingly tired throughout the day. These feelings will peak in the evening leading up to bedtime.
This sleep drive — also known as ‘sleep-wake homeostasis’ — may be linked to adenosine, an organic compound produced in the brain. Adenosine levels increase throughout the day as you become increasingly tired and then the body breaks down this compound when you are asleep.
Light also influences the circadian rhythm. The brain contains a special region of nerve cells known as the hypothalamus, and a cluster of cells in the hypothalamus called the ‘suprachiasmatic nucleus’ which processes signals when the eyes are exposed to natural or artificial light. These signals help the brain determine whether it is day or night.
As natural light disappears in the evening, the body will release melatonin, a hormone that induces drowsiness. When the sun rises in the morning, the body will release the hormone known as cortisol which promotes energy and alertness.
It is said that it is easy to pick up bad habits but it is very difficult to break them. The issue of a healthy lifestyle is true, a matter of concern yet people turn a blind eye to living a balanced lifestyle. They lack consistency and determination.
To lead a healthy lifestyle, is it important that you take one step at a time. We can only notice the benefits when we stay consistent and on track. But taking the first step is the most difficult hurdle. Once we are past that, there’s nothing we can’t achieve with a little bit of consistency and determination!
Happy Living!
This article was written by Abhishri Srivastava of The Phonetic House
