2nd Hand Advice

Some of my thoughts on health, summarized into 8 points, in no particular order.  These are the essential things I’ve learned in my life from personal experience, observation and study.

None of this is rocket science.  Some things just bear repeating.   Just things we should pay attention to. 

1. Diet – you are what you eat.  If you consume bad stuff, your body becomes a human trash can.  High fat, low fiber, high carb diets are bad, period.
2. Exercise – low exercise and sedentary lifestyles accelerate all the other maladies.
3. Sleep/Rest – a time of healing.  When the body gets no rest, it’s like running a motor at high RPMs for a long time.  Eventually, it shuts down.
4. Checkups – most things are designed to run a long time.  Even our bodies.  However, an illness or hidden medical condition sitting in the body for a long time without detection and corrective action, has a rotting effect.We all know what its like to leave food in the frig and bread in the bread box.  Eventually, it molds and rots.  That’s what happens when you fail to get checkups.  Go to the doctor.  The single most important thing is to get blood work.  The blood reveals just about anything and everything that’s wrong with you.
5. Stress Management – high stress is difficult to detect.  Most people don’t know when their bodies are under high stress and mistake a condition of high stress as normal.  I am so curious about our seniors who have lived long lives and what they do to stay around so long.  Most I’ve heard speak on longevity say they have little or no stress in their lives.
6. Awareness – low awareness means ignorance to your condition, or worse, denial about it.  Lack of awareness is as dangerous as any of the other risk factors.  Most people operate with the “lights” half on, at half strength.  They don’t realize life could be enjoyed with the “lights” all the way up at full strength.  Low awareness is like trying to find a pin you dropped in a room with the lights way down.
7. Commitment – low commitment means you accept a condition of weakness and vulnerability.  With no commitment, you keep digging a whole and it gets deeper and deeper.  You practice bad habits and not only become very good at it, but you accelerate the already negative downward spiral in your health.You’re in an extreme danger zone if you don’t want to be healed or are neither motivated nor committed to understanding your risk factors and taking remedial steps.
8. Action – it’s now obvious if you practice bad, risky habits and have low awareness and commitment to positive change, you will take no action.  If you know these things, yet take no action, why bother.  Get up right now and take action.