How to live longer and enjoy it more
Published on: 21st January, 2010
How to live longer and enjoy it more | Related News
Staying healthy doesn’t happen automatically; it takes both conscious and physical effort. It also usually involves some sacrifice, some reordering of priorities and forgoing certain things that would be enjoyable but not good for us. Long-term health is a lifelong investment, but it’s the wise thing to do. Better to invest a little each day in strengthening our bodies than to neglect them and suffer serious health problems.
In health matters, as with many other things in life, God won’t do for us what we can and should do ourselves. He expects us to take care of our bodies, and He usually won’t override the negative consequences when we could have made healthier choices but didn’t.
Ground rules
We’re either building up or tearing down our health daily, according to our choices. There are a host of little things that we do each day, often without really thinking about them, which add up and make a big difference in our current and long-term health.
Thankfully, God has laid out some pretty straightforward rules for staying healthy. These fall into three main categories: spiritual, emotional, and physical. The key to the spiritual aspect is in staying right with Him, in finding and following His plan for our lives as best we can. The key to the emotional aspect is in maintaining a positive attitude, which reduces stress, worry, fear, and other negative emotions, all of which take a toll on our health and happiness. The physical aspect is pretty much summed up in “Eat right, sleep right, exercise right.” Some health experts refer to these as the three pillars of physical health.
“Eat right” comes down to following a few fairly simple guidelines , but not always easy. Changing poor eating habits takes determination and planning, but you’ll probably be surprised at how quickly you develop an appetite for the right kinds of food and lose your appetite for the wrong ones.
“Sleep right” may sound easy enough, but many people these days try to operate with a sleep deficit. It’s true that some people need less sleep than others and that most of us need less sleep as we get older, but the real and perceived pressures of modern living push many of us to try to pack more into our days by sleeping less than the seven or eight hours our bodies need to be in top health. That’s being shortsighted, because we get more out of our waking hours when we’re rested. Plenty of sound, restful sleep stimulates the production and release of the hormone that combats aging.
For people who aren’t in the habit of exercising regularly, that is easy to neglect. It’s hardest to dismiss the need for sleep, because the effects of trying to go without sleep are felt immediately. On the other hand, much like the effects of a poor diet, the bad effects of insufficient exercise can be slower in coming, but without a doubt they will come. Exercise keeps our bodies capable of cleansing and repairing themselves. It also strengthens muscles, bones, and internal organs, and boosts our immune systems. There is scarcely a living cell in our bodies that doesn’t benefit from the right kind of exercise on a regular basis.
Replacing poor health habits with good ones takes determination, study, and planning at first, but the payoff in greater vitality soon makes it self-sustaining; we feel so much better that we want to keep doing the things that make us feel that way.
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