Put Health at the Top of Your “To Do” List

There are so many things in most people’s life that they “should do” right now:

Spend more time with friends and family; Protect all of your documents that contain personal information, shred sensitive ones, change all of your passwords; clean your gutters, dryer vents, chimneys, garbage disposals, and carpets, flush out your hot water heater, test alarms; check oil and coolant levels, air filter, tire pressure, wipers, battery, lights, and belts, keep tires rotated; consider exchange-traded funds, mutual funds, stocks, bonds, Treasury notes, high-yield savings accounts, CDs, real estate investment trusts and cryptocurrencies; Make a budget, decide new goals, clean out your purse, set goals, wake up early; Make your bed, learn something new every week, organize your computer files, review your expenses; Build your network, find a mentor, take classes to improve your skills, ask for feedback, broadcast your accomplishments, be a model employee, solve problems, speak up, project confidence, and volunteer…

Oh, and make sure you are lowering your stress. 

I like the old Geritol ad from the 1970s that said, “When you’ve got your health you’ve got just about everything.” If you agree, put health on the top of that list above, including eating better, exercising more, and sleeping better. Personally, I’m going to focus mostly on exercise as we still are suffering from poor data and poor research practices in nutrition.

If you haven’t been paying attention, Good Energy by Casey Means is the latest nutrition fad. Means and her husband are advising Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is highlighting America’s public health crisis in speeches and media interviews across the country. Both political parties seem to agree on the book’s analyses and recommendations (Means recently testified in the U.S Senate). 

Evil doers in the book include synthetic pesticides, ultra-processed foods, microplastics, 80,000 toxins used by industry, heavy metals like aluminum, average Americans who only walk “a paltry” 3500 steps a day and don’t get enough sleep, doctors who make too many errors, parents not getting their kids outdoors enough, Moderna, the American Dietetic Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Stanford who taught her nothing she needed to know.

I’m still reading the book. Meanwhile, here are some proven practices that can improve your health and should be at the top of your to-do list:

Sleep

The amount of sleep you need gets a little less as you age but 8 hours is a good number. Diet and exercise play a role in sleep. 

Exercise

Beyond the benefits of warding off disease, you will both look better and feel a lot better with some exercise. It’s about how much time you can carve out for different kinds of exercise. As one lady told me about meditation, “if you can’t spare a half an hour to meditate, do it for an hour.”

Weights—Particularly if you are over 30, the need for weightlifting increases as you get older. Start with lighter weights and no matter what exercise you’re doing, do it slowly. Don’t jerk weights. For me, it’s once a week and for about half an hour.

Warmups before and stretching after—Learn how to warm up before any kind of exercise and how to stretch afterward. These help to avoid a lot of injuries.

Aerobics and anaerobics—Make sure you include two kinds of exercises, aerobic and anaerobic. Anaerobic is high intensity exercise that gets you out of breath and can include running, biking, swimming, jumping rope, or running stairs. 

Aerobic exercises can include the same types of exercise, just done slower and, although you may be breathing hard, you are not out of breath. If you have access, ellipticals, stationary bikes, and other machines are great for when you can’t go outdoors to walk or jog. Try to do these at least twice a week for 30 minutes each.

Core—Core exercises are great for making you look better (around the waist) and help with back pain. Even 10 to 20 minutes once a week will help.

Balance—If you are over 60 or have balance issues, balance exercises can help. In fact, five minutes a week will help.

Stand on one foot, keep your back straight and bend over and touch the top of a water bottle that’s on the ground. Do this 10 times with each foot. Also, put one foot in front of the other, cross your arms, close your eyes and count slowly to 100. Switch feet positions. These just take a few minutes.

As for Good Energy, I’m intrigued by the idea that continuous inflammation is a key problem, but I think there are too many culprits that are insufficiently evidenced-based.