Tuesday, March 25, 2014

1. Avoid environmental toxins

In our list of 8 items to maximize your health, we'll start with Avoid environmental toxins.

I'm not going to get into genmod corn or fluoride in your water, you don't need to be a chemist or read an obscure scientific paper...just use that thing between your ears for more than a place to put your hat.

If you smoke, stop.  You know it's not good for you, you don't need statistics and warning labels.  Smoking is bad: stop.

If you're in your workshop sanding or playing with your hobbies or painting a room, wear a mask.  If you're spraying hairspray or deodorant, don't breathe.  If fact, why don't you quit using that spray can stuff altogether?  Common sense...if you're coughing, then stuff that's not good for you is getting in your lungs.  Yes, masks are inconvenient.  So is emphysema.

Wash food before you eat it.  You know that farmers use herbicides and pesticides.  You know those are poisons.  The only reason they use them is to kill things.  


Stop using pesticides and herbicides yourself.  Yes, we all want a green lawn without crabgrass.  But the stuff you're spreading is poison.  And you were out there spraying it on your lawn, wearing your flipflops, with the grandkids coming over to play.

Yes, I know the label says "safe for humans"....and they used to treat headaches with leeches.

Poison: they make it to kill things.  Stay away from it.  Keep your kids and grandkids and pets away from it.

If your work requires some type of personal protective gear, use it.  Not just when the boss is watching, but all the time

You can eliminate a huge amount of toxins just by paying attention and using your common sense. 

Live well, my friends.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Show me eight fingers.

You don't even need your thumbs.  Eight fingers are all you really need to count off the big ticket items to optimal health.

In upcoming weeks, we'll go over them individually, but let's start by putting our list together.

1.  Avoid environmental toxins. Quit smoking, wear a mask when around dust, wash food before eating, that kind of thing.

2.  Treat underlying medical conditions. Diabetes, obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure....whatever it is, take care of it.

3.  Exercise.  Every single day.  You don't have to run a marathon, walking counts.  But you have to move, stretch, loosen up the muscles, get the heart rate up.

4.  Eat well.  We're not going to get into all that organic or vegetarian stuff here, but eat a balanced diet of foods that don't come from factories.

5.  Keep mentally stimulated.  Don't spend all night watching tv or clicking "like" on facebook.  Learn something new.  Learn to play a musical instrument, memorize a poem, get a new hobby...something you're doing instead of something the people on tv are doing.

6.  Get quality sleep.  We posted a couple weeks ago....sleep restores you physically and mentally.  It's important.  

7.  Manage your stress.  Yoga, golf, bowling, workout, whatever.  Stress isn't just mental, it's hard on your body.

8.  Have an active social life.  The numbers are irrefutable, people with an active social life are happier, more engaged, more resistant to depression, live longer and hold off dementia better than their more isolated counterparts.


It's that easy.  It's not magic, there's no prescription or pill.  Just the same common sense stuff your grandmother probably told you.

Live long, my friends and please, live well.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Say it ain't so!

Men are the weaker sex?!?!

According to this compilation from Scientific American, with the exception of muscle mass, men are weaker across almost every criterion than women.

Our immune systems are weaker because we have less estrogen.

Males are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders 4-5 times more than females.

We're more susceptible to environmental poisons like lead and plastic.

We die sooner.  Except in Nepal...it's the only country in the world where men live longer than women.  Strange.

And the list goes on and on.  

There are 106 boy babies born for every 100 girl babies....but it doesn't appear that's going to be enough.  Men are going to end up on the endangered species list!

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

One good thing about music,



When it hits you,

you feel no pain.






The use of music in healing goes back as far as Plato and Aristotle.  It's use in our more "scientific" era goes back, at least, a couple hundred years.

More and more, the medical community is beginning to explore the power of music...to ease emotional problems, to lessen anxiety in dementia patients, to reduce chronic pain.

It's everywhere: 


There seems, no end these days, to the positive benefits of music.  In some cases, medical science is beginning to understand how it works.  In other instances they don't have a clue...but the results are statistically significant and the results uncontroversial.

So add some music to your daily essentials:  eat right, sleep well, exercise....and listen to your music.

I'll see you next week.