If you are at all interested in your health, well-being, and overall sense of vitality, you’ve probably noticed that there are hundreds, if not thousands of different practices that frequently get recommended in order to help optimize health and fitness, among other things.
Increasingly these days, it’s important to be mindful of our health and well-being, in light of things such as surgical complications which can include side-effects such as with hernia mesh repair, where 8 percent of patients develop infection.
And, of course, the global COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest overall reminder of the importance of health and well-being, in recent times.
But how do you get started on this path without becoming overwhelmed?
Here are a few simple holistic health practices that everyone should begin with.
Begin breathing right
Generally speaking, it’s probably fair to say that the vast majority of people give little – if any – thought to their breath one way or the other.
After all, we all breathe automatically, right? So what’s there to pay attention to?
Well, the answer is – a lot.
In the highly acclaimed recent book by James Nestor, entitled “Breath,” the author outlines how modern life has caused a huge raft of bad breathing habits and physiological conditions which can be amended in most cases by adopting different habits – but which are devastating while they remain in place.
Simply breathing through your nose rather than your mouth can have tremendous health benefits. The book even details accounts of a singing instructor who managed to give severe emphysema patients a new lease of life, by helping to strengthen their inhalation and exhalation muscles.
Keep a regular sleep schedule, and be sure to get enough rest each night
Chronic sleep deprivation, and restless sleep, are at epidemic levels and have been for some time – and the culprits include a wide variety of things ranging from modern artificial lighting, to the rising prevalence of shift work, and the fact that it’s now common for many people to eat close to bedtime.
As detailed in his book “Why We Sleep,” however, the sleep researcher Matthew Walker considers this to be a travesty.
Even just moderate sleep deprivation for about a week, he explains, can so badly disrupt blood sugar control that anyone tested by a doctor in that condition would be officially diagnosed as prediabetic.
Keep a regular sleep schedule, and be sure to get enough rest each night. It’s undeniably one of the pillars of good health.
Eat to nourish your gut microbiome
There are many different ways to eat, with advocates of all sorts of different diets making some quite lofty claims.
One thing that is increasingly being found, however, is that the gut microbiome – in other words the colony of microorganisms that live in our guts – seems to be at the heart of good health in a variety of different ways.
So, how do we nourish a healthy gut microbiome? The answer appears to be by consuming the broadest possible range of plant foods each week, regardless of whether you are a vegetarian or an omnivore.