The 6 Best Ways to Optimize Your Health This Year

1) Eat Right

The food you eat matters. The best advice I have on food is always focused on putting food into your body that provides a benefit for your health. If you use that as your guiding principle when eating you will be doing a great job eating a healthy diet. Processed food and high amounts of sugar do not fit into the category of improving your health. If you find yourself completing most of your grocery shopping in the middle aisles of the grocery store you need to reevaluate your food choices. The majority of the food you want to eat is along the perimeter of the store. You want fresh produce (organic to avoid pesticides when available) and quality meat (think grass fed and free range if possible) to be filling your grocery cart. Anything else make sure you read those ingredient lists! If it has words you do not know, do not eat it. If it contains added colors and dyes, do not eat it. Bottom line, eat real food not chemically produced food. I do not care if the FDA says it is safe, if it does not contain food, do not put it into your body. Always look at the sugar content also, they put sugar, and a lot of it, in our food. I am way less worried about fat calories than I am about grams of sugar.

Simple right? Wrong. It is hard, I get it. I went through my own “learning how to actually eat food” journey. It isn’t easy. We are addicted to sugar. We love our junk food. We love soda. We also love to have energy and feel our best and unfortunately we can not have it all. Make slow changes. You do not have to immediately give up everything and eat just celery and bananas. You will have to make changes though. Set achievable goals for yourself, and rewards for your success. Example, if you give up soda and start drinking water and tea instead you get to go see a movie with a friend. Start trying new foods. It will take time for your body to adjust from eating processed to eating real food (addiction remember) but keep trying. Search the internet for free healthy meal plans, recipes, and cookbooks to inspire you and teach you how to eat. Find the joy in cooking your own food. It takes time, and I struggle with being too busy to cook also- but as I learn I get faster, have more time efficient meals to draw from, and involve the whole family in the process. The kitchen is supposed to be a place to gather, talk, and make our own food. Let’s take back our kitchens this year and eat food to improve our health.

2) Think Right

Oh those negative thoughts, always holding us back from the life we want to live. I listened to 2 audiobooks this summer titled No Excuses and The Confidence Gap. Both are free from audible if you feel inclined to listen to them as you go about your life (for me I listen while I fold laundry, drive to work, and while walking/running). These books changed my entire attitude about life and what I can achieve. The takeaways from them were- we are responsible for our life. The decisions we make, the lifestyle we choose to have, the food we choose to eat, the relationships we choose to have, the work we choose to pursue, and the way we choose to spend our time is ours to own. We need to figure out what is not ideal in our life, and what we did to cause it or what we can do to change it. We are in control and need to not blame others for our misfortune but to learn from mistakes and to grow and change as needed.

Negative thoughts are the way our brain was trained to think for survival. Our brain naturally thinks of the worst case scenario to protect us from perceived danger. This was great for keeping us from being killed by wild animals but today mostly just keeps you from doing things that you might fail at. Our brain tells us we could never speak in public, pursue the job we dream of, write a book, date that person. The Confidence Gap teaches that these thoughts are normal, we can not prevent them from happening, but we can learn to manage and deal with them. One strategy I find helpful is to literally thank your mind for its negative opinion and then keep pursuing what you want to achieve. Do not let your thoughts hold you back, they are just thoughts. Thoughts do not actually do anything, they are just words and only hold meaning if you give them meaning. Similarly, fear is just a feeling, and a feeling also only has meaning if you give it meaning. The book teaches you how to recognize what fear feels like, and not to get rid of it (not really possible) but to acknowledge it, make room for it, and use it to fuel you instead of hold you back. Life changing stuff.

3) Poop Right

Poop. There I said it. Poop, Poop, Poop. Let’s get over avoiding the topic of poop and instead talk about how important how your poop is for your health. How should your poop look you may be wondering? Poop should be easy to get out (mushy like toothpaste) and mostly be light brown in color. You should not have trouble feeling like you got it all out and it should also not be hard to control (diarrhea and worry about where the bathroom is everywhere you go). You should also poop at least once daily to get rid of the waste your body does not need. Simply pooping daily isn’t enough to know you have a healthy digestive tract and gut. It also matters how long it takes for your food to journey from going in your mouth to exiting on the other end. This is called gut transit time and although it varies for each person ideally should be between 12 and 24 hours. Any faster than that usually means you are not absorbing enough of the nutrients from your food and any slower can mean toxins are building up in your system. It is easy to measure your personal transit time by eating something that will be very visible in your poop. A cup of whole kernel corn or beets will be easy to identify when they come back out. If your poop is not measuring up to the ideal standards there are some things you can do to improve. Clean up your diet, get rid of the processed food and replace it with fiber-rich fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and drink plenty of water during the day. Ensuring you have a balanced gut colonization of good bacteria through probiotic supplements can also help with poop problems. The other avenue to consider with gut issues is food allergies. A food elimination diet can help you determine if food is causing you digestive issues.

4) Move Right

Moving your body every day can help transform your health. Exercising will lead to weight loss through calorie burning, will strengthen your muscles, will improve your balance, and will cause your body to release endorphins to make you feel happier. When starting a new exercise regimen, start slow. Jumping off the couch you have been sitting on for 5 years and trying to run 2 miles will quickly land you back on the couch. Setting personal and realistic goals, including rewards for achieving them, will get you on the right track. Making small changes that grow over time will eventually lead to big results. Ideas to get started are to walk more every day, find a work out video you enjoy doing (usually have beginner moves for getting started), invest a little money into some hand weights, kettlebells, or a dumbbell to start strength training, learn some yoga moves to improve your strength and flexibility. Having a partner to hold you accountable for your desired work out regimen helps keep you motivated.

5) Sleep Right

It is important to have a good sleeping environment. Ideal conditions are a dark room, quiet or ambient noise such as a fan or sound machine (waves, wind, rain), and a place with few distractions (sleep and sex for the bedroom- watch TV somewhere else). You should also shut down technology before bed. The brain needs some non-stimulation time to prepare for sleep. Read a book, drink some herbal tea, talk with your spouse, take a bath or shower. Do something to unwind and tell your body it is time for bed. Routine before bed is as important for adults as it is children. We need to have things we do that helps us change gears and get prepared for sleep. Limiting alcohol, caffeine, and sugar intake during the day will help to avoid sleep disturbances at night. If you are someone who has trouble quieting your thoughts at night, make a list of things to do or journal before bed to clear your head. Sleeping and waking at the same time every day, yes on the weekend too, will keep your sleep cycle more consistent.

6) Medicate Right

Medications are important and life-saving at times, but being over medicated is becoming an American trend. We take a prescription for every pain, every feeling of sadness or anxiety, for weight loss, for digestive issues… the list goes on and on. This is not necessarily wrong, but what is wrong with our current health system and patient mindset is that every symptom needs to be resolved with a medication. We are now so focused on fixing each individual problem that we are losing sight of the whole body picture and that each symptom is really a sign of a larger problem in the body. Many problems can be fixed by backtracking and figuring out what we are doing with our lifestyle, food, exposure to allergens, and toxic burden that may be causing the symptoms we have. I am a pharmacist and I know a lot about medications and would never advocate to stop your medications or to avoid taking medications. What I am hoping people will do is change their attitude about medications. They are not the answer to our health problems. To be healthy and live better we need to change ourselves and how we eat, think and live. Follow the recommendations of your doctor, by all means, take prescriptions to help treat your health problems-often they are necessary but do not stop there. You need to find out what is leading to your sickness. Are you eating the wrong foods? Are you not dealing with stress positively? Are you not exercising your body? Are you lacking meaningful time with friends and family? Do you need to supplement your diet with vitamins/minerals/protein because you are lacking? What can you start doing to fix your body? It is your body, you need to take ownership of it and take control of the care you give it. Your doctor cannot fix you if you are unwilling to do the work to get better. Also if you take medications, you should make sure they are not interacting with one another (prescription, vitamins, over the counter medications, and herbal supplements). Many prescriptions can cause collateral damage to your body which may include nutritional/vitamin deficiencies or potential side effects. Consult with myself or your local pharmacist to ensure everything you take is safe to combine together and that your body is tolerating the medications.

Your Health Matters!

Tiffany Herring
PharmD

**THIS AUTHOR AND SITE INTENDS ONLY TO SHARE INFORMATION AND NOT TO DIAGNOSE OR TREAT DISEASE.