Many have attested to the saying- laughter is the best medicine, as it may be true in most cases. By laughing, you tend to forget about your problems and ailments even just for a while. But deeper than this observable fact, experts say that laughing or joking around may protect the heart by really getting your blood flowing. Laughing and or smiling are not too hard to accomplish either. It takes only one muscle to smile as opposed to a hundred plus muscles to work up just to frown.
Joke around and you’re not only making the other person laugh but you’re also helping him out to exercise his heart and regulate his blood flow. A hearty laugh can even clear your lungs of any dislodged foreign object there is. It paves for a clearer air way to make you be able to breathe better.
If you’re not much of a joker or a jester, there are still a lot of different ways to achieve this. Rent a Will Ferrel or Jim Carrey movie, TiVo Ellen, or go watch a circus act, or make fun of your self, or do anything that will incite maximum laughter.
Laugh ’til you drop. It’s healthy.
Remember your parents telling you to sleep after lunch when you were a kid? And you thought that sleeping and taking naps are just for babies and kids alike and may not be applicable to you as a working adult anymore?! Think again.
Sleeping has long been considered one of the greatest sources of one’s strength together with eating healthy foods like fruits and vegetables. For growing children, sleep has long been established as essential to their bone growth. Isn’t it true that kids who sleep in longer are often taller than their peers and they tend to be stronger than them, too? Same goes for older people who are in their 70’s and 80’s. They need to be sleeping more like a baby to recharge lost energy as this habit will make them less whine over stress and this will even help in making them alert despite their old age.
As for you who fall in the category in between, get those precious zzZzZZZZZzzzzs. Studies show that skimping on sleep may double your risk of heart disease.
To protect your health, aim for seven to eight hours a night. Consider it your excuse to sleep in!
Time to tuck in!
Have you been that one who have tried every dieting fad just to lose weight? Or maybe, the other way around. Have you ever been that someone who has tried a lot of proper diet management tips to gain weight?! And either way, you achieved it for a while but not long after, you bounced back to your same old routine, same old weight. You’ve managed yet again to go on the ever infamous yo-yo dieting.
Yo-yoing is actually found to be unhealthy for anyone. Researches have found that yo-yoing can not only be frustrating but it also makes you loose your self-confidence.
Your body adjusts to your every gain and every losing of weight. Your skin, for one, is stretched back and forth, causing stretch marks by accommodating the change of the mass of your over-all body muscles. This is just an example for the visible changes. A lot of other things may happen internally to the body which may cause far greater damage.
Yo-yo no more. If your weight tends to fluctuate by at least 10 pounds a year, year after year, your heart could suffer. Researchers believe yo-yoing lowers levels of good high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol.
Stick with sensible eating habits- not the latest fad plan.
There are practically a lot of stressors that can trigger depression. Not able to get the promotion you really worked hard for or not being able to make it through the Bar exams or breaking up with your boyfriend or your parents getting a divorce are just a few of the many common causes of depression. Like stress, depression is not healthy for you. But unlike stress, this state is far more complex to get out off. Simply put, depression is the worse version of stress and recent studies show that more women are often affected with it compared to men because women are more governed by their emotions.
Depressed women are four times more likely to have heart attacks. Why? The blues may trigger inflammation and may lead to blood clots.
More often than not, you can get over stress through relaxing and meditation. Depression on the other hand requires more of a clearer psyche to function better and be able to think better. Emotions are often playing a larger role in this state of being. Heart aches, failures, rejections are often the switch buttons for this.
If stress in itself is already not healthy, how much more of depression?
You wouldn’t want to let yourself go through it. Treat depression.
You eat two plates-full every meal, you snack on large servings of oily fries and burgers, you substitute water with soda, and you don’t want to be moving at all, much more exercise! There is only one way for you to go if this is how you’re living. You are subjecting yourself to be a candidate for a major heart disease! And it won’t take long for you to get there if you keep this up.
Unhealthy lifestyle can cost you a lot. It can even cost you your life.
Undo the damage. Doctors used to think heart disease was irreversible, but now they say it’s possible to erase past health sins. For example, researchers say good High Density Lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol can sweep away any harmful Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol you built up during your fast-food phase.
Eating is not bad as it is. But eating way more than you should is. Learn how to control yourself from bingeing. Cut back slowly on your food intake and later on, replace your diet with a more healthy one. To top this, don’t be a sloth. Move around. This will help your body burn more fats you’ve stored.
The best way to boost HDL? Regular exercise.