Daily Good Health Maintenance

To live a long life, you need wisdom in your daily good health maintenance for wholesome wellness throughout your life. Your longevity has to be wisely earned through your daily healthy living.

Wisdom is a gift given to man to learn from life. Unlike intelligence, everyone is endowed with that gift. It is only up to an individual to appreciate and recognize that gift.

Learn to appreciate life, irrespective of its conditions, and recognize that aging is a natural phenomenon, and that you can learn valuable lessons even from ill health and suffering if you would change your ways of life and attitudes.

Wisdom is the ability to accept responsibility for your own thoughts and actions. You may not have been blessed with good health, but you have the wisdom to improve or to maintain your good health.

                             Daily Good Health Maintenance

Healthy eating

You eat to live, not live to eat. You become your food, and your food becomes you, because you are what you eat. What you eat and drink becomes your body chemistry. The food you consume is totally responsible for your good health.

Eating determines if you are living in harmony with Nature, which is the key to anti-aging. You need to know the logistics of eating: what to eat, how to eat, when to eat, especially the components of food. Eating is a science, so treat it as such.

Eat only because you are hungry. Maintaining good health requires you to avoid the following types of eating, which are not anti-aging:

· Voluntary eating - subconscious or mechanical eating

· Emotional eating - eating to appease emotions

· Sensory eating - eating to satisfy the senses

If you think you can eat what you want to eat for as long as you want, and still have good health, think again!

Anti-aging foods

Eat only what gives you good health. Understand food criteria. Some of the foods you consume are not foods at all. For foods to be called “foods,” they must meet certain anti-aging criteria:

· Anti-aging foods must be living: they must have enzymes, which are the life in foods. Vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, and proteins are all lifeless unless and until they are activated by enzymes to provide you with good health.

Heating and preserving of food easily destroy food enzymes. Therefore, the way you cook your food and the types of food you consume affect your good health. Processed and preserved foods neither protect nor preserve your good health; they are never anti-aging.

To preserve enzymes in food, eat an anti-aging raw food diet at least a few times a week for optimum digestion for good health.

The Raw Secrets lets you have a taste of a raw food diet. You do not need to be a vegetarian to go on raw for good health maintenance. An occasional raw food diet works wonders for your digestive system, and goes a long way in detoxifying your body for good health too.

· Anti-aging foods must support your internal bowel ecology for ultimate good health. Foods must facilitate absorption of nutrients and disposal of toxic waste to optimize good health.

· Anti-aging foods must not trigger any unfavorable food reaction. Dairy and wheat products may cause allergies. Food reactions and allergies may adversely affect your good health.

· Anti-aging foods must not cause sharp surge of molecular changes in your body, such as a sudden increase in your blood sugar level, or wide fluctuation of neurotransmission, such as caffeine.

· Anti-aging foods must provide calories for your physical activity, but not empty calories, which provide little or no nutrients, such as white sugar and white flour.

   Empty calories do not give you good health. Stop buying processed foods from the supermarket!

· Anti-aging foods must balance your body chemistry in order to neutralize and eradicate free radicals, which are oxidative stresses that destroy your body cells, undermining your good health. Anti-aging foods must balance your body’s acid and alkaline level (no more than 30 percent acid-forming foods; 70 percent or more alkaline-forming foods), which is the key to ultimate good health maintenance.

The Acid Alkaline Diet provides excellent anti-aging information on how to alkalize your diet. Many anti-aging experts believe that a balance of acidity and alkalinity, known as your balanced pH level in your body, will hold the key to good health and longevity.

Eat only quality foods, such as organic foods, for good health. The Ultimate Organic Lifestyle shows you how to go organic to maintain good health,

Eat some of the best anti-aging foods in Nature for good health, and they are as follows:

Chlorella

Chlorella is a green single-cell algae cultivated in fresh water ponds. With its grass-like smell, it has the highest concentration of chlorophyll than any other plant in the world. It is the perfect anti-aging food (more than 20 vitamins and minerals, with the essential eight amino acids) for good health. In addition, it detoxifies by removing toxins and metals from your body. Chlorella is one of the best anti-aging foods for your daily health maintenance.

Wheat grass

Wheat grass is another anti-aging and life-giving food (rich in enzymes) easily assimilated to boost your immune system for good health maintenance. It is one of the best sources of chlorophyll, which provides oxygen for your brain and body tissues for good health.

Wheat grass is rich in chlorophyll. If grown in organic soil, it absorbs as many as 92 of the known 102 anti-aging minerals from the soil. Wheat grass juice is particularly a superior detoxification agent compared to carrot juice. It enhances your digestion, relieves your sore throat, keeps your bowels open, reduces your blood pressure, and improves your cholesterol for good health maintenance.

Get an organic wheat grass growing kit (it comes with full growing and juicing instructions), and grow your own wheat grass from organic wheat grass seeds in your own home. It is easy and non-messy. Have fun and enjoy the anti-aging juice for daily good health.

Digestion for good health

Your digestive system is often most neglected. Remember, good health begins from the inside, while death begins at the digestive system. How you take care of your digestive system may give you good health throughout your life.

Digestion is a process by which your food and drink must be broken down into their smaller parts so that your body can use them to build and nourish cells, as well as to provide energy for your body’s metabolism. Good digestion means good health.

Digestion involves the following processes:

· Mixing of food, chewing, and the chemical breakdown of food into smaller molecules

· Absorption of nutrients by your body

· Conversion of food to energy for your body’s use

· Disposal of waste materials from your body

What may go wrong in that whole process is incomplete digestion.

Underproduction of stomach acid may often lead to incomplete protein digestion, as well as compromised digestion of fats and carbohydrates by the incompetent pancreas.

The presence of any undigested food may cause an overgrowth of unfriendly bacteria in the lower small intestine and in the colon. The toxins from these bacteria may begin to stress the liver, which has to work overtime to remove those toxins produced. Poor digestion of food and absorption of nutrients may cause symptoms such as frequent headaches, chronic fatigue, insomnia, hypertension, anxiety, and even depression. Consistent poor digestion may play havoc with your good health.

Poor digestion may well be the culprit of Cancer, vascular disease, and aging. Therefore, efficiency of digestion should be encouraged for good health.

· Improper dentures, over-sensitive teeth, and diseased gums may affect your ability to chew your food adequately. For good health, always chew your food thoroughly. Eat slowly!

· For good health, eat several smaller and lighter meals, instead of one or two heavy meals. As you grow older, reduced blood supply to your small intestine may adversely affect your capability to absorb nutrients from your food. To compensate for compromised absorption of nutrients from your food, go for anti-aging liquid vitamins for better absorption.

· For good health, do not gulp liquids, or talk, while chewing food.

· For good health, eliminate dairy products from your diet, especially if you are allergic to them.

· For good health, avoid eating too much high-fat food.

· For good health, avoid excessive eating when you are stressed.

· For good health, avoid smoking and too much alcohol drinking, which may irritate your stomach lining.

· For good health, eat a piece of fresh ginger with lemon before a heavy meal to activate your salivary glands to produce enzymes to aid digestion.

· For good health, avoid cold drinks during a meal. Drink at least half an hour before or after a meal, but not during a meal.

· For good health, do not lie down immediately after a meal; do not eat before you go to bed.

· For good health, eat in a relaxed manner in order to efficiently absorb and process nutrients from your food. Do not eat in front of a television or a computer, or while standing, walking, or even driving. Proper eating is an anti-aging, life-giving process; your relaxed posture and consciousness of the smell, taste, and texture of food are conducive to good digestion.

   Did you know . . . you could even meditate while you eat? For more information, go to my website Meditation Techniques.

· For good health, learn to follow Nature’s prescription of suitable times for your meals. Your lunch should be the heaviest meal, since your digestive fire is at its maximum potency. A late dinner may interfere with your body’s mechanism to detoxify and digest food from the day, making you tired the next morning on waking up.

Over 90 percent of Americans suffer from everyday digestive problems, which affect their good health. If you are over 40, you may have become less tolerant of certain foods. As you become more advanced in age, your digestive problems may further aggravate due to reduced production of enzymes, which are essential to your digestion for good health.

Any digestive problems may result in the following:

· Acid reflux
· Candida infection
· Chronic constipation
· Chronic fatigue
· Diarrhea

Elimination for good health

Are you clean inside?

If you are not eliminating approximately the same amount you are eating, then waste matters will begin to pile up in your colon, leading to further impaired digestion, constipation, and improper absorption of remaining nutrients from your fecal matter, weight gain, development of hemorrhoids, bad breath, recurring headaches, frequent colds, and a protruding belly (Even exercise may not help your waistline!).

Worst of all, parasites may begin to live on the “dead” foods in your intestines, creating more toxins, which are absorbed into your bloodstream and transported to different parts of your body. That is often the beginning of disease.

Accumulating decaying food results in constipation, a condition in which less than 100 percent of the food you eat in the last 24 to 48 hours comes out when you go to the bathroom.

If you are in good health, the food you eat should come out within 24 to 48 hours in several bowel movements. That is, if you eat three meals a day, and you have only one bowel movement every other day, you are not regular at all. Even one bowel movement a day is far from adequate. You need a bowel movement for each meal to stay in good health!

Optimum good health, essentially, means three bowel movements everyday! Anything that falls short of that means there is accumulation of decaying food inside your body. That may explain why you have bad breath and body odor. Mouthwash and deodorant merely mask them; they still fester inside your body without your knowing it.

Remember, constipation is not anti-aging; it is not a normal part of aging: the frequency of bowel movements in healthy older population is essentially the same as in the younger population.

The causes of constipation in older population are many:

· Anorectal or colonic disorders - enlarged prostate, tumors

· Diabetes (Read my web page Diabetes.)

· Dietary - inadequate calorie intake, high-fat diet, low-fiber diet, poor fluid in-take, refined foods

· Functional - lack of exercise, poor bowel habits, physical weakness

· Medications - anti-convulsants, antidepressants, antihistamines

· Neurogenic disorders - dementia, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord lesions

· Psychological - depression, confusion, emotional stress (Read my web page Mental Health And Anti-Aging.)

Constipation is one of the most common problems as aging continues. But it does not have to be your problem. In addition to a healthy diet with adequate fiber, you can even use anti-aging exercises to promote regularity for good health:

· While lying on the floor with arms folded across your chest, raise your body to a sitting position without raising your heels. You may bend your knees to alleviate strain on your back.

· Lie on your back with your shoulders flat against the floor. Raise both legs without bending the knees.

· While lying on the floor, with legs flat, bend one knee and pull it against your chest with both hands. Repeat with the other leg. (This exercise is also good for your lower back.)

· While lying on the floor, contract your abdominal muscle by pulling in your stomach, and then relax. Repeat as many times as necessary.

· While sitting, tighten your rectal muscles as if you wanted to have a bowel movement but holding back due to having no toilet facility nearby.

For optimum good health, even if you bowel movements are adequate, you still need internal cleansing, such as occasional fasting - just as you occasionally need to deep clean your toilet in addition to regularly flushing it. Unfortunately, many people do that to their toilets, but not to their bodies.(Read my web page Fasting For Longevity.)

Food temperature is conducive to your digestive health. Food should be neither too hot nor too cold because very hot or very cold food or drinks can cause harm to the tissues of the throat, irritating them sufficiently to predispose it to cancer.

For good health, eat more fruits and vegetables to add enough insoluble fiber to your diet. Gradually add more fiber to your diet to avoid gas pains and bloating, often associated with high-fiber diet.

To improve elimination, it is important to detoxify your body on a regular basis for good health maintenance.

The 10 Step Detox Program is an anti-aging nutrition and diet program designed to cleanse your body of toxins for daily good health maintenance. The Detox Kit contains more than 100 pages of anti-aging nutritional information, with 10 steps to detoxify your body, hair analysis to find out the extent of your toxicity, pH test strips to determine your body/s acid-alkaline level, and vitamins supplements recommended for detoxification. Dr. Janet Starr Hull is a recognized anti-aging expert on alternative healing through nutrition. Learn from the expert the wisdom of healthy longevity and anti-aging living through detoxification to optimize good health.

For more information on detoxification, read DETOX, which is a handy booklet providing down-to-earth techniques to help you cleanse your body.

To help detoxification, try drinking Orgaqnic Ginger Kombucha Mushroom Tea, which not only cleanses your colorn, but also aids your digestion.

                                                Restful sleep

Remember the maxim from Lin Yutang, a famous contemporary Chinese philosopher: A wise man is never busy, and a busy man is never wise. Resting takes the stresses out of life. Take time out to relax - this is anti-aging and longevity wisdom in contemporary living. A centenarian always takes things easy, and is never on the go, because there is always time in the world.

Learn to de-stress yourself through anti-aging meditation. (For more informaiton, go to my website Meditation Techniques. Also, go to my website World Religions on Stress Control to find out how different religions teach you stress control, as well as to get the state-of-the-art STRESS ERASER to erase stress instantly.)

Learn to relax through the state-of-the-art brain music power technology for daily health maintenance.

Brain Music Power employs a new technology of meditation that literally forces you to relax to reduce stress, anxiety, and panic attacks. Watch every aspect of your life skyrocket with your re-discovered inner peace with this instant anti-aging meditation to remove your stresses for daily good health maintenance.

Are you getting enough sleep?

Sleep is a basic human need for good health. Restful sleep, like diet and exercise, is important for your mind and body to function normally. Restful sleep is an essential component of good health.

During sleep, many of your body’s major organs and regulatory systems continue to work actively, and, in fact, some parts of your brain actually increase their activity dramatically, producing more of certain hormones.

An adult needs between more than seven to nine hours of restful sleep per day, that is to say, an average of over eight hours.

It is a myth that older individuals require less sleep.

It is another myth that you can adapt yourself to getting less sleep so that you may have more waking time. If you think you can be a thief of time and outsmart Nature, think again! You will always have to pay back your accumulated “sleep debt” somehow in the form of sleep disorders, which underlie many diseases, including heart attacks and strokes. Fatigue due to insufficient sleep will take its toll somehow and sometime. That is the reality!

In fact, your immune system needs more than nine hours of sleep in total darkness in order to recharge itself completely. Turn off all lights even though you can sleep with some lights on.

Do not get smart by trying to get by with less sleep!

Find out if you have enough restful sleep for your daily good health maintenance:

· Start going to bed a half-hour earlier this week.

· If your alarm clock wakes you up, keep going to bed a half-hour earlier each week until you wake up before the alarm clock wakes you up.

· That will be the hours of restful sleep you really need. Don’t deprive yourself of restful sleep.

What makes you sleep?

You are put to sleep by two processes:

· Sleep homeostat, which tells you to go to bed after a certain amount of time awake, and to wake up after a certain amount of time of sleep

· Biological clock, which is a daily cycle unique to each individual

Nevertheless, your biological clock can overcome your sleep homeostat - unless your “sleep debt” is much too huge. Therefore, if you force yourself to stay awake, you may be able to actually stay awake but at the expense of increasing your propensity to future sleep disorders.

A dark sleep environment is essential to restful sleep. Your body does not completely shut down until there is complete darkness, which is conducive to a restful sleep.

You are not healthy unless your sleep is healthy. Sleep that requires medication is never healthy. For example, sedative drugs, such as Restoril and Ambien, may affect the thinking of older people, as well as contribute to daytime fatigue. These sleep-induced medications are never anti-aging.

How to obtain restful sleep for good health

· Always keep a regular bed and wake time, even on weekends and holidays, so as not to drastically upset your biological clock. That is most important.

· Maintain a relaxing daily routine prior to sleep, such as a hot bath, or a glass of hot drink.

· Create a sleep-conducive environment, such as a quiet and dark room.

· Avoid any stimulant, such as caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol during the day, or especially before bedtime, although you may have already grown accustomed to the stimulant.

· A firm and supportive mattress induces restful sleep.

· Do not nap too much during the day: a long afternoon nap may rob you of your restful sleep at night.

· Do not eat at least three hours before bedtime: a full stomach often makes sleep more difficult.

· Get some natural light in the afternoon each day. That, surprisingly, may help you sleep better at night.

· Regular daily exercise may enhance the quality of your restful sleep at night. However, do not exercise right before bedtime.

Natural Sleep Secrets shows you how to double your energy levels, and naturally transforms your body into a restful sleep magnet. Natural Sleep Secrets not only changes forever the way you think about sleep, but also controls your sleep through an all-natural energizing inner sleep system. The secret to restful sleep is Natural Sleep Secrets. Restful sleep is part of your daily good health maintenance.

                                                  Healthy vision

Your vision is important to you. Your entire life, welfare and well-being depend upon good eyesight. If you do nothing now to maintain healthy vision, your ability to function in life could be crippled further down the road as you continue to age.

You need to exercise your eyes, just as much as you exercise any other part of your body for good health. Unfortunately, the increased use of computers, television viewing, near-work both at school and on the job have placed undue stress on your vision, resulting in poor vision, eye disease, and often related neck and back problems.

An anti-aging lifestyle requires you to maintain your healthy vision through not only anti-aging foods, but also eye exercises and eye massage, which strengthen your eye muscles and sharpen your vision.

Eye exercises for healthy vision

If you can spend hours on the computer, there is no reason why you should not take a two-to-three minute break each hour to perform some anti-aging eye exercises.

Basic eye exercise everyday for healthy vision:

· Consciously breathe in through your nose, and breathe out through your mouth to bring more oxygen to your eyes, as well as to reduce stress on your vision.

   As you breathe in through your nose, let your shoulders remain down and loose to allow as much oxygen as possible to fill up your lungs.

As you breathe out through your mouth, push out as much as possible the carbon dioxide from the bottom of your lungs, feeling your stomach and chest flatten out gradually.

   It is important that you do not force yourself to inhale; instead, wait for your natural impulse to breathe in again. Repeat the process until your breathing becomes a natural rhythm.

   Concentrate your mind on only breathing and nothing else.

· Meanwhile, let your eyelids droop until they gently close. Your eyes should be unfocused and your eye muscles relaxed. Slightly open your mouth, while dropping your jaw.

· Continue breathing for a few minutes with your eyes closed.

· When you re-open your eyes, do not immediately focus on anything in particular.

· Blink your eyes repeatedly to soothe and moisturize your eyes.

· Smile broadly and hold for five seconds to remove any tension you might be holding in your eyes.

Palming exercise everyday for healthy vision:

This exercise, done without your eyeglasses or contact lenses, aims at reducing stress around your eyes through increased circulation.

· Consciously breathe in through your nose and breath out through you mouth until you attain a natural rhythm. Correct breathing is important.

· Lean forward with your elbows resting on a table.

· Close your eyes gently.

· Now, place the palm of your left hand over your left eye, with fingers on your forehead, and the heel of your hand resting on your cheek-bones, but without letting your palm actually touch your eye.

· Then, place your right hand over your right eye with your right fingers crossing over the left fingers from your left hand.

· Now, place the palms over your eyes but without touching them, thereby enabling you to focus on relaxing your mind and eyes simultaneously.

Figure “8” exercise as often as required for healthy vision:

This exercise aims at increasing the flexibility of your eye muscles in a relaxed way.

· Consciously breathe in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth until you attain a natural rhythm.

· Sit in a relaxed posture.

· Imagine a figure “8” in the distance.

· Let your eyes trace along the imaginary figure without moving your head. First, trace it in one direction, and then in the opposite direction.

Eye massage for healthy vision

Massage is beneficial in its effects upon all parts of the body. The nerves are stimulated, the blood stirred into greater and more active circulation, and the muscles and tissues generally stimulated into more vigorous life.

Rub the eye

· Apply and press the heel of your left palm against your left eye.

· With gentle pressure, massage with a twisting movement your eye with your palm.

· Meanwhile, contract and relax your eyelid muscles.

· Repeat with your right palm against your right eye.

Eyeball massage

· Place the thumb and forefinger upon the upper and lower left eyelids of your eye.

· Massage the eye by gently pressing the thumb and forefinger against each other.

· Repeat with the other eye.

Upward and downward massage

· Place two fingers, one on each side of the eyeball.

· Make a gentle upward movement with one hand, and a downward movement with the other.

· Massage without using any pressure.

· Repeat with the other eye.

Eye problems

The threat of eye problems such as glaucoma, macular degeneration, or diabetic retinopathy all arise steeply with age.

Macular degeneration, often called AMD or ARMD (age-related macular degeneration), is the leading cause of vision loss and blindness in Americans aged 65 and older, especially if you are a smoker, post-menopausal, or have blue, green or hazel eyes. AMD is a degenerative condition of the macula, the part of the retina responsible for the sharp, central vision needed to read or drive. Because AMD affects the macula, you may lose your central vision.

Fortunately, anti-aging foods can control or at least delay, if not avoid, many of these debilitating conditions:

· Avoid foods and food additives that contain monosodium glutamate (MSG), which may cause glaucoma.

· Eat anti-aging foods high in vitamin C and bioflavonoids, such as apricots, berries, black currants, cherries, grapes, grapefruit, lemons, and plums, to prevent broken blood vessels and new blood vessel growth in the eye.

   One orange contains about 70 mg. of vitamin C, one cup of strawberries about 80 mg., and one cup of sweet red pepper a whopping 283 mg.

Vitamin C does not stay in your body for long, so you need to replenish it constantly in order to reap its benefits.

· Load up on carrots for vitamin A. Carrots contain a carotenoid (a pigment in plants and animals that provides red and yellow color) called beta-carotene. Your body converts beta-carotene into vitamin A, which is a potent antioxidant for eye health and healthy vision. Eat these anti-aging foods, and you will have eyes of an eagle.

· Protect the interior of your eyes from the sun with lutein (the primary carotenoid located in the center of the retina, called the macula) and zeaxanthin through supplements, or foods such as collard greens, kale, and spinach.

   One cup of raw spinach contains about 18 mg. of lutein, one cup of cooked broccoli contains about 3 mg., and one cup of sliced green pepper around 1 mg. They are all anti-aging foods for healthy vision.

· Take magnesium to aid blood flow to the eye.

· Consume cold-water fish and fish oils for vitamins A and D, which aid in the production of protective pigments in the eye. Fish oils also provide omega-3 fatty acids to keep blood vessels clear by reducing clots. Eating tuna may also significantly reduce your dry eye symptoms.

· Eat fresh, raw garlic to keep your blood from clotting, thereby maintaining a good chemical balance for healthy vision.

· Take zinc to help release vitamin A from your liver to help healthy vision.

· Improve your night vision with bilberries, a cousin to blueberries, grown in the forest meadows of Europe, western Asia, and the northern Rocky Mountains. Bilberry is an herbal remedy that may have a very positive impact on night vision by fortifying blood vessel walls, thereby improving blood flow to the blood vessels in your eyes. Bilberry may help prevent macular degeneration and cataracts. Its original use traces back to World War II when British pilots found that eating jam made from bilberries helped improve their night vision.

· Eating more protein may reduce the development of cataracts, which make your eye’s natural lens cloudy, according to a French study.

· Supplement your diet with vitamin E from nuts to improve your healthy vision.

Your wisdom in anti-aging living is your daily good health maintenance.

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Copyright© by Stephen Lau

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