1. Consult With An Integrative Medical Practitioner For A Full Hormone Panel
At the Salerno Center, we take a look at medicine from an integrative perspective. This means we take a look at your whole health picture, and this includes looking into your hormones and if they are balanced. A hormone panel is the kind of test that we take to track if your hormones are correctly balanced and in sync with your age, sex, weight, and desired lifestyle. Premature aging can be impacted by irregular hormonal levels. Hormone imbalances can contribute to a poor sense of quality of life because of the impact on the emotional state, metabolic function, and regulatory processes in the body.
2. Drink Plenty Of Water
Water is the body’s most plentiful resource, aiding in cooling down, transporting of important minerals and materials, and many other functions. Water also helps us to detoxify the body from oxidative stressors. We recommend at least 8 cups a day of filtered water.
3. Everything In Moderation
…But remember not to overdo it with everything. Like everything else, too much of a good thing can be bad. This quote also applies to water, as a too high water content can contribute to a condition called hyponatremia, which is a lack of electrolytes in the blood stream. The key to smart consumption of healthy habits is also moderation, or getting enough to a little bit more than enough.
4. Everything In Moderation (Part 2)
Balancing out the healthy habits is important, but do not forget about the bad ones. Healthy habits can turn into bad ones if not done in moderation. An intense focus on dieting can lead to potential eating disorders and body dysmorphia. Drinking can turn into alcoholism. Listening to the body and your own feelings is important. Combined together, they tell a powerful story about potential problems. At the Salerno Center, dealing with people with many different lifestyles gives us experience into what might be potential risk factors. Identification of those is key.
5. Get Out And Move
Getting outside and moving your body does wonders for you. You might not call it exercise, but any movement that is vigorous and gets your heart beating a little faster helps with your life! You will experience the kind of feel-good brain chemicals, called serotonin and endorphins, that athletes benefit from when they exercise. You will prolong your life, reduce pain, and improve your lifestyle. Do it for you!
6. Eat Less Starch And Eat More Fats
Being able to move more means not feeling stuffed or bloated all the time. A little trick is to listen to the way your body communicates hunger. Think of hunger as a spectrum. On one end is “starving” and on the other is “engorged.” Find out how you can stay out of the “hungry” end of the spectrum and not so close to “full.” When you eat just enough to get rid of that hungry feeling, your body will be taking in less calories than if you were to eat to the point of feeling full. Less calories mean an optimal metabolism and a clear, clean, daily energy. Starches tend to be calories that have less nutrients, which is what your body needs to cleanly burn those calories. Stay away from starchy foods and remember the fats from organic sources.
The quality of your calories also dictates how healthy you are. Good fats always contribute to a healthy lifestyle. Fat helps cholesterol, and fat helps hormones. It is the base of all hormones. Fat also digests slowly, so your feeling of hunger will take more time to come around.
7. Let Go
Let go of the grudges or negative energy that held you back or stressed you out in 2016. Taking your attention away from negative things can putting in on positive things can change your outlook on life and your body chemistry, too! Your body will be in less of a stressful mindset, which can change the way your body releases hormones. That results in less of the stress hormone, cortisol, pumping through your veins and interrupting digestion and sleep patterns.
8. Learn About Positive Psychology
Interestingly enough, we have not done as much research into being happy as we have into feeling sad. A lot of positive psychology is based around learning how people can experience feelings such as happiness, contentedness, and comfortable. It also focuses on how resiliency can be built and developed by a person. Learning about what bodily structures and processes have evolved can help you to identify what makes you happy. For instance, learning that buying something new may not be as satisfying as learning something new. There is new information coming out every month that can not only make your year better but have you smile today.
9. Learn A New Skill
The human brain is an amazing learning tool. When you learn a new skill, you maximize the portions of your brain that process the movements, the practices, and the learning methods that you used to attain that skill. For instance, if you decided to learn painting, you are actively working out your brain like a muscle. Your visual-spatial processing space in your brain is worked out, and your hand-eye coordination is maximized as you learn to brush lightly or heavily and that communication between the visual-spatial area is also improved. When you hear, see, and practice what the instructor tells you, you are actively taking in new information to be processed through all the different spaces in your brain. This new practice for the brain contributes to a stronger brain and reduces the possible risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia.
10. Read More
Like learning a new skill, reading is a valuable habit to pick up. Novels, scientific reports, comic books, the newspaper. Reading is practice for many parts of the brain, and it helps to develop the open mind that is so useful to developing innovative solutions and overcoming difficult times. Physical books have an ability to contribute to memory retention because you are holding an actual object, as opposed to a smartphone.
