Little Giants of Health

Having a near death experience with streptococcus got me thinking about alot of things. If such a small thing can so quickly destroy our health, what little things can so quickly help our health? Well there are a few that I used to consider unimportant, but now, I think they have alot of value and you might find this is true too. Each of these takes less than 5 minutes to do each (well except for one).

Flossing Your TeethI personally have real difficulty getting this to work for me. But, it’s tough for me to whine about this when flossing can reportedly add 6.4 years to your life! In fact, 21st Century Dental notes on their site some studies on flossing and health:

The best of these studies done at Emory University with the Centers for Disease Control, indicated that people with gingivitis and periodontitis have a mortality rate that is 23 percent to 46 percent higher than those who don’t… why? They are linked to increased rates of cardiovascular disease and stroke, as well as to an increase in mortality from other causes, such as infections.

Taking care of your feet
Obviously, I have an appendage fetish (I wrote about hands last week here , now feet, what??) in any event…would you let your hands look like the bottom of your feet, provided you actually looked at the bottom of your feet? If you have big cracks and fissures in your feet, going to the local drug store to buy some off the shelf anti-athlete’s food medicine isn’t likely to really fix the problem. Your probably going to need a prescription drug like Lamisil to really clear up the infection. Then you need to make your feet pretty – no ugly cracks and callouses! I’ve been using a foot emery board (also known as fine grit sand paper mounted to a stick) and Burt Bee’s Coconut foot creme. Vaseline works pretty well too, and is alot cheaper.

Washing your hands
We covered this one pretty well when I posted on hand washing at this link here. Suffice to say, wash ‘em!

Sleep
This is a toughie isn’t it? Of all the things you can do, this one is probably at the top of the list of important things but at the bottom of what we really do. Why is that? Guilt (“Oh no I’m actually resting!”), too big a todo list stealing hours when we should be resting, other more exciting things to do (like eating chocolate).

There is so much data on the benefits of a good nights sleep it’s hard to believe most of us simply don’t do it. To quote Dr. Ellington Darden in a chapter on sleep and recovery from exercise, from his excellent book, “A Flat Stomach ASAP“:

Your body is a complex factory that is constantly making hundreds of delicate changes to transform food and oxygen into many chemicals required by various parts of the system. But there is a limit to the chemical conversions that your recovery ability can make within a given time. If your requirements exceed the limit, your body will eventually be overwork to the point of collapse.

Important to note if you fall asleep while driving. Some states are trying to put accidents caused by drivers who fall asleep into the same category as accidents caused by the driver being drunk.

You can find reams of information on sleeping on the net, most of it accurate (click to this Yahoo search link for a few of them here). But let me just highlight a few points (from page 67, “A Flat Stomach ASAP”, and the APA)

• Sleeping in 90 minute increments is best. That’s a complete sleep cycle in which your body goes through normal sleep, rem sleep, and then normal sleep again. Practically, this means 7.5 hours of sleep will be better for you than 8 or 7 due to it being six 90 minute cycles

• Having trouble figuring out complex issues? Sleep on it. That’s when your brain works out complex problems. Your much more likely to have the solution in the morning Can’t sleep because of the complex issue keeping you awake? Don’t take a shot of whiskey! Instead, write the problem out on a piece of paper, sort of placing it to the side in a sense.

• Do you have a few pounds to shed before lounging at the beach this Summer? Sleepers (those with 7 hours or more on their pillow) are much more able to control their appetite and as a result their eating. While those who sleep 6 hours or less put their bodies under stress. The body responds many times by craving carbohydrates (can you say a whole bag of Oreo’s!!)

Fish Oil
No you won’t grow fins, scales and crave krill. BUT you will have healthier skin and hair, strengthen your immune system and reduce your risk of both cancer and heart disease! Wow, now that sounds fishy doesn’t it? Well fish oil will do that for you. It’s so proven that the American Heart Association recommends it (see info here). BUT (there’s alway a but buttin’ in…) Most fish are spoiled with mercury, so it’s wise to consider a supplement that actually screens that out. There are two that I know of, there are probably alot more. One is Carlson’s Brand Fish Oil and the other is from the Stop Aging Now website (note, Beck’s Cafe gets no reimbursement for pointing you to those links, we just want to be nice to you ).

So, to ward off some of the little nasties that can fell you, try the little giants to get health on your side.