“Your outlook—having a sense of optimism and purpose—seems to be predictive of health outcomes,” says Dr. Laura Kubzansky, professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Kubzansky has studied the health effects of several forms of psychological well-being. She has found that emotional vitality—characterized by enthusiasm, hopefulness, engagement in life, and the ability to face life’s stresses with emotional balance—is associated with a substantially reduced risk of heart attack and stroke.
diet
🍎 Health Hack: Small Changes Make a Big Difference
7 Small Diet Changes That May Make a Big Difference
- swapping soft drinks for water and herbal tea
- eating no meat for at least 1 day a week
- ensuring that produce makes up about 50 percent of each meal
- swapping cow’s milk for plant-based milk
- eating whole fruits instead of drinking juices, which contain less fiber and often include added sugar
- avoiding processed meats, which are high in salt and may increase the risk of colon cancer
- eating more lean protein, which can be found in eggs, tofu, fish, and nuts
🍎 Health Hack: Choose Carbs With Care
Carbohydrates are one of the main types of nutrients. Your digestive system changes carbohydrates into glucose (blood sugar). Your body uses this sugar for energy for your cells, tissues and organs. It stores any extra sugar in your liver and muscles for when it is needed. There are two types of carbohydrates: simple and complex. Simple carbohydrates include natural and added sugars. Complex carbohydrates include whole grain breads and cereals, starchy vegetables and legumes.
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TIP: STICK WITH COMPLEX CARBS
🍎 Health Hack: How Many of the 5 Healthy Habits Do You Follow?
Maintaining five healthy habits can add more than a decade to your life:
- Eating a healthy diet.
- Exercising regularly
- Keeping a healthy body weight.
- Not drinking too much alcohol.
- Not smoking — during adulthood.
Nutrition Hack: 2 of 10 Intuitive Eating Principles
Intuitive Eating Principle #2
Honor your hunger. Hunger is not your enemy. Respond to your early signs of hunger by feeding your body. If you let yourself get excessively hungry, then you are likely to overeat.
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Nutrition Hack: 1 of 10 Intuitive Eating Principles
Intuitive Eating Principle #1
Reject the diet mentality. The diet mentality is the idea that there’s a diet out there that will work for you. Intuitive eating is the anti-diet.
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Longevity Hack: It’s What You Eat
Eat Whole Foods
It’s more a way of eating than a formal diet. You load up on veggies, fruits, whole grains, nuts, and low-fat dairy. You eat less fatty meats, butter, sugar, salt, and packaged foods. Many studies have found that this diet can help you live longer and protects against heart disease, cancer, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers believe one way it works is by physically changing parts of your chromosomes linked to age-related diseases.
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Health Hack: Is it Time to Try the Mediterranean Diet?
It’s generally accepted that the folks in countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea live longer and suffer less than most Americans from cancer and cardiovascular ailments. The not-so-surprising secret is an active lifestyle, weight control, and a diet low in red meat, sugar and saturated fat and high in produce, nuts and other healthful foods. The Mediterranean Diet may offer a host of health benefits, including weight loss, heart and brain health, cancer prevention, and diabetes prevention and control. By following the Mediterranean Diet, you could also keep that weight off while avoiding chronic disease. There isn’t “a” Mediterranean diet. Greeks eat differently from Italians, who eat differently from the French and Spanish. But they share many of the same principles.
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Longevity Hack: Trim the Fat
Diet and exercise habits help people maintain a healthy body weight, which the Circulation study defined as a body mass index between 18.5 and 24.9. Obesity is associated with chronic conditions including Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, all of which can shorten your life. A 2018 study found that widespread obesity shaved a year off the U.S. life expectancy and is responsible for up to 186,000 deaths per year.
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Sleep Hack: Munch on Pistachios
Pistachios: One ounce of pistachios contain about 25 percent of your daily value of vitamin B6, a vitamin necessary for the production of serotonin and melatonin, hormones that help us get better sleep. Get your fill of B6 by consuming pistachios, along with a variety of foods containing vitamin B6 such as animal proteins like fish, chicken, turkey, pork, eggs and milk, along with whole grains and soy products such as edamame or tofu.
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