Staying healthy isn’t just about taking your medicines and vitamins and staying away from the cold; it is a whole lifestyle. While the visits to the doctor can help you direct your efforts toward the right path, you will eventually have to change everything about your living habits to adopt a healthy lifestyle. What you eat, how you eat, spend your time, and even feel will determine your results.
It might not seem like a lot, but staying away from diseases and illnesses while strengthening your immune system is a tough job. So if you are wondering what to do and how to do it, acquire the services of a healthcare professional, namely a nurse. Nurses know holistic care and how patients can benefit from it. For this reason, we will discuss a few healthcare tips that most nurses swear by.
1. Spend time outside
Living in an apartment complex or are limited to home and office, doesn’t mean you can’t take some time to go out. Spending time outside benefits your health, and many nurses would agree. Spending some time outside now and then refreshes your mind and soul and allows your body to get a little exercise. This advice has become even more relevant today as we tend to spend more time indoors. But going outside and spending time in a park or a garden every now and then can do wonders for your health. For this reason, this has become a piece of constant advice by nurses ever since the nursing trends shifted to include holistic care. Also, this advice is backed by research that shows that spending time outside in nature helps reduce stress and urges you to be more active.
2. Get enough sleep
Sleep is as crucial as any medicine you can take as that is the time when your body recharges, and your cells heal. Therefore, getting enough sleep is the best way to manage your tension, stress levels, and overall health.
The reason why nurses put so much emphasis on getting enough sleep and rest is that poor sleep can cause insulin resistance in the body. Apart from that, it also reduces your physical performance and causes concentration problems. Research has also shown that poor sleep happens to be one of the most significant risk factors for obesity. Because when people aren’t getting enough sleep, they are more prone to making bad dietary choices, which, added to insulin resistance, causes unwanted weight gain.
3. Eat healthy meals
Nurses suggest you start your day with a healthy meal to properly wake up and energize your body. A healthy breakfast will dictate not only your energy levels throughout the day but also the food choices you make later on during lunch and dinner. For this reason, stay away from any kind of processed or fatty food early in the morning and opt to feed your body whole meals. Apart from that, opt to pack your lunch to resist the urge to grab something on the go or choose a junk food place to have a meal.
4. Try eating an anti-inflammatory diet
Inflammation happens when there is some disease or damage in the body that requires your body’s natural defenses to activate. The inflammation should only last as long as the repair and should naturally go back to normal. But chronic inflammation can signify that your body is suffering more than you realize. Chronic inflammation can be more damaging to your health than you realize, as it can cause fatigue, insomnia, body pain, anxiety, and depression. For this reason, nurses suggest you change your diet and include anti-inflammatory food to minimize the damage. You can include green and leafy vegetables, fatty fish, berries, olive oil, and nuts into your diet. Moreover, you should also avoid processed foods that are loaded with sugar and carbohydrates.
5. Limit your coffee intake
Sometimes it feels like it’s only coffee that is helping your stay upright throughout the day. But the extra cups you drink can cause more damage to your body than what is worth it. Since coffee happens to be a diuretic stimulant, it tends to create a vicious unending cycle that urges you to drink more coffee. The more coffee you drink, the more water you should consume. However, drinking coffee tends to limit your hydration. In addition to that, drinking more coffee pumps up your adrenals and creates a stress response in your body. This stress makes you feel tired and down, and what do you do when you feel fatigued? Grab more coffee. And so, the cycle continues.
6. Avoid intense exercise
It is already well established that exercising often helps your mental and physical health. And while creating and maintaining a workout routine is necessary for your health, you should also keep the level moderate. Pushing your body every single day can cause even more health issues in your body.
What happens is that exercising tends to release endorphins in your body that help in reducing stress. Moreover, it also releases cortisol. While small bursts of the cortisol hormone are good for your immune system, too much cortisol results in inflammation. Therefore, exercising at a high intensity too often without any rest causes the cortisol levels in your body to increase and lead to chronic inflammation. For this reason, stick to moderate exercises such as biking, brisk walks, dancing, swimming, yoga, etc. Focus on having fun with your exercise sessions instead of considering them torture to your mind and body.
Conclusion
Some of these pieces of advice may surprise you, but all of them are backed up by years of medical education and science that helped nurses better understand the human body. Therefore, follow these tips to ensure that you live a healthy and well-balanced life where your body is as healthy as your mind. After all, maintaining one at the expense of the other is never the solution. But be sure to seek professional help if any unforeseen complications arise. After all, nurses and doctors are dedicated to helping you live a better and healthier life so that you can be productive and happy.
