There are good reasons why the medical community increasingly supports the safe use of natural supplements — including those derived from healing plants and natural herbs — to support a healthy lifestyle.
For starters, natural supplements derived from many aromatic healing plants and natural herbs can be as effective as their synthetic alternatives. What’s more, natural supplements (or “nutraceuticals”) can be preventive, therapeutic, and even potentially curative, often with fewer complications.
That said, the best use for any natural supplement is always in conjunction with healthy living behaviors — and following your physician’s advice!
The Secrets To Healthy Living Are Simple
Despite our best efforts, up to 97% of adults do not live a “healthy” lifestyle. Busy schedules and competing responsibilities make it hard to eat well, get enough sleep and enough exercise, maintain a healthy work-life balance, and get sufficiently close with your loved ones and yourself. These are the biggest “little things” you can do to live healthier:
1. Count Nutrients, Not Calories
Experts in the science of healthy living note that eating right is a highly impactful health behavior.
Their definition of “healthful eating” focuses on nutritional, not caloric, content. That is because:
- Nutrient deficiencies — already affecting up to 90% of US and Canadian residents — increase the risk of chronic illness, function-limiting pain and physical/cognitive decline, and death.
- Calorie-restricting diets can cause and contribute to critical nutrient deficiencies.
2. Don’t Forget That What You Drink Counts, Too
It is easy to overlook just how important beverages are when following a low-fat, nutritionally balanced diet. Yet soft drinks and juices are both calorie-dense and nutrient-thin. Consequently, even minor changes to beverage intake behaviors can have a significant outcome on nutritional outcomes.
3. Move More Vigorously, More Often
Aside from poor nutrition, sedentism is one of the most significant predictors of poor health and well-being []. Taking frequent stretch/stand/movement breaks while working as well as regular moderate-intensity exercise (even as little as 2.5 hours per week) make a major difference.
4. Look At The Right Measurements, At The Right Time
For people aiming to lose weight, regular self-weighing can increase weight loss.
Nevertheless, even though about half of us want to lose weight and more than one-third of adults self-weigh nearly every day, some healthy living experts say it would be better to avoid it altogether. Instead, more personal measures — like body fat percentage and visible muscle mass — offer better insights into what healthy looks like for each body.
5. Spend More Time Sleeping
Sleep habits impact lifelong health even more than many of the most-recommended healthy living behaviors. That is because insufficient sleep (less than 7 hours) is not only linked to negative physical health outcomes (increased body fat, suppressed immune function) but to a variety of mental health, social, and professional consequences as well.
6. Spend More Time Having Fun
Picking up a recreational hobby — whether listening to music, making art, taking classes, or playing sports — can have an immediate positive impact on physical and mental health.
7. Limit Screen Time
The average adult spends approximately 11 hours on-device per day. This type of prolonged use of digital devices has a variety of health consequences, including:
- Eye strain;
- Headaches;
- Back/neck/shoulder pain;
- Depression;
- Dangerous levels of sedentism.
Both actively reducing screen time and adopting better screen-time hygiene (like looking up from the screen every 20 minutes, banning digital device use before bed) can be helpful healthy living behaviors.
8. Build Stronger Friendships
Close friendships are critical to health and well-being. Yet many adults struggle to create them — both because life gets busy and because overcoming insecurity makes keeping friendships more challenging.
Connections that support healthy living goals involve people who are (and become more) consistent, available, reliable, responsive, and predictable in social interactions.
9. Drop Your Bad Habits
Some recreational habits are just plain bad for you. For example:
- Quitting smoking has the most significant impact of any healthy living behavior on overall health and healthy aging.
- People who stop drinking or limit intake to one drink per day have better health and fewer health risks than either moderate- and heavy-drinkers.
10. Recognize When Being On Your Best Behavior Isn’t Quite Enough
The best healthy living habits and being aware of how your lifestyle choices compare are critical to your health and well-being. Though it is not always (or even often) possible for a person to adopt every possible healthy living behavior, modifying even one unhealthy habit can have a noticeable impact on overall and ongoing health.
Moreover, amplifying the positive effects of the changes you can make — like taking natural supplements that support sleep health and nutrition and/or lower anxiety — can go a long way towards closing the gap between an unhealthy vs. healthy lifestyle.
Health Tips from Canada Kratom Express
Canada Kratom Express is the premier vendor of kratom in Canada. We often blog about health and medical tips based on our own research and experience. Nothing we say or write about should be misconstrued as medical advice. We are not certified health experts. Just how practical and effective any given natural supplement is for any one person depends on their individual context and needs! So do your own research before you buy kratom, and speak with a medical professional.
