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It’s easy to look up a list of healthy foods, download an exercise app, and claim that you’re living a healthy life. The truth is, though, truly healthy life requires more than just basic holistic-focused eating and exercise. If you’re looking for ways to weed every unhealthy habit out of your lifestyle, here are a few of the more unique considerations to keep in mind throughout your day-to-day existence.
How to Keep Health of Your Body Inside and Out
Watch Your Eyes
Eye health is an interesting subject. It’s easy to think of cataracts, glaucoma, and even glasses as problems and solutions when it comes to eyes. But there are daily habits and behaviors that can also go a long way in preserving one’s eye health before a crisis like surgery or even the simple necessity of glasses arises.
For instance, if you need glasses, make sure that they have UV protection. If you prefer to use contact lenses, make sure that you’re getting UV blocking contact lenses. Either way, this can provide a natural layer of protection, even if you’ve left your sunglasses behind.
Consider Your Car
Another area that is often overlooked when it comes to health and wellness is transportation. Sure, you may hear the somewhat obvious advice that walking and biking places are activities that are good for your health, but what about when you can’t avoid using a car?
When it comes to your health, in particular, it’s important to keep two different things in mind. First, there’s your own personal safety. After all, if you die in a car accident, it won’t matter how many times you walked instead of drove. Getting a car that is known for its safety, such as a Chevy Traverse or a Subaru Impreza, can be an easily overlooked yet essential part of keeping the health of your body.
In addition to personal safety, though, it’s also important to remember the environmental impact of your vehicle, e.g. how it affects the Earth. With that in mind, it’s important to look for compact or even subcompact vehicles like the Mazda CX-3 or the Honda Insight that are also well known for their safety ratings.
Water Things Down
Everyone is aware of the fact that you must drink a lot of water every day — just shy of a gallon for a full-grown man, to be precise. However, have you ever thought about the quality of the water that you’re drinking?
Clean water is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. However, keeping purified water perpetually on tap doesn’t usually happen without a little bit of work.
You can start by checking to see if you need to have the pipes that connect your home to the water main relined. Relining the pipes can ensure that only the clean, treated water itself is making it into your home.
From there, it’s still worth considering a water filtration system in order to further purify any unwanted substances out of your H2O. Once that’s done, you can rest assured that you’re hydrating your body with the cleanest water possible.
Remember Your Mind
This one is two-fold. You want to consider the physical health of your brain and the condition of your mental state as well. There are many different ways to keep your brain healthy, including:
- Learning new things.
- Taking supplements.
- Drinking plenty of water (see the previous suggestion!)
- Avoiding smoking and alcohol.
Beyond keeping your mind in good physical shape, it’s also important to address the stress that can often creep in and wear down your emotions. One of the easiest ways to identify and address rampant stress is by looking for things like overgeneralizing or jumping to conclusions that can lead to a perpetually unhealthy mental state.
Cultivate Good Sleep
If you’re interested in health, chances are you’ve heard about a million times by now that you need to get a good quantity of sleep every night. The question is, have you considered the quality of your sleep, too?
If you genuinely want to improve the overall health of your body, mind, and soul, it’s important to make sleep a priority in both quality and quantity. Fortunately, you only need to get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per day in order to be getting enough rest.
In addition to this 8-hour benchmark, you can increase the quality of your sleep by:
- Dedicating a specific area to sleeping and only sleeping.
- Hanging blackout curtains.
- Using an essential oil diffuser.
- Making sure you have a quality bed to sleep on.
- Avoiding blue light well before you go to bed.
The quality of your sleep can make a big difference in how healthy you are actually are feeling.
Finding a Holistically Healthy Lifestyle
While it’s tempting to stop at healthy food and basic exercise as all that is necessary for a “healthy life,” in reality, it’s important to apply that healthiness filter to everything that you do.
From your eyewear and the car you drive to identifying cognitive distortions and getting good sleep, it’s important to dig deep into the nitty-gritty behaviors in your life in search of every little area where you can improve the health of your body, mind, and soul.
Ainsley Lawrence is a freelance writer that lives in the Northwest region of the United States. She has a particular interest in covering topics related to health, social justice, and workplace issues. When not writing, her free time is spent reading and researching to learn more about her cultural and environmental surroundings.
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