living healthy - longevity

Kick those bad habits and replace with better ones!

There’s a far better way of looking and feeling fantastic than to go to the expense and discomfort of surgery.  Instead of going under the knife and ending up looking like a cartoon version of a youthful person, focus on improving your health from the inside out.  Smart, healthful living is simply better – and will make you look more beautiful – than surgeons and cosmetics can.  Most of my patients’ New Year’s resolutions usually involve wanting to lose weight so they can be healthier and have greater longevity. But the truth is you have to be healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to be healthy. So here is some great information you can use right now to help you get healthier, and therefore look better and live longer.

Longevity Checklist

  1. Healthy Weight Loss: Proper nourishment from healthy foods and vitamins will decrease your cravings and make you feel full sooner. Losing weight on low-calorie, low-nutrient foods is more likely to make you look wrinkled and tired, and those kinds of foods weaken muscles and bones. Weight loss using stimulants and poor quality foods is weight that you are much more likely to put back on (plus a little extra).
  2. Healthy Skin: The health of your skin is directly dependent upon your nutrition, so watch what you put in your body! If you haven’t done so already, come in and get your food allergies and hormones checked.  Having healthy skin is critical to maximizing the longevity of your health.
    • Have your hormones balanced and checked. Leptin, insulin, sex hormones, and growth hormones greatly influence our appetite, metabolism, skin health, and body fat distribution.
    • Eat natural foods that are free from toxins and chemicals. Bad food hurts your skin primarily because one important way the body eliminates toxins is by sweating. When excess toxins come out of your skin pores, you can experience issues such as rashes, psoriasis, acne, and eczema.
    • Eat healthy fats like olive oil, organic butter, avocados, coconut oil, or flax oil. Avoid trans fats and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) like soy, corn, safflower, cottonseed, canola, fast food and vegetable oil. Why? The body oxidizes bad fats during digestion, releasing tissue-damaging free radicals which promote inflammation. This contributes to aging, atherosclerosis, and cancer. One study found that women who consumed mostly vegetable oils had more wrinkles than those who ate more traditional animal fats. This is probably because PUFAs are structurally “floppy” and do not provide our cells with any physical resiliency.
    • Drink plenty of filtered water. “Plenty” means half your body weight in ounces. Coffee, tea, juice, etc do not count towards your water total.
    • Skin Care Products. From sunscreen to soap to moisturizers, you need high-quality skin care products free of toxins. Sometimes you can do more harm than good due to the chemicals in these items.
  3. Exercise Makes Everything Better. It improves blood flow, helps you achieve a healthy weight and good muscle tone, and lowers stress (stress contributes to wrinkles!). Research shows exercise improves memory, your mood and your ability to think clearly.
  4. Avoid Breathing, Eating & Drinking Toxins. Processed foods, sugar, excessive alcohol and caffeine are the main offenders. Avoid inhaling damaging fumes by not smoking and choosing green cleaning products.  Simple things to help you extend the longevity of your health.
  5. Get Your Sleep. It’s true; you really do need your beauty sleep. 7.5 to 9 hours per night is ideal. The quality of your sleep is dependent on the choices you make all day long. If you have a stressful day and make poor food choices and do not exercise you will not sleep as soundly as you would have if you had made better choices. Sleep is the time when your body does most of its fat burning and when it repairs itself, so it is critical to your longevity to get a good night’s sleep.
  6. Approach Life with a Positive Attitude. Learning to smile more, love life and to keep a positive outlook helps us be beautiful from the inside out and have laugh lines instead of frown lines. If you are finding it harder and harder to do this, your neurotransmitters (brain chemicals) may be out of balance, and this is something we have lab tests to check.

If you are struggling with any of the items on this list, it can affect the longevity of your health, so come in and let’s figure out the root cause of the problem!  Look better and feel better!