5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Health

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There has never been a better day than today to improve your health. Healthcare costs continue to rise in the United States with no end in sight. A staggering 88% of American’s are metabolically unhealthy (study) and 50% of Americans are overweight (study). These numbers are not trending in a good direction. American’s are getting busier and busier yet more sedentary. It is essential to use your time efficiently as we are being tugged in multiple directions. Here are five easy ways to improve your health that don’t require making lots of extra time in your day.

  1. Listen to Podcasts
  2. Walk When You Usually Stand
  3. Eat in a 10 Hour Window Every Day
  4. Eat More Vegetables
  5. Perform Posture Exercises

Listen to Podcasts

Humans have never had more access to knowledge than in the age we live in now. I don’t even bother listening to the radio when I drive my car anymore. Instead, I listen to podcasts. I’m a huge fan of Joe Rogan’s and Dr. Rhonda Patrick’s podcast. I typically spend about an hour total of my day in my car and it used to be a pretty non-productive hour. Now, it is an hour filled with information. Knowledge is power!

Walk When You Usually Stand

My neighbors probably wonder if I’m crazy but any time that I am cooking in the kitchen, I walk circles. Motion is the lotion for life and the more you can move, the better! I walk during times I would normally just stand such as cooking, talking on the phone, watching videos on YouTube, listening to podcasts, etc. Any opportunity I get, I walk.

Eat In a 10 Hour Window Every Day

Time-restricted feeding shows tremendous promise in a profound amount of ways for your health. And, it isn’t nearly as hard as you think it will be. You should aim to eat in a 10-hour window. So, if you have breakfast at 8 am, you need to have your last bit of food for the day at 6 pm which is very feasible. As soon as you consume anything other than water, it starts your feeding window. Dr. Rhonda Patrick, who I mentioned above, is a large proponent of time-restricted feeding. She had a recent podcast with Dr. Satchin Panda that covers the topic in-depth. A key study on time-restricted feeding in mice demonstrated:

  • Decreased body fat
  • Decreased glucose intolerance
  • Decreased leptin resistance
  • Decrease liver pathology
  • Decreased inflammation
  • Increased motor control

Eat More Vegetables

We all know that vegetables are good for you. We all don’t eat enough. You don’t need to eat like a rabbit to eat more vegetables, just add them to what you’re already eating. In the ideal world, you cut out processed carbs and replace it with vegetables but I know for most people reading this, that would be a hard thing to do. So add vegetables to your smoothies, mix them in with your regular meals. Try to eat lots of different colors. Try different vegetables and find out what you like and don’t like. You may be like me and not like eating vegetables solo but if I mix them in with other food that I’m eating, I enjoy them. Eat them any way that you can!

Perform Posture Exercises

I can’t emphasize enough how important posture is biomechanically. Our bodies just function much better with good posture. I’m a big fan of doing posture exercises whenever I can. When I brush my teeth, I always do some triplanar dynamic hip flexor stretching. The way I see it is you have 3 minutes 2 times a day where you can do something productive or stare at yourself in the mirror. I’ll also do chin retractions while driving my car. Both of these require adding zero time to your day. I also think that any sort of thoracic mobility exercises are important. You may have to add a minute or two to your day to do these but you’ll get a lot of value from a biomechanics perspective by doing them.

-Dr. Brian Damhoff DC MS

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