5 things that can change your health

If you knew that you could easily change one habit that would make a difference to your health, would you do it?

We make choices every day that affect our health, sometimes these choices are deliberate.

But if you could make an easy choice to prevent disease would you do it?

The answer is not the obvious choice

Our days are full of choices, some are important and necessary, some are default. They fall into the category of what we always do, should do, must do.

But are they?

Many habits improve health. Regular sleep routines, exercise, eating whole foods, managing stress, all add up but can seem elusive and unattainable for many people.

Our lives are so full of musts and shoulds, that we never realize what we can do today to make a difference.

In the last month, research has found that eliminating one of these five habits will improve health.

Are you willing to do just one?

1. Eliminate palm oil from your diet. If you don’t check food labels, now is a good time to start. Palm oil, one of the only plant sources of saturated fats, can increase skin and mouth cancers. It is in many processed foods.
2. Reducing meat, seafood and eggs from your diet has the biggest impact on your personal carbon emissions. Highly processed foods, such as sweets, pastries, ice cream have a lower impact, but are eaten in higher quantities. Reducing one of these lowers your environmental impact and improves your health.
3. Buy fewer bulk food items. People who buy larger quantities tend to eat more empty calories. Eliminating high calorie, low nutrition foods would result in a 29% reduction in carbon emissions.
4. Reduce salt and protect your brain. 50-60% of high blood pressure cases are salt dependant, meaning, eating less salt would reduce your blood pressure. Now new research has shown that salt consumption can also reduce blood flow to the hypothalamus. The region in your brain that regulates heart rate, temperature, hunger, thirst and sleep cycles. Eating too much salt can interfere with the ability of the hypothalamus to function.
5. Eating highly processed foods from fast food outlets increases exposure to dangerous chemicals. Researchers found that food contained phathalates and plasticizers are in most meals. Plasticizers are chemicals that make plastics soft, often found in fast food containers and now in the food too. These chemicals are endocrine disruptors. They are known to cause reproductive problems and learning disorders in children.

One habit to rule them all?

You could pick any one of these 5 and make a difference to your health, however, if you did just one thing you would eliminate the risks of all of them.

If you made most of your meals from whole, unprocessed foods you would reduce your environmental footprint, reduce your risk of cancer, protect your brain and hormone function.

Making most, not even all, of your meals, with recognizable, real ingredients, that habit would cascade into every aspect of your health.

Would you do it?

Change your mind, change your health,

Shayla