***Three Easy-Peasey Health Tips

You deserve a break today, so let’s talk about some things you can do for your health that don’t require heavy lifting, grunting, panting or any other sort of exhaustion. Some people like extreme exercise, but most don’t.

Either way, healthy living shouldn’t feel like punishment. And here are some tips to help.

1. Mom probably hit the “stand up straight” button upon frequent occasion during your youth, and she was right! Well, who knew posture had anything to do with health? Perhaps even Mom didn’t know that part of it.

Slouching folds your body in on itself, which crowds your innards. Well, our organs need room to do their thing, and when health is our goal, we badly need for them to do it. Crunched-together body parts struggle as best they can, all while yearning to break free of the crowd and really twirl that baton, maybe even cartwheel.

So, shoulders back and head high, whether standing or sitting. And sleeping counts, too. If you sleep on your side, don’t let your shoulders fold in around your chest.

2. And then there’s the problem of being a desk jockey, spending hour after hour sitting at a desk, perhaps being wildly productive, but still sitting. Which inevitably leads to hearing lectures about getting exercise.

Well, which is it? Earn a living or jump-and-sweat? In a perfect world, each day would contain enough time for both, but–and I hate to be the one to break it to you–this isn’t a perfect world.

If keeping company with your desk is necessary, a recent study offers hope. You can mitigate the effects of all that sitting by taking a minute or two each hour to move. Take a few steps–to get coffee, to the copy machine, to the bathroom, maybe even break free to take a peek outside.

It’s good to do more (see #3), but just a minute or two an hour gives your body enough encouraging feedback to know you still care.

3. And speaking of exercise, forget the idea of slogging it out for hours of hard duty on a treadmill, running over hill and dale, or biking up Pike’s Peak. After years of hectoring us about getting a move on, serious people realized this approach is more harmful than helpful.

How about a half-hour walk? At, say, about three miles per hour or so? As long as you can still carry on a conversation, it’s good.

And don’t forget housework. Since most people like housework about as much as they like exercise, or even less, that kills two birds with one stone, as the saying goes. If you envision exercise as you break out the vacuum cleaner, then go at with a workout in mind, results will follow.
Gardening certainly uses muscles. Playing with the kids does, too. And so on. If it puts your body into action, it’s exercise.

So there you have three easy-peasey health tips. That wasn’t hard, was it?

God is good,

Bette Dowdell