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2 Simple Ways to Improve Your Health   

BY READERS DIGEST

22nd Jun 2020 Wellbeing

2 Simple Ways to Improve Your Health   

Health challenges can cause chronic pain and suffering. Showing up unexpectedly, they preoccupy most of our time and attention, drain our bank accounts, and ruin our hopes for a carefree life. 

Fortunately, the body has innate healing capacity. So, when you add a few healthy living practices to your day, you’ll progressively improve your overall health. If you repeat a few simple steps over a few weeks, they will become habits. 

Two simple changes you could start making today to upgrade the quality of your health and well-being is to eat healthier meals and talk to your doctor if you have a chronic health condition. 

Eat Healthier Meals 

The philosophy of eating for health focuses on a simple premise: food is medicine. Many health issues disappear when you feed your body micronutrients you were deficient in. You also feel much more energetic when you stop consuming packaged foods high in calories but low in nutritional value. 

Eating nutritionally dense foods will improve your health and reduce your risk of disease. 

Here are some ways to upgrade the quality of your meals: 

Make your own foods rather than buying packaged foods. The ingredients will be fresher, and you won’t have excessive salt, sugar, or saturated fats. You also won’t be ingesting any artificial ingredients, such as food dyes and preservatives. 

Eat foods close to their natural state, rather than processed foods, such as nuts, beans, legumes, fruits, and vegetables. 

Plan enough meals to avoid hunger pangs that drive you to crave snacks. You can also reduce snacking by resisting the urge to buy your favorite snacks in the first place. When snacks aren’t easily available, you won’t raid the pantry. 

Drink plenty of purified water every day rather than from the tap if you don’t know if your municipal water system is safe.

Plan your meals so that you always have enough food on hand and don’t go through feast-and-famine cycles because you didn’t go grocery shopping when you had the time. 

If you buy a healthy recipe cookbook or visit DietHive, you’ll discover how easy it is to prepare your own nutritious meals.

If these changes overwhelm you and you can’t figure out how to create a healthy meal plan for yourself, then make an appointment with a nutritionist. 

Talk to Your Doctor  

While practicing preventive medicine by eating nutritious meals will improve your health, you should talk to your doctor if some of your health problems don’t clear up. By minimizing the significance of your symptoms or subduing them with OTC medications, things might get worse.

Resolving your health issues might be as simple as getting the right medical advice. What’s more, you might prevent a minor problem from getting worse. Early detection of a serious illness makes all the difference in reducing the progression of a disease. 

However, even if you have a wonderful doctor, he or she may not know what they don’t know. So, if your symptoms persist despite your doctor’s medical treatment plan, then you will need to find another doctor, one who can provide you with an accurate diagnosis. 

While diagnosis has improved tremendously with the help of information technology and laboratory testing, some diseases are extremely difficult to detect. Rare diseases, for example, are genetic diseases that often show up in childhood--but there are also adult-onset rare diseases.  Dystonia, for example, can show up in childhood or adolescence, the adult-onset version can also start from age twenty or older. 

In conclusion, while you can resolve some health challenges through lifestyle changes, others may require a medical examination. It’s important to figure out why you don’t feel well. Don’t ignore warning signs of health problems. Your doctor’s advice could make all the difference in resolving your persistent health challenges.

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