Healthy lifestyle - Staircase towards better future

Healthy lifestyle is an initial doorway leading to a prosperous and long-lasting existence. Health plays a very significant role in a person’s overall life, ruling every phase and action at all ages.

What is health?

Health refers to a state of absolute physical, emotional, mental and behavioural well-being of an individual. Well maintained, healthy lifestyle leads to enjoyable, peaceful, disorders-free life.

World Health Organisation (WHO) defines health with two definitions. That are:

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

“A resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. Health is a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities.”

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle:

Keeping up a healthy lifestyle has more benefits than we count. Healthy lifestyle is not limited to eating healthy and exercising daily, it includes numerous factors that needs to be adopted by every individual, especially in Pakistan.

Talking about Pakistan, it is the land of contrasting cuisines, Pakistanis being obsessed with spicy, salted, oily, all-meat and extra-sweetened dishes. With their love for food, the population is inclining towards various health disorders including obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cardiac diseases that needs to be controlled.

Here are some steps that we can acquire as part of our routines in order to maintain flourishing and healthy lifestyle.

Increase water consumption:

Water is the basic requirement of humans, with up to 60% of human body made of water. It plays significant roles in metabolism, removing toxins, governing proper transport mechanism and maintaining proper shape of all organs.

Increasing daily water consumption adds to the benefits and provide following functions:

boosts energy level and brain functions
prevents headaches and body aches
treat minor kidney stones
relieves constipation
maximise physical activities
provides clear skin
prevents weight loss
regulates body temperature
prevents acidity
increase saliva production
lubricates the joints

As water is excreted out of the body during urination, breathing and sweating , it needs to be reloaded, hence drinking plenty of water contributes to a healthy lifestyle. Normal water requirement of human body is 2-3 litres/24 hours.

More fruits and vegetables:

Fruits and vegetables are rich in vitamins, minerals, dietary fibres, folic acid and potassium. They are low calorie and low-fat diets and prevents variety of diseases like cancer, obesity, high blood pressure and cardiac arrest. They are low in sodium and cholesterol and essential asset to a healthy lifestyle, playing great part in physical health.

Vegetables reduces risk of variety of diseases

Proper sleeping routine:

Proper and comfortable sleep is very important for human body to function properly. The basis of a person’s mood and behaviour depends on their sleeping hours. Lack of sleep usually make a person lazy and tired, and decreases physical activities.

Sleep requirements vary with age, however normally every individual require at least 7 hours of sleep every day. Human brain and other organs needs rest to function properly, therefore try maintaining proper sleeping routines. Consistent sleeping pattern is important part of wellness of an individual and contributes to a healthy lifestyle. Best time to sleep is midnight (12:00 am) to early morning (7:00 am)

Exercise daily:

Exercise is very important to maintain proper metabolism of the body. Moreover, exercising daily for at least 30 minutes makes your bones stronger, decreases risk of numerous diseases, reduces fat and maintains body shape.

Performing variety of exercises daily has plenty of advantages. Some are:

Maintains brain health and high memory
prevents obesity and helps in weight loss
Maintains muscle and bone structure
promotes proper blood circulation
Improves mood and make you feel fresh
maintains proper organ functions
Decrease risk of heart failure

Avoid oily/fried items:

Minimise fried snacks consumption as they are high in fats, increases Cholesterol levels of the body and opens gate to hypertension, obesity and cardiac diseases.

Here are some disadvantages of oily snacks:

weight gain
promotes bloating and stomach ache
causes acne
acidity and digestion problems
high risk of stroke and heart failure

Quitting smoking promotes healthy lifestyle

Smoking has fatal effects on lungs, destroying them completely, increasing chances of lung cancer hence reducing lifespan. Alcohol on the other hand effects liver and cause variety of cancers including oral, breast and liver cancers. Quit smoking and other addictions to maintain healthy lifestyle.

Start by reducing consumption, to quitting them completely.

Avoid negativity

Avoid negative people and negative thoughts. Spend time with family and friends, be productive, learn new skills and invest time in positive things. Some good and healthy leisure activities include:

Reading
Swimming
Cycling
Jogging or walking
cooking; try new recipes
writing
playing outdoor

Reading is good for health and contributes to wellness

These were some of basic steps that you can embrace as your routine in order to spend a happy, care-free and active life. Adopting Healthy lifestyle is very important for your future, especially if you’re a Pakistani.

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