NIRVANA

Today on 7th April, World Health Day is being celebrated around the world. Maybe on this day, we can reflect on how our health is important to us and how we can prioritise our health through small daily habits.

Our health will determine the quality of our life and our longevity. The World Health Day serves as a reminder that our Health is Wealth.

How is Your Health Important to You?

Being in good health allows us to work and do the things that we love. It allows us to take care of ourselves and our loved ones. However, I believe that sometimes we take our health as granted. Try to ask yourself the question: How is your health important to you?

How Can We Adopt a Healthy Lifestyle?

• Daily Movement & Exercise

Moving daily such as daily walks, yoga, or doing a sport or activity that you love has many benefits including improved cardiovascular health, stress reduction,and enhances cognitive function.

A daily activity of 30 minutes releases endorphins that improves our mood and reduces anxiety. Moreover, daily movement helps to keep our joints healthy, strenghens our muscles and helps in weight management. Sleep quality is also improved while counteracting the effects of a sedentary lifestyle.

• Digital Wellness

Digital wellness is important to ensure a healthy relationship with technology and not let it dominate us. Excessive use of technology like social media is linked to higher stress, anxiety, and depression. It also causes physical problems such as poor posture and eye strain.

Social media comparison causes people to unconsciously compare themselves with other people who are posting their best reels and often exaggerated self searching for a sense of validation.

Setting app limits, creating tech-free zones in your house, and practicing mindfulness can help to enhance digital wellness.

• Securing Quality Sleep

By prioritising 7-9 hours of quality sleep, we are supporting our memory, immunity, natural healing, and overall mental health. Sleep improves our concentration, memory, and productivity. During sleep, the body repairs tissues and help to heal injuries, infections and muscle fatigue. Sleep also contributes towards emotional regulation and decreases mood swings.

Chronic sleep deprivation is linked to serious health issues, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular diseases.

• Practicing Stillness or Meditation

Through meditation, we reconnect with ourselves and just be with our existence. Stillness allows us to cut through the noise and hectic lifestyle to return back to who we are and reconnect with our life purpose and our reason of being.

Meditation helps us to regulate our emotions by shrinking our amygdala thus reducing our fear and stress responses. In doing so, we are able to break negative thought patterns hence reducing symptomsof depression and anxiety.

• Maintain Healthy Eating Habits

Eating high energy foods including fruits and good water intake contribute towards a good health. Limiting fast food and high sugar food help to decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Mindful eating helps to enhance digestion. Avoid overeating by eating only until 75% full to leave space for digestion.

• Practicing Gratitude

Being grateful helps us to focus on the positive things happening in our lives and decreases anxiety and uncertainty. According to research, practicing gratitude stimulates the part of our brain which boosts neurotransmitters associated with positivity, happiness, and calmness.

Ask yourself the question: What am I grateful for today?

• Activate our Happy Hormones

Our happy hormones include dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins that regulate our mood, pleasure, bonding, and pain, promoting feelings of well-being.

Dopamine is our reward chemical which is produced when we achieve a goal or complete a task. Oxytocin is the love hormone which gets activated when we socialise, help people, hug a family member or our pet. Serotonin stabilises our mood by being with nature, getting sunlight, or practicing meditation. Endorphins act as pain killers which happens when we exercise, watch our favourite movie, or listen to music.

• Regular Health Check-ups

These are preventive measures that we can take to detect potential issues early and prevent chronic diseases. These might include physical exams, blood tests like cholesterol, glucose, and specific screenings to detect chronic diseases. Family history, age, and gender must also be considered.

My Takeaway

Maintaining a good health is our sole responsibility. To maintain a good health, important factors need to be taken into consideration such as our daily movement, exercise, food eating habits, mental and emotional health, social connections, digital wellness, and self-care routines.

Adopting healthy micro habits will have considerable impact in the long run. How we eat, how we move, how we prioritise our sleep and rest is totally up to us. Our current lifestyle is going to impact how we are going to live our older years.

How is your health important to you and how are you prioritising your health?

Yashna Veera

Life Coach and Yoga & Meditation Practitioner

NIRVANA