Healthy Habits

While others are often getting sick, you don’t. It is probably because you are practicing healthy habits that are protecting you. Check these healthy habits out!!

1. Get plenty of rest. Research from Carnegie Mellon University suggests that people who slept less than seven hours a night were three times more likely to catch a bug than those who had more than eight hours of sleep a night.
2. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine says getting the flu shot is the best way to improve your immune profile. The vaccine also lowers a person’s risk for heart attack, stroke, heart failure or other major cardiac event by about a third in the year receiving the shot, research shows.
3. Don’t smoke. Enough said.
4. Get sweaty. The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle found that post-menopausal women who exercised regularly lowered their risk of colds; exercisers had about half the number of colds that women who only stretched had over the course of the year. Aim for moderately intense physical activity for about 45 minutes a day, five days a week to get the perk.
5. Plain soap and water is enough to wash away microbial threats; antimicrobial cleansers are not necessary. The Center for Disease Control recommends scrubbing for 20 seconds each time you come inside. Also, use hand-sanitizing gels that contain alcohol when a sink is not available.
6. Stay connected, since a robust social life can help you stay healthy. Researchers chalk up the good result of many social contacts to friendship’s stress-buffering effects. Psychiatry Professor Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University said: “When people with social support face adversity, they are less likely to get sick and less likely to die than people who don’t have social support.”
7. Laugh!! Laughing revs up your immune response. Select something funny to watch to increase your body’s NK cells, the infection-fighting part of your immune system. Data from a study at Western Kentucky University supports this idea.
8. Drink a glass of red wine. The suggestion isn’t to start drinking alcohol, but if you do partake, the resveratrol in red wine has an anti-inflammatory protective action. Harvard University School of Public Health researchers found that red wine was particularly protective against colds. Better heart health and having a lower risk for respiratory illnesses is a red wine outcome.
9. Stay positive. People who are content and relaxed are more likely to avoid a cold than those who are depressed, anxious or angry. This is the finding of Carnegie Mellon researchers who found that the content people were three times more likely to avoid a cold than the depressed group. The explanation is that positive attitudes lower stress hormones, such as cortisol, that make people more prone to illness.

From: www.nextavenue.org