Natural Health – How Do You Get Started?

Natural health, holistic health, alternative healing, all seems like its anew thing, but it has been around for centuries. Unfortunately, many people have gotten away from what encompasses natural, healthy living, so people look at ‘natural’ as something different or strange. Now, what does all this mean? What is natural health?

Put simply natural health it is a lifestyle that helps you restore and maintain your health and wellness through diet, exercise, and the use of a variety of alternative medicine treatments. Okay, that sounds good, right? But how do you do that and where do you begin? A good way to start is from the inside out. Here are a few examples on how to get started:

• Drink plenty of water. It helps move vital substances through the blood stream and into your cells. It also helps regulate the body’s temperature. Most people are dehydrated and don’t even know it. A person should drink at least 8 glasses of water a day or more if they consume caffeine or alcohol.

• Whole foods and fresh foods are what our bodies are built for. Any time a food is touched, it looses vital nutrients. For example, white flour and white sugar have been processed so much that when ingested, it is like taking empty calories. Then our bodies are still requiring the necessary vitamins and we eat more to try to gain that; which, in turn, causes unnecessary weight gain. How do we know what we are getting? To start, check the labels. Every packaged food has a label and it is best to understand what those labels mean. Also, eating local produce and products insures that you are getting the most pure food out there.

• Balanced diet – We need to eat a balance of foods, or more realistically a balance of the essential vitamins and minerals in the foods we eat. We need to eat healthy fresh foods, that contain all the ingredients our bodies need.

• Fat – Fat is bad, right? Well, not in all cases. Trans fats and too many saturated fats are. They are too often consumed in large quantities. However, there are essential fats that maintain your brain’s metabolic levels and needs. How do you get the fats you need? Start by adding olive oil to your grocery list along with walnuts and flax seed. These items are readily available and adding them to your diet can be extremely beneficial.

• Simple is better – Do you know when you read the label on your foods and there are those words that you need a PhD to understand? Well, those are the things that you should stay away from. If you can’t read it or understand it then you truly do not need it. Foods that are processed (luncheon meats for example) are filled with nitrates to do so. These aid in keeping foods fresher for longer periods. However, these nitrates and other preservatives have been linked to certain cancers and other maladies in the body.

• Nurture nature – Which quite simply means to stay as natural as possible. Try to stay away from pharmaceutical drugs as much as possible. If you have to be on them, try working with your doctor to go on the least dose possible. Having too many drugs in your body can lead to toxicity and many drugs strip your body of essential vitamins. Whenever possible, ask if you can try a natural nutritional remedy instead of the processed version. A good example would be taking Vitamin E, flax, and garlic will reduce inflammation, lower blood pressure, and keep important body fluid levels where they need to be.

There are many more ways to benefit your body from the inside out. Combining some of the above with exercise, mental health, and spiritual health will give you the best chance of combating those ailments that flood an ill balanced body.