Build Your Health with Lifestyle Strategies
Illuminate the Possibilities by learning lifestyle strategies to support overall vitality and lifelong health.
Lifestyle Strategies are the behaviors and habits you do, or don’t do on a daily basis.
Your daily habits and behaviors can enhance and protect your brain and body health, giving you the power to BUILD Your Health and live life with vitality!
Each Lifestyle Strategy builds on itself to enhance your overall well-being while maintaining your brain and body health and your life!
Below, we dive into seven lifestyle strategies to support your health and longevity- no matter what stage of life you are in.
Move More
Stress Less
Nourish with Real Food
Good Sleep
Continue to Learn
Positive Socializing
Reduce Toxins
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Move More.
Move More
Key Benefits
Physical activity improves sleep, mood & insulin resistance.
It enhances hippocampus volume (your brain’s memory center) and reduces the inflammation caused from stress.
Movement also improves blood flow to your brain and organs since your blood vessels dilate, and heart rate speeds up.
what You can do
Do any movement you like for 10 minutes right now!
Work your way up to 45-60 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise like, walking, dancing or spinning, coupled with resistance training like, weight lifting, group athletic classes, or body weight movement like yoga or HIIT.
Move 5-7 days a week.
Do any movement, for any amount of time, because that equals More Movement!
Stress Less.
Stress Less
Key Benefits
Reducing stress levels lowers the stress hormones of cortisol, & adrenaline.
Less stress equals reduced blood sugars.
Improves serotonin & melatonin secretion which means more focused calm & better sleep, with less food cravings.
Less stress reduces heart rate and blood pressure and evens out mood swings.
What you can do
Try breathing deeply from your diaphragm, instead of your chest.
Journal about things you think about often before going to sleep.
Sign up for a meditation class.
Explore meditation apps to see what works best for you.
Nourish with Real Food.
Nourish with Real Food
Key Benefits
Real food derived from nature, reduces cellular inflammation, toxin exposure & helps restore insulin sensitivity.
All of these are key components for keeping your brain and body filled with energy!
What You can do
Eat real food without chemicals, coloring or preservatives.
Eat 1/4 cup of berries at least twice/week.
Avoid trans fats: aka partially hydrogenated oils.
Do an elimination food plan to determine your food sensitivities & understand how food affects you.
Good Sleep.
Good Sleep
Key Benefits
Solid sleep reduces amyloid production, stress & excessive caloric intake.
It increases the process of autophagy, which is the body's way of recycling & removing damaged cell parts.
Sleep remove toxins through cerebral spinal fluid 'washing'.
What You can do
Get good sleep-about 8 hours/night without sleep aids.
Practice sleep hygiene like:
No stimulants like caffeine or energy drinks in the afternoon.
Remove all electronics from your bedroom- including the TV.
Invest in super comfortable linens & pillows.
Continue to Learn.
Continue to Learn
Key Benefits
Participating in leisure activities like reading books, a trip to a museum, & writing letters protects your brain from amyloid protein buildup.
Lifelong learning strengthens the connections between your brain's nerve cells.
What you can do
Learn a new language.
Visit the library & pick a topic to discover for free!
Learn to play a new instrument, or re-learn one you used to play.
Take an adult continuing education class.
Invest in yourself.
Positive Socializing.
Positive Socializing
Key Benefits
Even brief episodes of positive social interaction can improve executive function.
Staying socialized resists negative effects of amyloid protein build up in your brain & combats exposure to depressive feelings & isolation.
What You can do
Join a group. Religious, social, political or other- just join in on the fun!
Attend local plays, concerts or musicals.
Be an active player on a sports team, or coach one.
Make a lunch date with a friend.
Join a book club.
Reduce Toxins.
Reduce Toxins
Key Benefits
Removing toxins like the heavy metals of lead, mercury & aluminum and other toxins like solvents, mold alcohol pesticides can improve your memory, concentration, headaches, mood swings & erratic behaviors.
Less toxins keeps your cells functioning at high levels.
What You can do
Eat foods that are pesticide-free if you can. Organic produce greatly reduces pesticide ingestion.
Ask your healthcare provider to test you for heavy metals.
Reduce alcohol intake to minimal.
Quit tobacco, vaping and other oxygen depleting habits.
Reduce use of heavy fragrances in lotions, detergents and perfumes.