In a nutshell, health optimization is the practice of looking at your health from the perspective of how you can make it even better. Or, what can I do to feel my best every day and live a long and healthy life? Versus, how can I fix this thing that’s wrong with me? Health optimization medicine and practices aim to take you from, “Yeah, I’m doing pretty good” to “I’m feeling the best I’ve ever felt right now.”
Health optimization medicine represents a fundamental shift in how we look at our health, especially in a Western context. In conventional and integrative medicine, the current medical model primarily treats disease and fixes or prevents future health issues. However, health optimization focuses on sustaining health rather than treating or preventing illness.
And for those patients still struggling with chronic illness, health optimization medicine represents a shift in how we look at our bodies. When you have a chronic disease, it can be easy to get trapped in a mindset of the body becoming the enemy; life becomes about a war against illness, and the condition must be defeated and beaten into submission. But that perspective rarely brings about lasting healing. Health optimization sees the body as a partner in health, to be nourished, supported, and guided into its best possible state. For chronic illness patients, this may represent a shift in perspective that leads to significant recovery and healing.
How Can You Optimize Your Health?
So, health optimization is starting to sound pretty good. But how do you put it into practice?
Figure Out Your Health Goals
Separate your goals from the disease paradigm–-instead of asking, “How can I prevent X?” figure out how you want to feel. Do you want more energy? More brain power, focus, and creativity? Do you want to be physically stronger? Optimal fertility? Strong immunity? Figure out what’s important to you for this coming year. Then, write down your ideas and narrow your options to one or two primary goals.
Create a Plan
Ideally, this is where you would work with a doctor or health coach familiar with health optimization medicine. They can help you identify nutrients and healthy habits to support you based on your goals and discuss how to optimize your environment and relationships with your health in mind.
Establish Healthy Habits
Optimizing your health to reach your goals will involve some habit changes. There’s plenty of advice on changing your habits and developing new ones, but at the end of the day, it comes down to how invested you are in reaching your goal.
Your healthy habits depend on your goals and your plan to achieve them. But if you’re uncertain where to begin, here are a few suggestions.
- Set up your environment so that you have no choice but to choose a healthy habit. An obvious example is not allowing junk food in the house and preparing healthy snacks ahead of time so that you have something immediately on hand when you’re hungry. Also, make your home environment somewhere that inspires you and motivates you to make healthy choices. Add some natural plants, books, art, or whatever the healthiest version of you finds inspirational.
- Talk to an accountability partner, whether that’s a trusted friend, a spouse, or a close family member, especially when you’re tempted to break your good habits and return to destructive ones. But even when you’re not in danger of reaching into the cookie jar, so to speak, it’s good practice to update your accountability partner on your progress so that they can encourage you.
- Give yourself rewards that motivate you to continue your habit streak—a few ideas: a relaxing bath, a new book/music, date night.
- Keep some record of your progress–a journal, a voice note, or even a video–-to look back on and see your progress over time. How are you feeling better as you change your lifestyle? What challenges are you facing and overcoming? There will come a point where you hardly recognize the person from the first entry!
Incorporate Helpful Supplements and Nutrients
Being your best also requires caring for your body and firing on all cylinders! Here are a few things you can add to your daily routine to do just that:
1. Breathe: Practice Deep Breathing
Seventy percent of your body’s toxins are released through your lungs and exhalation, making the act of “full breathing” a natural and powerful detoxifier. You take 10 “power breaths” three times a day using a ratio of 4-7-8. For example, inhale for 4 seconds through your nose, hold for seven seconds, and exhale through pursed lips for eight seconds. This type of breathing brings energy to your body, making it healthier and less stressed. You’ll start to feel better almost instantly.
2. Eat Healthy Foods
The first step is to eliminate packaged, processed food and food loaded with sugar. One example is bread. Bread from the store will last for weeks because it is highly processed and full of preservatives. We’ve talked about several things you can do to make your days more productive, but did you know that the foods you eat can help with this, too? That’s right. The items you consume daily can affect how well your brain functions, ultimately making it easier or more challenging to hit your goals. Foods that fall into this category and have positive effects on your body and brain include:
- Fish
- Nuts
- Seeds
- Avocado
- Blueberries
- Raw carrots
- Dark chocolate
Eat foods like these, and your body and brain will thank you!
3. Drink More Water
Nearly 75 percent of all Americans aren’t drinking enough water daily. Do you fall into this group? If so, this can leave you tired, result in more frequent headaches, and lower your strength and stamina, making any routine challenging to create, let alone keep. One way to overcome this all-too-common occurrence is to always have water with you. Drink a full glass first thing in the morning, have one following your morning exercise, and drink up at every meal. Keep sipping the rest of the day, too, so you get ten to twelve cups of water daily.
4. Drink Some Tea: Polyphenols Benefit the Body
You may want tea in your cup when you’re not drinking water. Polyphenols found in various herbal teas have been found to do many good things for your body. Specifically, they are anti-inflammatory and provide antioxidant-like benefits.
Here are some of the best teas to drink, as well as the reasons why:
- Green tea: Positive anti-cancer effects, good for your circulatory system and brain
- Black tea: Promotes healthy lungs
- White tea: Strong cancer preventative effects
- Oolong tea: Lowers bad cholesterol
Sit back, enjoy a cup or two a day, and reap the benefits.
5. Exercise More
Spending your days sedentary, stuck behind a desk, can wreak havoc on your body. Sitting too much causes an increased risk of colon and breast cancer, Type 2 diabetes, strokes, and heart attacks, as well as a more significant mental decline and loss of muscle and bone. Try to get 150 minutes of exercise per week – walking, yoga, dancing, riding a bike, swimming, lifting weights, or running. What you do doesn’t matter; do something to get your body moving! Other benefits of regular exercise include having an easier time controlling your weight, reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes and cancer, improved mood, and more.
6. Get Enough Sleep: No Less Than Seven Hours
Sleep is vital to your overall health for a multitude of reasons. In the short term, not sleeping enough can affect your judgment, mood, and ability to retain information. In the long term, chronic sleep deprivation can lead to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even early death. Beyond the physical and mental problems, it’s pretty tough to stick to an entire routine when you’re so tired that all you can think about is crawling back into bed, pulling the covers over your head, and drifting back to sleep.
To get a good night’s sleep, you can:
- Limit your caffeine to early in the day
- Choose late-day foods that bring on sleep, like bananas, oatmeal, and cherries
- Using ear plugs or a white noise machine to cut out outside noise at night
- Darken your room
- Stay away from technology for a good hour before bedtime
- Take melatonin to help you sleep
7. Avoid Excess Stress
A healthy lifestyle involves a wholesome diet, quality sleep, and regular exercise. But the way you feel and how you think is also very important. Being stressed all the time is a recipe for disaster. Excess stress can raise cortisol levels and severely impair your metabolism. In addition, it can increase junk food cravings and fat in your stomach area and raise your risk of various diseases. Studies also show that stress is a significant contributor to depression, which is a massive health problem today. To reduce stress, try to simplify your life — exercise, take nature walks, practice deep-breathing techniques, take supplements, and maybe even try meditation. Overcoming your stress will make you healthier and improve your life in other ways. Going through life worried and anxious and never being able to relax and enjoy yourself is a big waste.
Why Health Optimization Matters
Health optimization is about promoting health and longevity, not treating disease and injury. It’s about figuring out what imbalances can be corrected in the body to help you live and feel better every day. It can even extend to shaping your environment and relationships to help you and your whole community thrive.
8. Blood Work
And lastly, Doctor’s Nutrition knows the importance of monitoring health status and associated lab work. Insurance companies seldom pay for frequent testing; therefore, most doctors are reluctant to order these tests for you. Please don’t hold this against your doctor, as they live within the confines of guidelines established by insurance companies. Once we have the results of your blood work back, we will go over them with you. You will also receive a copy of your results and recommendations for specific nutritional and health needs that you may have. If there is something that needs further investigation, we ensure you know where to go next.
