The Daily Mind

Daily Steps To Mindful Living

Body

Why Exercise is NOT the Key to Losing Weight

Body, Movement & Fitness


Creative Commons License photo credit: John Steven Fernandez

Six months ago I weighed 93 kilograms (204 pounds). Today I weigh 83 (182 pounds). In just six months I have dropped a solid 10 kilograms and feel healthier than I have since high school. So how much exercise did I do to achieve that goal? Almost none.

In this post I am going to share with you how I lost the weight and why I am convinced that weight loss has very little to do with the exercise that you do. If you have your own weight loss experiences I would love to hear about them in the comments.

Why my teeth helped me lose weight

So here is the confession. About six months ago I got a new form of orthodontics called Invisalign. Invisalign is basically a series of invisible plates that you wear all day that move your teeth one by one. Every two weeks you change to the next plate and at the end of the series your teeth have gone from crooked to perfectly straight. Which I badly needed.

Anyway, the real kicker is that you can’t eat with them in. You take them out to eat (and drink) and you can only have them out for around 20 minutes at a time. Say goodbye to snacking, sugary drinks in between meals and, of course, say goodbye to second helpings after dinner.

These changes that have been “forced” upon me are the reason I lost 10 kilos so quickly. The secret to lasting and healthy weight loss is not exercise, it is the amount of food you are taking in.

Why exercise is not the answer

Prior to getting these plates I spent a lot of time exercising trying to lose weight. I didn’t have much luck. I would lose one or two kilos but the weight would always come back on as soon as I stopped the intense work outs. Why? Because I was still taking in way too many calories.

Let me show you some maths that I have been thinking about:

One can of Coke has around 155 calories in it.

Running on a treadmill for 20 minutes burns around 150 calories.

That means that after 20 minutes of exercise you have burned off one sugar drink and hardly any fat stores.

As you can see by this simple bit of maths, exercise is not the best way to lose weight. Diet is. It is your diet that will make or break your progress. It is simply too hard to burn off all the calories you need by exercise alone.

Why portion sizes will help you lose weight forever

I am now a firm believer that your portion sizes are one of the most important things when it comes to losing weight. And to prove this we can use a simple example and a bit of maths again.

Let’s say you use an extra large bowl for your dinner every night and fill it up so that you get 100 more calories than if you used a smaller bowl. Now, over a year that is 36,500 extra calories that you wouldn’t have had if you used a smaller bowl. There are 3500 calories in a pound of fat so in one year you have added around 10 pounds of fat. And that is just from dinner.

It is really important to control your portion sizes and think of it as extra calories that add up over a year or over ten years. By just making your dinner smaller you will essentially save 10 pounds of fat in a year. It is very powerful.

Why you have to keep exercising

After all this diet stuff is said and done it is still vital that you keep exercising on a regular basis. The exercise helps to increase your metabolism and thus will assist your weight loss progress. It isn’t the main thing, but it will make a massive difference to the way you look and feel. This is especially true if you want to add a bit of muscle or tone – diet can’t do that. Exercise also helps you to feel better about yourself due to the large amount of endorphins that are released. These feel good chemicals go a long way to keeping you healthy.

Does anyone have any weight loss stories to share? I would like to know what has/hasn’t worked for you.

Originally posted on November 3, 2010 @ 11:47 pm

3 Ways to Deal with Physical Pain and Painful Sickness

Body, Inspiration, Spirit

too much
Creative Commons License photo credit: lpk90901

“If the problem can be solved, why worry? If the problem cannot be solved, worrying will do you no good.” – Shantideva

For the last two weeks I’ve been in bed unable to move due to a big ole stone stuck in my saliva gland. Every time I ate (or even thought about eating for that matter) the gland would swell up to golf ball size and ache like nothing I’ve ever experienced. It was the worst pain I have ever been in.

During this time laying perfectly still I really started to think about all the people out there who have it so much worse than me and my stone. And now that the stone is gone (thank you surgeon!) I wanted to write down some things that I’ve heard about in the hope that it might help you if you ever go through some horrible physical pain or sickness. I hope it helps someone out there.

Getting on top of the worry

If you talk to my friends and family they will probably tell you that I am a big worrier. I seem to make things out to be worse than they are and I worry intensely about things that haven’t happened yet. This is a very bad thing as it makes many a mole hill into a mountain.

Worry seems to make any pain that is there seem a lot worse than it is and this leads to a lot more suffering for you and your family. I think that if you can tackle the worrying you are halfway there as most physical pain is somewhat manageable.

A best friend with cancer

Some of my long time readers might remember that my best mate had cancer a few years ago. It was a pretty tough time for everyone involved (mostly him) and we all spent a lot of effort looking into ways to deal with the physical and emotional pain that was going on. I remember one night sitting with him whilst he was in unbearable pain and wishing there was more I could do. I also had the thought that one day it might be myself in that bed and that I should prepare my mind now and not wait for it to happen.

So even if you are not in pain now I hope that you will take some time to research some techniques as it seems that those who have trained their mind and bodies are able to cope with the bad times much better than those who start training when the problems occur. Of course I don’t want you to worry about getting sick, that’s not the point. I just hope that you might do a little preparation in case it ever happens.

Dealing with physical pain and painful sickness

saliva gland stone removed
There it is – the stone once removed from the saliva duct. Painless operation but a very painful few weeks before hand. All that trouble over a tiny little calcification!

Like I said, most of these ideas are things that I used when I was in bed with the saliva gland stone and when my best friend was dealing with cancer. They worked for me but there is no guarantee that they will work for everyone. If you yourself have any advice for people going through something painful then please leave a comment as it might really help someone out there.

1. Compassion – think about others more than yourself
More than anything else I am thankful for compassion. My mother and all my loving Buddhist teachers have constantly tried to teach me to make other people more important than myself. And while I have absolutely no real understanding of this, it did become very important when I was in pain.

It actually sounds quite selfish now, thinking about compassion in order to make your pain better. But as I was laying there unable to move I naturally started to think about all the other living beings out there who are in much worse pain than I am. All those people who are suffering terminal illnesses or have just had their arm blown off in Iraq. My pain, by comparison, is fairly minute.

I realized after a few days of being sick that I had a choice. I could panic and worry about whether I would ever get better or start thinking about others. Shifting my mind away from myself seemed to give me some strength and a will to endure and be brave and get back on my feet because there are a lot of people out there who can’t.

2. Giving and taking meditation – take on the suffering
In Tibetan Buddhism there is a tradition of meditation called Tong Len or giving and taking. It is basically an aid that helps you develop compassion and weaken your self clinging by imagining that you are taking on all the sickness of other sentient beings by using the breath. I am obviously not qualified to teach this so head over to this website for a nice teaching by a western nun called Pema Chodron.

Basically what I would do while I was sick was imagine that I was taking on all sentient beings suffering when I breathed in, and when I breathed out I would give them all my happiness. I imaged that my pain was me taking on the illness of everyone else. Again, this practiced seemed to help me because it made the experience meaningful. It gave me a chance to practice. Other than that all I could do was lie still and worry about whether the surgeon would accidentally cut an artery in my neck and kill me!

3. Accept help – don’t be ashamed
When my best mate was in hospital one of the doctors mentioned how important it was to be honest and open about how you are feeling because if you’re not two things happen. Firstly, the doctors have trouble diagnosing you because they aren’t sure what your true symptoms are. Secondly, your pain doesn’t get managed properly because no body knows how much pain you really are in.

For the first month of my illness I didn’t really talk about how much it hurt. Because of this the doctors just sort of plodded along not really thinking it was a huge problem. Finally the pain got so bad that I rang my GP desperate and begging him for a referral for a specialist. Within an hour I was talking to a surgeon who said he could operate in two weeks. Had I not opened up about the pain I would probably still be laying in my bed in agony, unable to eat or drink.

During that time I also asked my teachers to do prayers for me and my friends and family to help me with things like DVDs or just someone to chat to when I needed a distraction. Unless you open up and accept the help it is really hard for anyone to know what to do for you. Without the kindness of my doctors, teachers, relatives and friends I don’t know what I would have done.

Conclusion

I would love to hear about what has helped you or a family member deal with some pain or illness that has happened. It can be a very lonely and frightening time and it would be nice to use this post as a tiny bit of support for anyone who might stumble upon it one day when they really need somewhere to turn. If it is you that is going through something painful I hope you get better really soon.

Originally posted on October 8, 2010 @ 1:45 am

Eating Animals: Is It Time We Evolved?

Body, Nutrition

childlike curiosity
Creative Commons License photo credit: robert.molinarius

“We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err.”
– Henry Beston

Is it time to stop eating animals? Is meat really necessary in a world where so many other options exist? Is the practice of eating meat something that is outdated, old fashioned and perhaps a little bit primitive? In this post I want to share some thoughts I have been having lately about eating meat and whether or not it is time we evolved.

A new angle to look at

The quote at the start of this post is from a book called The Outermost House by Henry Beston. Henry was a nature writer who produced this masterpiece while living in solitude on Cape Cod. There on the windy beach he found a new appreciation for the natural world and, in my opinion, wrote one of the most inspiring and opinion-shifting passages about our relationship with animals. Here is the full quote:

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

What I love about this quote is that it very subtly challenges our ideas about animals by arguing that they are not below us but are in fact other nationalities existing within our own. This concept is an interesting one because it brings up new ideas about eating meat. The documentary Earthlings explains this further by asking us why we consider racism and sexism to be negative traits but species-ism to be perfectly okay. On a logical front it doesn’t seem to make sense because discrimination against animals has the exact same patterns, motives and behaviors as the characteristics that we, as a society, most abhor.

Is it time we evolved?

cloe
Creative Commons License photo credit: Michael W. May

The world “evolve” keeps coming in to my mind when I think about eating meat because it seems as though the more reading I do about meat the less I feel drawn to it. As you probably know by now I am an aspiring vegetarian. I still eat meat once a week but for the most part I avoid it. Inwardly it feels as if I am evolving a little bit from who I used to be – an overweight meat lover who stayed comfortable in the thought that the killing was out of sight and out of mind. But in a world where we are now all so conscious about global warming, disease and ethics I feel as though meat eating just doesn’t fit anymore. Some questions I have been asking myself lately:

  • Is it healthy?
    After reading a few studies about the fact that vegetarians live longer and are less likely to develop cancer or heart disease I started to wonder whether meat was as healthy as we had always been told. Sure, meat has proteins and lots of vitamins but so do the variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and other foods that are available. And these don’t seem to come with the health consequences.
  • Is it ethical?
    Growing up I was always told that killing animals, hurting things, etc. were unacceptable but the idea of meat eating was never challenged. This is probably because my parents wanted me to have meat while I was growing and developing but now that I am on my own I wonder whether it is time to challenge the status quo. I would never kill an animal so why do I consider it okay to have someone else do it for me?
  • Is it logical to ignore an animal’s suffering?
    I have a cat and a dog and I love them like children. They have mood swings, get happy when I come home and cry out when they get hurt. I do not believe that their emotional responses are as developed as a human being’s is but I am 100% certain that they posses them. They are not like plants or rocks. They have a very active and emotional brain. And, from what I have been told, pigs are a lot smarter than dogs. They run away when they see the knife coming. So how can I justify eating pork and bacon when it comes from an animal that thinks and feels with greater capacity than my cat and dog?
  • Is it socially responsible?
    Scientists have stated that the meat industry does more damage to the environment than any other industry or problem. Cattle emit enormous amounts of methane gas, they have to be fed and fattened up and that food needs to be grown and manufactured. Then we slaughter the cow and refrigerate it, truck it around the country or fly it overseas. The sheer amount of energy and pollution that goes into making one steak is staggering. And in a world where hunger and food prices are becoming a serious problem (never mind the global warming) it seems as though meat has become socially irresponsible.

These are the thoughts I have been having lately about meat eating. I am going to try and reduce the amount of meat I eat because I feel like it is something that I need to be doing. I do like the taste of meat and I understand why we eat it. But, it feels like it is time to perhaps move on.

What do you think?

What are your thoughts on the idea of evolving away from eating meat? Do you think it is something that has potential or do you think that meat should always be a part of our society and culture? If you can’t stand the idea of giving up meat, even though you might concede there are downfalls, why do you think that is? I would be really interested to hear all of your ideas on this topic as it is something that I have been quite interested in for a while now.

Originally posted on August 13, 2010 @ 2:51 am

Why Your Stress Might be Killing You

Body

20100624_0158
Creative Commons License photo credit: Christina Spicuzza

“Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness” – Richard Carlson

A few years ago I went through a rough patch that left me feeling constantly stressed. During that time I started to also see some physical manifestations of that emotional turmoil. One day I went to my doctor and he told me that I needed to do something about it or I could wind up doing some serious damage. It hit me like a tonne of bricks – up until that point it had never occurred to me that stress might be damaging my health in the long term.

In this post I want to talk about why your stress levels might be killing you. The more I read about the matter the more I am coming to understand that there are a lot of people out there doing themselves some harm.

The scary links between stress and health problems

My younger brother is studying medicine and as such we often have talks about the link between body and mind. Long gone are the days when the medical world viewed them as two separate things; the current consensus is that what goes on the body is strongly related to the mind. You can look to your own life as an example. Try and remember the last headache you got; I am betting it had something to do with a work or family argument. What about the last time you couldn’t sleep? Was that stress related too? These are prime examples of the body following the mind’s lead.

Its called psychoneuroimmunology and it is the study of the interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems of the human body. There have been countless studies showing that stress can:

  • lead to an increased chance of weight problems
  • cause poor sleep which can lead to other health issues
  • have an impact on your heart’s health
  • impact your immune response
  • etc

These (and the ones not mentioned) are pretty serious and, over time, can do serious damage to your body. It is extremely important for our health that we understand how stress affects us and learn a few things to get it under control.

The necessary trip

hiking. tutzing kathi 1
Creative Commons License photo credit: deep_schismic

If you think that you might be having problems with stress it is vitally important that you go and see your doctor. This is something that I put off for a long time for fear of coming across too sensitive and dramatic. The truth was, however, if I waited much longer I may have winded up doing some permanent damage.

The amazing thing was that I felt almost instantly better after seeing my doctor. It was a combination of knowing I was doing something to help myself get better and just talking to someone who knew how to help. Sometimes talking to friends and family is extremely helpful, but sometimes it is not. I’m sure we all have those mates who just tell us to “man up” or “keep busy until it goes away”. Sometimes these help, sometimes they harm.

Book a time to see your doctor, especially if you have been having bad sleep, noticed changes in your weight or have been having any other unusual symptoms that you think might be related to your stress.

How to deal with stress in the short term

There are a few little things that you can do in the short term in order to help combat the effects of stress. These things may or may not work for you, they are just some things that I find to be quite helpful on a stressful day at work or home. Remember, an underlying stress condition can seriously impact your long term health and as such it is very important to talk to a professional.

1. Run, run, run
Exercise is a tried and tested method for reducing stress and helping your body recovery from a bad day. Why? Because, as we all know, the body releases a chemical called endorphins which leaves you feeling. Although I can’t find any medical proof for it (any doctors out there?) I once read that the stress hormone is designed to prepare you for a primal “fight or flight” situation which is then perfectly burned off by running. It is almost as if the stress is preparing you for a good jog!

Running also has the dual effect of getting you outside into the open and getting some sunlight. Sunlight is necessary for the production of Vitamin D which is involved in keeping you happy as well as immune healthy. Some studies also suggest that it may help prevent cancer.

2. Eat less meat
There are numerous studies that point to the fact that eating a healthy vegetarian diet can lead to a longer life expectancy and better heart health. There is also some evidence to suggest that you are less likely to get cancer. Now I am not a total vegetarian, I eat meat about twice a week. But since cutting back from daily meat intake I have noticed better energy levels and a much happier feeling. It might not work for you but I would never go back to a meat based diet.

3. Read from the experts
There is so much knowledge to be found in books. All the problems that we are having now have been had and thought about by smart people for thousands of years. Aristotle, Buddha, Plato, Descartes, the Dalai Lama, etc. – all of these people’s thoughts and ideas are written down. And they help. They have practical meaning for our lives today. If you are having problems with stress you might just find a solution or two by reading a book and then applying the ideas to your situation. Family, work, disease… all of these problems have been tackled before.

Conclusion

The opening quote is something that I found to be quite striking. Everyone is stressed but hardly anyone thinks that it is a real problem. But as my doctor showed me and as the studies continue to show us, stress can have a serious impact on your health, well being and longevity. I hope that this short post might serve as a starting point for you to tackle your stress levels. At the very minimum I hope we all go for a jog tonight!

Originally posted on July 30, 2010 @ 5:44 am

17 Ways to Wake Up Feeling Fresh in the Morning

Body

Okay so we know that waking up and doing things in the morning is the best way to achieve our goals in life. We can exercise, study, work, meditate, etc. much better than other times in the day. However, most of us feel pretty crap in the morning.

So what can we do about it? How can we wake up ready for work?

Ways to wake up feeling fresh in the morning

Here are some things you can do in the short term and the long term so that you will wake up fresh and energetic in the morning. I’ve divided them up into three sections; (1) the night before and (2) during the night and (3) the morning.

Wake Up Feeling Fresh in the Morning

The Night Before

1. Avoid coffee, red wine and chocolate the night before

To wake up fresh you need to get a good sleep and one of the best ways to ruin a good sleep is to upset your gut. You really need to keep it happy during the night.




Coffee, red wine and chocolate have been scientifically shown to disturb your sleep more than any other food. They upset your intestines in such a way that you will wake up constantly or have a very light sleep that doesn’t re charge you at all. Try not to have these things after lunch time.

2. Go to bed happy with your partner

One of the best ways to get a terrible sleep is to go to bed before you solve a problem with your partner. In my relationship I never let the sun set on an argument, even if I have to compromise a little bit on my own ego.

Before you go to bed make sure your partner is happy (as much as you can) and make sure that you are happy with them. It is also one of the best things you can do for your relationship, let alone your sleep.

3. Meditate, pray and calm down before going to bed

Every night before I go to bed I do about 30 minutes to an hour of meditation. This is amazing as it allows you to throw out all the days worries and forget about the worries of tomorrow. The future cannot be changed while you are asleep and even if you get a free psychic reading, the future cannot be changed while you are asleep and the past is gone so there is no point losing sleep over it! Let it go.

Meditate or pray or do whatever you do. Simply sitting there and watching your breath is a great way to prepare yourself for a nice deep sleep. Check out this post if you want to learn to do a quick little stress relieving meditation.

4. Don’t eat dinner right before bed

A lot of people run home after work, cook up some dinner and then eat it and go to bed. This is a bad idea. The process of digestion takes a while and you do not want to be laying down right after you ate a big meal. Try and leave a few hours in between your bedtime and your dinner and see how you feel the next day.

5. Organize your room according to Feng Shui principles

I know a lot of you probably think that Feng Shui is a load of bull but just give me a second to convince you that it actually has some “western logic” behind it.

For those of you who don’t know Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese art of setting up your home in a way that balances the energies and vibes by putting furniture in certain “hot spots”.




The bedroom is particularly important and I have found that since I arranged my room according to Feng Shui principles I have had a much more “rested” sleep. In particular the placement of your bed is important. Feng Shui tells us that you should sleep where you can see the door but not be in he direct path of the door opening. This helps us sleep with a sense of security. I can see the practical reason for this. You can get some more bedroom Feng Shui tips here.

6. Go to the toilet

Even if you do not need to go to the toilet before bed you should still have a go and squeeze out whatever you can. The reason for this is that the kidneys will continue to work during the night and by the morning your bladder will be nice and full. If your bladder fills up early you might feel the need to go during the night and this cuts out valuable time from your sleep.

You might think that sleeping is about the total time spent asleep but this is incorrect. It is important to stay asleep without breaking it because it takes some hours to get into the “zone” where you are truly at rest. A toilet break interrupts this zone.

During the Night

7. Not too hot, not too cold

Another sleep related tip: your sleep is greatly affected by the how hot or cold you are during the night. It is important to get a good balance as this keep your energies calm and stops them from spiking.

Try and find a balance between clothes and bed covers. For example, I like to sleep without any clothes but with a heavy blanket. This keeps my temperature pretty consistent.

8. Keep the window open

One of the best things you can do for your health in general and your sleep in specific is to keep your window slightly open during the night. This has two benefits.

Creative Commons License photo credit: volvidejapon

Firstly, the gap in the window will allow poisonous carbon dioxide to float away. The reason the human body breathes out is because carbon dioxide is poisonous. And during the night you take a heck of a lot of breaths and your room fills up with this gas. Let it out the window.

The second reason is that you need to allow new oxygen to float in. This might also help you regulate the temperature of the room.

9. Keep your sleep consistent

People think that you MUST have eight hours sleep to get enough.

Not true.

It is more important to go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time everyday. Not everyone needs eight hours. In fact, if I get eight hours sleep I usually feel tired and groggy for the entire day. Six to seven hours is about right for me.

Start by setting your bedtime at the same time each night. Forget what is on the television and just go to bed at say 11pm each night. After a while start setting your alarm for the same time each day; even on weekends. If you don’t start waking up fresher and happier each morning I will write you a personal apology.

10. Cut out noise, it’s actually killing you!

I recently read in New Scientist Magazine that your life is actually being shortened by noise during the night. Yep, that’s right… that screaming police car or roaring traffic is actually killing you! The magazine said that the noise has an effect on your heart and waking up many times during the night puts your body under a lot of stress.

Try and keep your room quiet by wearing some earplugs. You can get earplugs that only cancel out certain sounds so that you can still hear your alarm or a baby monitor on your bedside table.

The Morning

11. Drink a glass of water

A cool glass of water on an empty stomach actually has a lot of health benefits as well as serving to wake you up. The water will kick start your metabolism and as such you will wake up faster and feel more alert.

12. Exercise

When you are groggy in the morning and nice run in the fresh air can wake you up fast. However, the interesting thing is that when you exercise in the morning you will actually have more energy the NEXT day. The more you exercise the more energy you will have as you become fitter and healthier.

If you need some tips to get up and exercise early check out this post on early morning exercise hacks.

Wake Up Feeling Fresh in the Morning
Exercise first thing in the morning is a great way to wake yourself up

13. Don’t drink coffee… everyday

Science is now showing that our body becomes accustomed to the caffeine in our coffee and we have less of a reaction to it. This means that your daily cup of coffee is waking you up less and less every day that you drink it.

How to Wake Up and Keep Going: Have the Right Early Morning Drink

A better idea is to save the morning coffee for when you are really tired and need a little bit of help. Perhaps if you had to stay out late or get up extra early and you have disturbed your regular sleeping habit. This is the time to have a cup of coffee.

Wake Up Feeling Fresh in the Morning

14. Breathe deeply

The first thing you should do in the morning is take some deep breaths into your stomach and concentrate on waking up. Imagine breathing in a bright white light that makes your body feel happy and light.

15. Have something to be excited about

If you get up and go to a job you hate to work with a boss that drives you crazy you are not going to really enjoy waking up. However, if you have something you enjoy to go to you will be more likely to wake up happy knowing you have a bit of joy coming your way.

If you can’t leave your terrible boss then you should make time in the morning to do some sport or activity that makes you happy. Start your day with something happy and fun as opposed to starting it with work.

16. Get up straight away

When I was in the Himalayas a buddhist master told me that one of the best things you can do to wake up early and feel alert and fresh is to get up straight away. As soon as your alarm goes off you should get up without snoozing it over and over again.

He said to me half jokingly: “You have to get up before your self cherishing does”.

17. Be grateful for not dying

The Buddha said that every time you go to bed you should consider that you won’t wake up. That way, when you wake up you will be especially grateful for the day you have ahead of you. Instead of seeing the day as a burden that you have to “get through” you will see it as an opportunity to do something meaningful and beneficial.

Why? Because you could die tonight.

When applied correctly this realization will bring you tremendous energy.

Conclusion on waking up freshly

Each of these tips works. I have tried it on myself and my friends. And the great thing is that the more of these tips you apply the fresher you will feel when you wake up. Try them yourself.

Do you have any other to add? I’d love to hear them!

Top photo:Creative Commons License photoeyeliam

**Top 10 Daily Mind post.**

Originally posted on July 19, 2010 @ 3:39 am

How to Add 10 Years to Your Life: The Do’s & Don’ts

Body, Life

who's zooming who?
Creative Commons License photo credit: gorgeouxness

“Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.” – Trotsky

It is said that although death is certain, the time of death is most uncertain. Wise people have been trying to teach us this for thousands of years. Long life is considered by many to be the most precious gift that one can be given for it is rare and valuable; an unlikely chance to experience more, contribute to society and redeem our faults.

And although we will never be able to permanently cheat death, modern science is now showing us dozens of ways to add years to our life. In this post I want to show you some interesting things I have found about how to add at least ten years to your life, broken down into a list of do’s and don’ts.

Why live longer?

While researching this post I have come across and interesting perspective – why would I want to live a long life? Why would I want to grow old and lose my mobility, friends and perhaps sanity? Wouldn’t it be better to pass away younger whilst still relatively healthy and independent?

From one point of view I guess this attitude is right. I can understand why people would be afraid of living to an old age if old age meant only a degradation in the quality of their own life. But, from another perspective I think old age is quite a wonderful thing. Time is so limited and fleeting, any extra amount I am given to accomplish my goals would be most welcome.

A different focus
The key thing here, I think, is that your focus must be on charity, contribution, service, others. If you are just trying to live a long life because you are afraid of death or because you don’t want to leave your nice house then the whole idea seems silly. But if you want to live a long life in order to help others, then you are on a very different track.

The list of people who continued to help others right into their twilight years is long and includes wonderful names like:

  • Shakyamuni Buddha (81 years)
  • Mother Teresa (87 years)
  • Gandhi (78 years)
  • Benjamin Franklin (84 years)

Adding ten years to your life would be a wonderful achievement if it meant you could spend more time working to benefit others, helping your family and friends and contributing to your community and society. Unfortunately, however, there is no way we can add so many years to our life that death is averted. We must always try to remember that.

How to add 10 years to your life – the do’s and don’ts

Feelin' Alright
Creative Commons License photo credit: Ka-ho Pang

I have done my best to include as much “further reading” materials in the following tips so that you can go on and read more about the subject, the studies, etc. If I have missed any or you have any further information please leave a comment. It might really help someone.

DO – Meditate
Modern science is now beginning to study the effects of meditation on longevity with some very promising results. In India I had often heard stories of monks and nuns who lived to an extremely old age and I often wondered whether this had something to do with their dedicated meditation practice. Dr. Robert Keith Wallace is a pioneer in this field and published a study in the Journal of Neuroscience which showed that those who practiced meditation for just a five year period had a biological age somewhat 12 years less than their chronological age.

So why does meditation increase your lifespan? Lots of reasons. The main three, however, relate to its ability to deal with stress, longevity and immunity hormones. Dr. Vincent Giampapa has done studies that show how massively these hormones are affected by some simple meditation practice.

Many of these studies have shown that you just need to take a few minutes each day to sit down, relax and focus on your breathing. Calm your mind down and focus on the breath coming in and out of your nose and there is a good chance you will avoid certain illnesses. Scientific proof that the mind can affect the body in a big way.

DON’T – Stress
More than ever before we have concrete evidence that stress can kill you. Sure, it won’t kill you right away but it will lead to things like heart disease and perhaps even cancer. Robert Sapolsky has spent more than 30 years studying the effects of stress. In an interview with Stanford Report he mentions that stress is designed to keep us alive by helping us run away from predators or fight off enemies, and it does this extremely well by releasing certain hormones. But nowadays those same hormones are being released when we worry about money or our next bill. And overtime this has devastating effects on the body.

Stress is also dangerous because it can lead to other life-shortening practices like smoking or binge drinking. When you feel stressed at work you often come home to a junk food meal and some beer to make you feel better. And this makes you sick.

If you want to add 10 years to your life you need to learn how to deal with stress. It is important to realize that you will never be able to eliminate all the causes of stress in your life; the bills will keep coming. The goal is to develop some techniques to deal with those life events.

DO – Drink Green Tea
Green tea has been drunk in China and other regions of Asia for thousands of years. It has formed an integral part of their medical system and has long been known as a substance that can have very positive effects on the body. And now western medical science is backing up those claims with various studies that point to the health benefits of green tea. The study in the previous link surveyed 40,000 people over a ten year period and found that drinking green tea made you less likely to die of cardiovascular disease. And considering that heart disease is the leading cause of death in the western world, it might mean that green tea can significantly increase your life span.

Munnar Tea Plantations
Creative Commons License photo credit: code_martial

When drinking green tea it is important to buy it from an ethical producer who is located in a non-polluted region. There is some evidence that suggests that toxins in the air and soil can be absorbed into the tea plant and passed along to your body. It is also very important to drink tea without any milk as a protein in the milk can damage some of the beneficial enzymes in the tea. Tea also has the dual effect of calming you down which can definitely reduce your stress levels.

DON’T – Stay up late
I have written about sleep a lot of times on this blog; how to wake up fresh, how to get to sleep, why staying up late is bad for you, etc. I have always felt the effects of a bad night’s sleep on my own body and mind but the more I look in to the matter, the more I realize that science is discovering the same thing. Late nights and erratic sleep are now understood to be contributing causes to conditions like obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

The interesting thing about sleep is that no one knows why we do it. But we know that we need it. Since the beginning of our species the body has forced us into shutting down each night for around six to 12 hours. And now that we have the internet, busy careers and, of course, the TV, we are all getting a lot less sleep. And this is worrying a lot of experts.

If you want to live an extra ten years it is important that you have good sleep habits. Try to make sure you go to bed and wake up at the same time each evening and morning, don’t drink things like red wine and coffee before bed which cause you to have poor sleep, and make sure you are getting enough hours. The ironic thing about all of this, however, is that you will probably spend an extra ten years asleep!

DO – Exercise every day
This is nothing new. Exercise has long been known to have benefits like weight loss, increased cardiovascular health and an increased level of emotional well being. But what is just coming out now is how much exercise you need to achieve these benefits. And it is bad news for sweat haters. You need exercise every day. One recent study went so far as to say that you will not lose weight in the long term unless you exercise an hour every single day. That is a lot.

DSC_0056
Creative Commons License photo credit: David Clow – Maryland

The good news is that there are so many different types of exercise you will never feel bored. Exercise doesn’t have to be running or lifting weights. It could be yoga, pilates, dance classes, tai chi or kick boxing. It is important to choose a variety of different disciplines so that you do not get sick of one thing and give up on exercise altogether. One way you can do this is find a buddy that will share your passion and dedication. Go to classes together, wake each other up at 6:30am to go for a run, have fun together. This is an easy way to add years to your life.

DON’T – Eat Meat
This is likely to be a very controversial heading as the western world is so obsessed with eating meat. We have commercials on television telling us to eat more red meat for its iron and vitamins and we have Government sponsored cookbooks telling us that lots of meat is healthy. But, as happened in Australia a few years ago, it turned out that the cookbooks were paid for by the meat industry. Often times the advice telling us to eat meat has an ulterior motive.

There are now lots of studies that show that vegetarianism is linked with a longer life. In fact, this one tells us that if you eat a vegetarian diet for over 20 years you are likely to add four whole years to your life. It is interesting to note, however, that the scientists don’t really know why a low meat diet increases our lifespan. Is it because fruit and vegetables are so healthy, because meat is unhealthy or because being a vegetarian might also indicate other lifestyle choices? They just don’t know.

Eating less meat is a way to live longer but it is also a good idea for other reason. Two of the big ones include ethics and environmental protection. The meat industry is extremely cruel to animals at every stage of their life. The living conditions are often torturous and the culling and transport stages (especially if live export) are unacceptable. In a day an age where we have scientific and documentary evidence that animals feel pain, emotions and desire happiness, it is entirely baffling that we continue to treat them with such cruelty when using them for food.

I have been trying for a long time to be vegetarian and keep failing miserably so I definitely don’t deserve this soap box. But I have got my meat eating down to around once or twice a week with a view to, one day, have totally kicked the habit. If you love a good steak or a cheeseburger perhaps try limiting it to weekends and see how you go?

Conclusion

These few simple do’s and don’ts are enough to add ten years on to your life if you do them consistently and with dedication. But it doesn’t need to stop there – you can stop smoking and, just by that fact, you will increase your life expectancy. Remember, living a long time is something we should aim for but not expect. It is important to use what little time we have on this planet to help others and bring about positive changes in lives of those around you. Otherwise you might spend 90 years not doing much at all.

Originally posted on April 13, 2010 @ 4:33 am