The 7 Pillars of Healthy Living

1. Food

What you put in your mouth can positively or negatively affect your health…and not just your physical health. What you eat impacts your mental health as well.

Whole, real foods can support your wellness by providing your body and mind with the nutrients they need to function optimally. Making specific dietary changes to support your exact needs can help your body rebalance and heal and to get you feeling great again.

On the other hand, consuming processed foods and fried foods can negatively impact your physical and mental health. They are known to be highly inflammatory and negatively affect numerous body processes that influence how you feel physically and emotionally. There is a ton of research showing that inflammation is a driving factor behind many physical and mental health concerns.

Diet quality and nutrient intake must be at the forefront of your mind when wanting to support your well-being.

2. Supplements

In a perfect world, you would get all your nutrients from your food. Unfortunately, our food quality is not the same as it once was, due to things like GMOs, picking crops too early, nutrient-poor soil, and things like insecticides, herbicides, and pesticides.

Additionally, when your mood is off or your hormones are all over the place or you are tired and your blood sugar is on a rollercoaster, your body isn’t going to crave the healthy stuff. It is going to want the cake, the bread, the chocolate, and the alcohol because they make you feel good – temporarily! 

Physiology wins every day of the week! Which is why supplementation is so important. It helps correct nutrient deficiencies much faster than food alone, which in turn will help give you the physical and mental capacity to engage in healthy behaviors and naturally reach toward foods that nourish your body and your mind.

3. Exercise

It is well known that exercise is a vital component of any health and wellness regimen. That’s because it supports both physical and mental health. However, when seeking a positive impact from exercise, frequency, intensity, and duration need to be considered.

If you over or under exercise, then your physical and emotional well-being can be negatively affected. Daily movement is great, but it doesn’t need to be intense or for great lengths of time. Doing so can be a stressor on the body, rather than a stress reliever.

4. Gut Health

Good health starts in the gut. Period.

If your gut isn’t functioning properly, then you may experience issues with digestion and/or absorption. If you do not digest your food well, then you aren’t going to break it down into small enough particles to be absorbed. This is a problem!  If you don’t absorb your nutrients, then you will be left with nutrient deficiencies that can be linked to any number of physical, mental, or emotional issues.

If you have an infection in your gut or an overgrowth of bad bacteria or yeast, then your body and mind will be impacted…and not in a good way. Your microbiome needs to be balanced for you to function at your best.

One indication of gut health is bowel motions. If you do not poop daily, you may experience undesirable physical, mental, and/or emotional symptoms. Pooping is one of our detox pathways and is very important when it comes to hormone health, specifically. If you are finding that you poop too much, or that it isn’t well-formed, then you may not be getting the nutrients you need to support your well-being.

5. Stress Management

Healthy living means you must manage stress.  Stress is a key factor behind many physical and mental health concerns. It is inflammatory and can throw several body systems out of whack.

When stressed, the nervous system switches into fight or flight mode. This is healthy for short periods and unhealthy for long periods. Unfortunately, most people are continuously in this mode. When the flight or fight mode is engaged the adrenals pump out cortisol in response. Higher than normal levels of cortisol are linked to things like heart palpitations, anxiety, panic attacks, and sleep disturbances.

When the adrenals work overtime, the thyroid jumps in to help them out. However, it can only do two jobs for so long before it starts to crash! The other problem is that the more cortisol you have, the less progesterone you naturally make and absorb. This then throws the entire sex hormone balance out of whack. When this happens, it is almost guaranteed that your mental and physical health will suffer.

6. Sleep

Don’t let this be the last thing on your list. Sleep is vital because it is where your body rests and restores, which is key to physical and emotional well-being. Another key process that happens while you sleep is detoxification, which is critical to hormone health, weight management, and a host of other things.

Going to bed and getting up at the same time – even on weekends – can be a huge benefit to your well-being. The body thrives on routine, so be sure to make sleep a priority and a non-negotiable in your wellness routine.

7. Low-Tox Living

Healthy living cannot happen without managing the toxins you’re exposed to every day.  This is an area that is often overlooked. However, when it comes to supporting your physical, mental, and emotional health, you must consider chemical load. The body already works hard to eliminate toxins within the body (waste from metabolic processes and carbon dioxide are a few examples).

However, our body also must detoxify external and environmental toxins. These include food, alcohol, heavy metals, chemicals, air pollutants, and medications. Our bodies are taxed with a lot of toxins, some of which are naturally occurring, therefore not avoidable, and many that can be avoided.

A body with too many toxins can experience a host of undesirable physical, mental, or emotional symptoms.  Therefore, decreasing your toxic load and increasing the natural detoxification process of your body are key factors in increasing your physical, mental, and emotional health.