Think Choose & Act

Good quality sleep does not happen in isolation. Sleep is not something which can be improved without good movement and good nutrition. The three components of health need to work together to help improve each other. You will sleep better at night with increased activity during the day. Exercise is one type of movement, but there are many ways to provide healthy movement for your body. One example is going outside to enjoy the fresh air. Morning sunlight and engaging your senses in nature can help you sleep more soundly at night. Movements are also types of thoughts you have. Negative talk you hear or say to others, as well as excessive worry, can keep your brain overly active. Negative thoughts and negative self-talk can make it more difficult to fall asleep. Thinking positive thoughts can help you fall asleep more quickly and sleep more deeply. If it takes you an extended amount of time to fall asleep, try attaching gratitude to deep breathing which can help you fall asleep more quickly. Nutritious food during the day helps your body rest comfortably at night. If you eat nutritious meals and snacks evenly spaced throughout the day, you can avoid overstuffing yourself in the evening. Eating late at night leads to a night of tossing, turning, and indigestion. During deep, quality sleep, your body restores balance, repairs cells, and clears metabolic waste. Good sleep gives you energy to be outside, away from electronic devices, enjoying the fresh air and moving your body. When you also eat nutritious food, you get even more energy. If you can help your family and friends join you in some of these lifestyle choices it makes your community stronger too. It's all about balance. It's a cycle that goes round and round. You need all three components: good sleep, good movement, and good nutrition to Become The Whole Healthy You!

July is the month to celebrate America's 250th year! From the fireworks of 1776 to today, our country has continued moving forward with energy, spirit, and strength. Just like America, your body is always moving in three amazing ways: movement into your body, movement out of your body, and movement by your body. Movement by your body is also called exercise . Sometimes people only think of movement as exercise, so let's first explore movement into and out of your body before learning about exercise. Movement Into Your Body This is all about taking good things in through your five senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. Movement into your body is called consumption . Consumption is the basis of creativity and allows you to have new experiences, energy, and joy. Reading exciting books about inventors or breathing in fresh air on a hike are two examples of movement into your body through your senses. Are there other senses besides the ones just listed? Yes! One is called proprioception , which is your body's sense of where it is in space. Tiny sensory receptors in your muscles, tendons, and joints send messages to your brain, helping you know where your body is and how it is moving without having to look. Another important concept is coherence . Coherence happens when your heart and brain work together in a balanced, coordinated way. Both your heart and brain communicate using electrical signals, and when they are working in harmony, you may feel calmer, more focused, and better able to connect with others. Developing coherence means learning to be in harmony within yourself and with the people around you. Movement Out of Your Body Your brain and heart process all the information that your body consumes. This includes thinking, feeling, learning, deciding, and making good choices. Your brain and heart work together to solve problems, talk about feelings with friends, and express ideas through writing, art, music, and other creative activities. Movement out of your body happens in many forms, such as taking a walk in nature to explore the world around you, singing your favorite song at the top of your lungs, creating a beautiful piece of art, taking slow, deep breaths with a long exhale to calm your body during stressful situations, and even going to the bathroom. These are all ways your body responds, expresses itself, and releases energy. Learning about your brain and your heart helps you make thoughtful decisions, build healthy habits, and respond to life's challenges with wisdom and kindness. Just as you can receive coherence from the people around you, you can also send coherence through your words, actions, and presence, positively influencing those around you. Movement By Your Body Movement by your body is called exercise . Exercise keeps your heart, lungs, muscles, bones, and brain strong. It also boosts your energy and improves your focus during the day. Healthy consistent exercise allows for deep, restorative sleep at night. There are many fun ways to exercise. Try dancing to patriotic music, hiking a trail, playing baseball, riding your bike, swimming, or playing tag with friends. Every time you move your body, you are building strength, confidence, and habits that last a lifetime. When you balance all three kinds of movement—taking good things in, expressing good things out, and exercising your body—you help your heart, brain, and body work together. That's a great way to celebrate America's 250th birthday and to Become The Whole Healthy You!

We just enjoyed the longest day of the year! Summertime means hotter days for most us. Have you ever thought if just drinking water IS enough to hydrate your body on a hot summer day? When you sweat you must hydrate more. With excessive sweat you need to replenish electrolytes. Electrolytes are a subset of minerals t

Feed your body with real food. Real food from plants is when you eat vegetables, fruits, nuts, herbs, and spices grown in natural sunlight and from "clean soil". Real food from animals is when you eat eggs, dairy, meat, and fish from animals raised in their natural habitat. Eating real food will give you the energy needed to exercise. Real food starts from natural, not modified, seeds. Modified seeds are manmade in a laboratory to withstand herbicides and pesticides sprayed on the food grown, without harming the plants as they grow. This results in food becoming antinutrients. Antinutrients interfere with the absorption of nutrients in your body. Nutrients come in the form of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and water. These nutrients are part of plants, eggs, dairy, meat, and fish. Eating nutrients as close to their original source is the healthiest option. Unfortunately, there are many toxic chemicals in fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides which contaminate the soil. These toxic chemicals can include things like heavy metals, microplastics, herbicides, poisons, synthetic fertilizer, and run-off from industrial manufacturing. Toxic chemicals sprayed on plants that you or animals eat are harmful to your health. Eating real food delivers nutrients to your body. It is important to know the source of the real food you eat. With plant food, know if it is grown from natural (nonmodified) seeds in clean soil. With animal sources of real food, both from land and sea, know whether the animals eat toxins themselves. Trees and plants grown to produce the plant food you eat (apples, oranges, tomatoes, peas, beans, just to name a few) should be grown in clean soil, without toxic chemicals in it. The grass and plants animals graze upon should also grow in clean soil. When real food (fruits, vegetables, meat, or fish) is mixed with synthetic chemicals, fillers, and preservatives, the nutritional value is depleted, making it full of antinutrients. This is processed food that is made in a factory. It becomes fake food. Make the choice to not ingest chemicals or eat fake food! Learn more about why it's so important to eat Real Food . See the Dietary Guidelines For Americans .

Become the Whole Healthy You, Healthy choices blog, Lifestyle choices

Consistent sleep is critical for good health.

The global rise in diabetes is directly linked to how we make and eat our food today. Because refined sugar is cheap to make and easy to ship around the world, it is hidden in almost everything. Even if a label says a drink or food is "healthy," it usually is NOT! Refined sugar is 99-100% sucrose and is processed in a factory using heat to extract pure sugar, which removes the fiber, vitamins and minerals found in the original plant. Hence the phrase, "added sugar is empty calories", that means there is no nutritional value. When you eat plain sucrose, like in a candy bar, your body digests it almost instantly. This causes a huge sugar rush where your energy spikes, but then it crashes quickly, leaving you feeling tired and cranky. The natural sugars found in fruits and vegetables are fructose, glucose, and sucrose. It is nature's way of packaging these foods with needed fiber, vitamins, and minerals. In fruits and vegetables, the three sugars are trapped inside tiny "cages" made of fiber. Your body has to work hard to break those cages open. This means that fructose, glucose, and sucrose enter your blood slowly and steadily. This gives you long-lasting energy instead of a crash. Fruits and vegetables are nutrient-rich and come with a list of benefits: Vitamin C: Helps your body fight off colds. Potassium: Keeps your muscles and heart working well. Antioxidants: Protects your cells from getting damaged. When refined sugar is added to food, it becomes processed food, which is fake food. When you eat fake food it spikes your hormone insulin. When insulin goes up, then glucagon goes down. Glucagon’s job is to take fat and use it as fuel. If you do not have enough glucagon, then you cannot effectively use your fat as fuel. This forces your body to continue storing new energy as fat while being unable to use the fat it already has, wow what a problem! Other hormones that processed food messes up are, ghrelin (your hunger hormone) and leptin (your feeling full hormone). Refined sugar increases ghrelin and decreases leptin, so you stay hungry without feeling full, when you eat fake food. Have you ever started eating something like sugary cereal or donuts and it is hard to stop? Refined sugar increases the amount of dopamine in your brain. Since dopamine makes you feel good, you become addicted to sugar. The end result is that processed,fake food, is full of refined sugar that is driving you to feel good but not full. Yet, the good feeling does not last because of the sugar rush/crash explained above. It turns into a vicious cycle, the more refined sugar you eat, the more your body wants to eat it, because you feel good and you are still hungry. Refined sugar is an addictive substance that has become a world health crisis. Globally, diabetes incidence among children and adolescents has increased by approximately 94% from 1990 to 2021 . Make the Healthy Choice: There is something we can all do to decrease the diabetes epidemic that is a world health problem. Choose to eat real vegetables and fruits that are in their natural state like a sliced avocado or a bowl full of blueberries. Strive to have a variety of colors in the fruits and vegetables that you eat each day. Reach for vegetables and fruits as a snack instead of processed food. Every choice that you make about what you eat matters!