Are you looking for ways to help keep yourself healthy? If so, you have come to the right place. Keeping ourselves healthy is essential to our happiness, a long life span, and the prevention of disease. To find out how to keep your mind and body healthy, continue reading this article. Throughout the article we will discuss the four main factors that help people to live longer and healthier lives.

The first way to help yourself stay healthy is to avoid harmful habits. Smoking and drinking can both be severely damaging to your health. Did you know that each year over half of a million Americans die from cigarette smoke? If you are a smoker, cut the habit - now! Smoking can lead to a whole variety of health related issues. It can also decrease your lung capacity, causing you to miss out on many fun and exciting activities. Like smoking, excessive intake of alcohol leads to a variety of negative side effects. Drinking too much alcohol can lead to heart failure, liver disease, and cancer.

A healthy lifestyle also requires regular exercise. Exercising is extremely important to our health and decreases our risk of developing a wide range of diseases including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. If you are not a regular exerciser, you can start now! Be careful, however, that you do not overdo yourself. Only exercise in moderation and never do more than your body can handle. If you can only do a 20 minute walk, that is fine. Begin with a 20 minute walk and then, once your body has had time to adapt to this, increase the pace and length of your walk. Eventually, once your body becomes accustomed to walking, consider getting a gym pass.

Of course, staying healthy requires eating healthy. A healthy diet consists of a variety of whole grain foods, vegetables, and fruits. According to nutrition experts, we should all be eating between 3 and 5 servings of each of these each day. Foods such as these contain a variety of nutrients, minerals, and vitamins that are essential to our health.

Eating healthy is extremely important, as is drinking water. As most of us know, it is generally suggested that we drink between 6 and 8 glasses of water each day. Why? Drinking water is vital to our health because it is used in a wide variety of our bodily processes. Water is what is used to transport nutrients and oxygen into our cells, moisturize the air in our lungs, boost our metabolism, protect our vital organs, protect our joints, and help our organs absorb nutrients better.

So there you have it - the four secrets to living a longer, healthier lifestyle are staying away from unhealthy habits, exercising daily, eating healthy, and drinking plenty of water!

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