How to Be Well

To achieve your New Way Forward (and enjoy it) you need to have health, vitality & strength. Find new & practical ways to be well in mind, body & spirit.

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Reinvent your wellness strategy

Reinvent your wellness strategy by realizing there are radically new ways of looking at health, nutrition, exercise, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing.

Many of these new ways aren’t new ways at all. In fact, they are ancient and primal.

Yeah. I wanna be well as the Ramones opined.

This is despite the presumption that because I am getting older I will be well less and less.

Oh boy! There’s another one of those aging assumptions (think ageism, joys of retirement, etc.) that are proving to be myths.

I want to die young at an old age – Dr. Steven Gundry

We know that life span has grown and so has health-span yet not at the same rate. What good is it to live longer if you can…well…live?

For me, the solution is not to depend on medicine. It’s to avoid it because I don’t need it and so far, I am succeeding (running joke with my doctor upon completion of my yearly physical is him saying, “So why are you here?”).

It’s easier than you think – and more basic

The solution is found in ourselves and it doesn’t mean being Jack LaLanne or subsisting on sprouts or wheat germ (in fact avoid glutens!) and it cannot be entirely blamed on our DNA as recent studies show genetics is more often not the culprit (inherited habits are).

Significant segments of modern human biology research have taken a dramatic turn in the past decade away from traditional medical and pharmacological solutions to more fundamental primal solutions. In other words, the way we evolved over the past 250,000 years vs. our current exercise and nutrition habits which are only 10,000 years old which is too short a time to change our genome and gene expressions.

Back then it was feast and famine. Mainstream medical science shows fasting, even intermittent fasting (12-16 hours) has huge health benefits.

Back then we were super active with our bodies. Run marathons? No. Sprint, lift, and endurance? Yes.

We didn’t eat grains, sugars, processed foods, or complex carbohydrates (except for late summer/early fall from harvesting fruits). Those are the real modern-day toxins.

“Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture the assumption that aging means decline and poor health is probably the deadliest.”  – Marilyn Ferguson

This non-trendy trend in nutrition is showing (with peer-reviewed, comprehensive studies from mainstream institutions) that:

  • Inflammation is a major cause of aging health problems such as Alzheimer’s, dementia, heart disease, Type-2 diabetes, many cancers, and autoimmune diseases.
  • Most inflammation comes from a leaky gut (our bodies fighting the infection).
  • Almost everyone on earth has a leaky gut to one degree or another.
  • An unhealthy diet (especially glutens, lectins, saturated fats, sugar, processed foods) leads to inflammation and other ills.
  • A healthy gut = low inflammation.

Reinvent your wellness strategy – I did and love it

I have gone gluten-free because of the impact of gluten and lectins on the gut and the inflammation it causes. Additionally, I have learned that our gut biome is the most critical part of our metabolism to make happy by eating a lot of the healthy things and little or none of the bad things.

It also impacts your brain and cognition. There is a proven link between the two body parts.

Don’t trust the marketing by pharma and the food industry. What they tout as healthy is all too often not.

Exercise is known to be critical to good health yet research is proving that weight resistant training has a multitude of benefits as does short higher intensity aerobic exercises (think three sets of 30 seconds full speed on a stationary bike) vs jogging for 20 miles.

Last but not least is emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Not just a nice to have, it impacts our physical, mental, and emotional health. A relatively new recognized field of mainstream study is Epigenetics which proves our cells and body chemistry is directly impacted (for good or bad) by our state of mind and being.

I spoke with Jon Warner who is highly renowned in the healthcare, aging, and entrepreneurial realm. One of his many interests is to gather the necessary data (foundational) to truly determine how we can thrive, avoid the need for medicine with better nutrition, healthy habits, and good mental health.

He’s asking the question what would we do to help people thrive vs. just trying to fix a broken system?

Be well instead of not needing drugs, treatments, surgery and misery.

If you think you’re in a certain unhealthy state and assume it’s because you inherited it from your parents, realize that what you likely inherited is their unhealthy habits. Often DNA has nothing to do with it.

For me, I have gradually changed my diet (meat as a side, lots of vegetables, no sugar, some intermittent fasting – and yes, I do “cheat” every now and then), have a great morning routine with no news or social media. Instead, I hydrate, do simple meditations and yoga (stretch). I do short intense bursts of cardio plus 20 minutes of weight lifting.

I can’t recall ever feeling this good in my whole life. Yes, even better than I did in my 20s and 30s.

So, if you’re wanting to live healthier longer and if you’re undertaking challenging new endeavors in this third phase of life, you gotta have the health and wellbeing to do it and enjoy it.

Just as we’re looking at this phase of life in an entirely new way, with new possibilities and opportunities, we have to look at our health, mindset, and habits in a whole new way as well. Therefore, Reinvent your wellness strategy.

You’ll be interested in:

9 Habits of Highly Successful People (The Little Things)

Strategies for Successful Aging: Mindset