I have written about this before but thought it would be worthwhile to rehash the importance of healthy living. What’s the point of making a ton of money if you sacrificed your health in the process and are unable to enjoy the fruits of your labor with your family and friends?

So, here are some ways to improve your healthy living for 2010:

1. Sleep hygiene is the most important thing…specifically the consistency with getting enough sleep. Most research suggests that if you fix either the time you wake up or fix the time you go to sleep, and then let the other time naturally take care of itself, your body will end up adjusting to right around eight hours.
2. As you get older, getting sun becomes ever so important. That means year-round, especially in the wintertime, trying to get sun. The body makes vitamin D from sun exposure, and vitamin D is critical in a whole bunch of things – fighting cancer, regulating your mood, allowing you to sleep easily at night, and a whole host of other important processes.
3. Movement is the next thing. You can call it exercise if you want, but it’s really important to move. The ability to move really defines humanity in many respects… the fact that you can express movement and can get up and walk and jog or swim or bicycle. It’s critical for your health, too. Just doing something, whatever it is, whatever you can do. Whether it’s stretching in the morning or evening, or walking 20 minutes every day. Whatever you can do that’s simple, easy, and doesn’t cost much will absolutely benefit you. There are chemicals released throughout the body that regulate mood as well as cancer-fighting chemicals. Blood pressure-helping chemicals that release from the large joints in your body, like the hips, knees, and shoulders. So by moving those things, you’ll feel better and live longer, and that’s been studied and looked at over and over again.
4. I love massages. Although it’s expensive to go out and have someone massage you and pay for a professional massage, there are inexpensive alternatives with great benefits. This has incredibly powerful benefits in relaxing, getting rid of aches and pains, and flushing toxins from parts of your body as well.
5. Next up is eating fruit because there are a lot of micronutrients in fruits, especially fruits that have colors in their skin. As more and more research comes out on fruits, we’re finding that they are better and better for you – fighting cancers, lowering blood pressure, getting rid of joint pain, all these things that seem to become more worrisome as you get older.
6. I have started to meditate this year and have found it to be very beneficial. Just spending time sitting quietly, breathing, concentrating on your spirituality has incredible health benefits. Benefits for heart disease, blood pressure, even your ability to use oxygen, which is one of the measures of fitness. They all improve with meditation.
7. Aromatherapy is something I am going to experiment with in 2010. By that, I mean getting some pleasant and fun and nice aromas in your life and around you, especially in the winter, when we spend so much time indoors. Scents can just be so powerful and have such an effect on your mood and well being. Smells like fresh-cut flowers, cocoa, cinnamon, fresh-baked breads, even onions cooking, are fantastic, and it can be quite soothing to surround yourself with them when the mood strikes you, even if it means doing something as simple as throwing some onions in a pan.
8. Next up on the list is aspirin. I have read in several publications the benefits of taking one tablet, which is about 325 milligrams, once a week. Aspirin’s known to reduce the risk of colon cancer and heart disease for people taking it more regularly than once a week. But the benefits of it last about seven to 10 days. So I figure you are probably getting most of the benefit by taking just one a week. And the cost to take one year of aspirin is a couple bucks, so I’ve done that for a long time. I would check with a doctor first before doing this.
9. Drinking one or two glasses of wine each day if you’re an average-size male, or one glass – which is four to six ounces – if you’re an average-size female, can provide tremendous health benefits. The health benefits of drinking wine and even alcohol are undoubted in the medical literature. And yet, there’s this whole push against alcohol and drinking alcohol and the risks that can come from alcoholism and drunk driving. Now that’s not what I’m advocating. Moderation is the key here. Often, I will have a glass of wine before dinner. No one as yet has really teased out exactly what produces the benefits, but they are certainly there – everything from arthritic diseases to heart disease to cancer to Alzheimer’s, you name it. There’s very, very powerful research on that. The red wines tend to have a lot more of the antioxidants, the polyphenols as they’re called, that give it the red color. But the research shows white wines, or even moderate alcohol consumption in general, can provide health benefits.
10. The last item on this list is don’t share drinking glasses, mugs, cups, forks, spoons, or knives with people. Obviously it’s not quite as important with your spouse or children or someone who’s living in the same household as you, simply because you’re already so close that it probably doesn’t matter as much. But it’s a great general rule to follow. I’ve always contended that one of the major reasons people get so sick this time of the year – besides the lack of sleep and sun exposure – is that people are shaking hands more frequently, touching their mouths, eating the foods at holiday parties, sharing food and drinks. “Here try this wine.” “Try this food.” And it just spreads bugs like crazy.

Hopefully, you have found my postings to be of use. I plan to continue writing and finding ways to profit in the current market. If you have followed my advice, you should have done pretty good year with our precious metals and large global dominating blue chip stock picks. I think these will continue to do well in 2010.

So, have a happy new year, be safe tonight, and see ya in 2010!!!

-Samir

This posting is a bit of a deviation from the norm. I do want to include some wellness related postings as I believe that money alone does not ensure a wealthy lifestyle. Other things that must be present include exercising, maintaining a healthy lifestyle (do everything in moderation), and have solid relationships with your family and friends. What good is it to have a lot of money if it’s come at the expense of your health, family, and friends?

Researchers are now realizing the importance of having friends you can turn to in determining overall health. For additional details, please read the following New York Times article.

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Stuart Bradford

What Are Friends For? A Longer Life
By TARA PARKER-POPE
The New York Times
Published: April 20, 2009

In the quest for better health, many people turn to doctors, self-help books or herbal supplements. But they overlook a powerful weapon that could help them fight illness and depression, speed recovery, slow aging and prolong life: their friends.

Researchers are only now starting to pay attention to the importance of friendship and social networks in overall health. A 10-year Australian study found that older people with a large circle of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with fewer friends. A large 2007 study showed an increase of nearly 60 percent in the risk for obesity among people whose friends gained weight. And last year, Harvard researchers reported that strong social ties could promote brain health as we age.

“In general, the role of friendship in our lives isn’t terribly well appreciated,” said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. “There is just scads of stuff on families and marriage, but very little on friendship. It baffles me. Friendship has a bigger impact on our psychological well-being than family relationships.”

In a new book, “The Girls From Ames: A Story of Women and a 40-Year Friendship” (Gotham), Jeffrey Zaslow tells the story of 11 childhood friends who scattered from Iowa to eight different states. Despite the distance, their friendships endured through college and marriage, divorce and other crises, including the death of one of the women in her 20s.

Using scrapbooks, photo albums and the women’s own memories, Mr. Zaslow chronicles how their close friendships have shaped their lives and continue to sustain them. The role of friendship in their health and well-being is evident in almost every chapter.

Two of the friends have recently learned they have breast cancer. Kelly Zwagerman, now a high school teacher who lives in Northfield, Minn., said that when she got her diagnosis in September 2007, her doctor told her to surround herself with loved ones. Instead, she reached out to her childhood friends, even though they lived far away.

“The first people I told were the women from Ames,” she said in an interview. “I e-mailed them. I immediately had e-mails and phone calls and messages of support. It was instant that the love poured in from all of them.”

When she complained that her treatment led to painful sores in her throat, an Ames girl sent a smoothie maker and recipes. Another, who had lost a daughter to leukemia, sent Ms. Zwagerman a hand-knitted hat, knowing her head would be cold without hair; still another sent pajamas made of special fabric to help cope with night sweats.

Ms. Zwagerman said she was often more comfortable discussing her illness with her girlfriends than with her doctor. “We go so far back that these women will talk about anything,” she said.

Ms. Zwagerman says her friends from Ames have been an essential factor in her treatment and recovery, and research bears her out. In 2006, a study of nearly 3,000 nurses with breast cancer found that women without close friends were four times as likely to die from the disease as women with 10 or more friends. And notably, proximity and the amount of contact with a friend wasn’t associated with survival. Just having friends was protective.

Bella DePaulo, a visiting psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose work focuses on single people and friendships, notes that in many studies, friendship has an even greater effect on health than a spouse or family member. In the study of nurses with breast cancer, having a spouse wasn’t associated with survival.

While many friendship studies focus on the intense relationships of women, some research shows that men can benefit, too. In a six-year study of 736 middle-age Swedish men, attachment to a single person didn’t appear to affect the risk of heart attack and fatal coronary heart disease, but having friendships did. Only smoking was as important a risk factor as lack of social support.

Exactly why friendship has such a big effect isn’t entirely clear. While friends can run errands and pick up medicine for a sick person, the benefits go well beyond physical assistance; indeed, proximity does not seem to be a factor.

It may be that people with strong social ties also have better access to health services and care. Beyond that, however, friendship clearly has a profound psychological effect. People with strong friendships are less likely than others to get colds, perhaps because they have lower stress levels.

Last year, researchers studied 34 students at the University of Virginia, taking them to the base of a steep hill and fitting them with a weighted backpack. They were then asked to estimate the steepness of the hill. Some participants stood next to friends during the exercise, while others were alone.

The students who stood with friends gave lower estimates of the steepness of the hill. And the longer the friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared.

“People with stronger friendship networks feel like there is someone they can turn to,” said Karen A. Roberto, director of the center for gerontology at Virginia Tech. “Friendship is an undervalued resource. The consistent message of these studies is that friends make your life better.”
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-Samir