2025 November 4 Think your way to health

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Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me to talk about why to stay healthy. So let's get started. If you like what you hear today, please leave a like, subscribe, tell your friends, send me a message.

We've been talking a lot about brain health, which obviously is really important, but what about our overall health? A quick note here, to be clear, I'm not a healthcare professional in any way except in very limited emergency medical situations. I have a wilderness first responder certificate, so this advice is based solely upon my personal experience and commonly available materials. Never, ever change what you're doing if you're under the care of a medical professional or other healthcare provider without speaking to them first. You have been warned. Seriously. Sometimes even something seemingly minor like deciding you want to start eating grapefruit can impact other medicines. So always check in with your medical team first, please.

We've already discussed that a healthy body is essential to support a healthy brain, besides just moving our brain out of harm's way. A body is also kind of a handy device for things like eating food and supplying the brain with nutrients and a comfortable environment. So that part is pretty obvious. But what is often overlooked is that aging isn't just a numbers game of how long you manage to keep living in some form. One of the really important metrics of life at any age is your quality of life.

To be clear, you can have many ailments and challenges and still have a very high quality of life. Part of that is attitude. The other part is the ability to enjoy the things that bring you pleasure. That varies a lot between people. So a good quality of life is usually accessible despite the wear and tear of living, and that's exactly where maintaining your overall health comes into play in many different ways and uniquely for each one of us.

Personally, I don't feel comfortable if I'm not at least reasonably fit, not like an athlete, but able to go outside and play when I want to. For another person, that may be less important than something like the ability to sit for hours and work on a quilt or do fine work. It's a very different set of expectations and also a different kind of activity regime and a different way of preparing for it.

What's the same, however, is that both of us know what is needed to make our choice possible and we can continue to work on our bodies so they can do what we find satisfying. But it's a lot more than just diet and exercise. A lot of it, as always, is attitude. If you forget the reason why behind what you're doing, these things can turn into a kind of drudgery that you dread. So it's really important to remember that you're not doing this just for a checkbox on something. You're doing it because it makes you feel better.

You have to remember to celebrate the wins in your life, like that nice activity you did because you felt good. Then when you're faced with doing some stretches in the morning, for example, it's a reminder of the fun things you'll be able to do rather than some kind of self-inflicted punishment. Always keep the goal in the front of your mind while you're doing stuff. It's very important.

Another part of that attitude is the common expectation that as you get older, of course you'll be taking many medicines. A doctor I used to follow and read a number of their books had a saying. They always said they had never seen a disease or ailment that was caused by a deficiency in medicine. Taking an array of medicines is not the default or natural way of living. This is where attitude comes in again.

Sugar is a great example. I love sugar. For a number of years, especially when I was a child, I essentially lived on sugar. As a child, we always had all the new sugary cereals and treats, and it was not a healthy way to live, to say the least. But a funny thing happened in my twenties and as I transitioned into my thirties. My body said enough. I started to realize that I felt a whole lot better when I avoided certain foods, some of which were even being touted as a cure to heart disease. I'm looking at you, partially hydrogenated oils, and of course there's things like fast foods or simply eating fast. My eating habits were bad. A lot of the foods that we were being given were really bad, and I just said I have to make a change.

Within a year, I'd cut out so many things that everyone ate, things like soda, anything with any sort of fake fats, sugary snacks, and much more. It wasn't because I was being a health nut. It was simply that I was sick all the time and I wanted to change it. And what do you know? A number of major ailments that couldn't be cured, as told to me by both general practitioners and specialists, went completely away. It never occurred to me to try and take medicine so I could eat garbage foods. Yet this is often what's prescribed these days. If you can't eat something, well, here, try taking this to calm your stomach, try doing that, whatever. That's not the way to cure something.

An old friend of mine had heart issues and worsening pre-diabetes. His physician had advised him they could always start him on insulin and never once mentioned that perhaps he could clean up his diet. He worked long hours and ate lots of sugary foods. This is a sort of attitude adjustment that can literally change your life. The expectation now is that there's some sort of medicine somewhere to cure almost anything when in reality, we're already surrounded by everything we need to live a healthy life. Natural sunshine, healthy foods, the ability to move our bodies to stay flexible and so much more.

And it's not about trying to get a tan when we're out in the sun. Our bodies are designed to absorb and use energy in many forms from the sun. There's a lot more research going on all the time in these past few years about things like the different wavelengths, different infrared wavelengths being absorbed well under the surface of the skin with really positive health benefits.

Again, another shout out to Robert Soler and BioLighting. I mentioned them last week. They provide some of the best research on naturally balanced lighting and lighting systems, both for homes, commercial buildings, office settings, and also medical settings, because your circadian cycle also plays a large role, a very large role in your overall health and energy. I have no affiliation, no current affiliation. I used to do some stuff with Robert, but just check them out. Their products are great. He's great. They know their stuff and your body will thank you a lot because if your circadian cycle gets out of balance, we talked about this a lot last week. Your circadian cycle gets out of balance, it really kind of throws your whole center point, your whole reference for your body out of balance as well.

So like I said, things like sunshine, eating foods, the sunshine is not only to get the energy into your body, but it's also to keep the circadian cycle properly tuned. A lot of simple things you can do that don't require medicines, don't require anything special other than just living life the way you're designed. We're creatures that were designed to live in the outdoors, and we're gonna be doing a series of talks on that. It's pretty interesting.

But the really good news is that interest in longevity is starting to increase. Yay. And not by looking for new medicines. Yay again. So while much of it's still kind of commercially driven by this veggie shake or mix or drink or whatever, more and more people are realizing that you don't need a bunch of supplements when just buying healthy food and eating it is not only cheaper but healthier and much yummier.

There was just an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about the longevity movement and then a reply a couple days later in the letters section. And what was most obvious to me in the original editorial was pretty much a lack of emphasis on how easy living better really is. It's really not a difficult thing to do. There's a fair amount of talk about supplements, although they're talking more about them in the context of what people are trying to do to get healthier. But the simplest solution to all of this is the old saying: just shop around the outside aisles of the grocery store when you're shopping. That wasn't even mentioned in any form.

Much of staying healthy isn't what you have to do. It's simply by not doing and not eating things that are bad for you. You don't have to try and move more. Just don't spend 10 minutes driving around the parking lot looking for a parking space closer to the door. Voila, you've just added a few hundred steps to your day and you're out in the sunshine longer. Win-win. You don't have to spend hours looking for the perfect nutrition shake. Use AI or just read the ingredients on the label. Go buy those vegetables and fruits and enjoy them. Cheaper and better.

I know I'm oversimplifying things a little bit. It's really only by a little, and I also know that there are some people with physical limitations or diet limitations that make some aspects more of a challenge, but so much of it still comes down to attitude. If you make your health something of importance to yourself, not just something cool you do or something you have to do, and you do it for a real heartfelt reason, then it stops becoming a burden and just becomes a way of life.

Oh, and the letter to the editor was from an older physician. He was in his mid eighties actually, and his reply to the original editorial was that he didn't work out to live longer, but to live better for as long as he could live. It was really very simple. That attitude turned his pre-breakfast workout into something exciting to do because it improved his day and improved the rest of his day and improved his life, not because it was something he felt he had to do for no good reason.

So when you start thinking about aging, no matter what your age, you should immediately start thinking about maintaining or even improving your physical health. It doesn't have to be difficult, and always remember that it isn't a chore, but it's a gift to help you enjoy life longer.

This past weekend I ran into two women who turned out to be in their mid forties, and we were all talking. There was myself, my dog, and those two people, and they were concerned because of the effects of aging. I mentioned they were in their mid forties and getting a little older and how's aging gonna be in the future? And it was pretty funny except that I met them in the woods on a nicely challenging walk through a very pretty area in the mountains. So all those things, the walking, the socializing, being in nature, being in natural woods, being in a peaceful area, seeing new things. Every one of those things is exactly what is needed and what they needed to age gracefully, healthily and likely happily. It wasn't hard, but it's beneficial in every way.

So that's it for the evening. Your homework tonight is to think about your overall health and if you're satisfied with it. If not, jot down one or two things that you'd like to change. Extra points if you then make a plan for how to start doing one of the things that you wrote down. Remember to check with your medical provider if appropriate. Then it's very important to write down a big reminder of why you're doing it to motivate you when you want to skip a day. But most of all, enjoy it.

Remember, one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. We've talked about this every week. So we have the two places we support: UKR7.com and WCK.org. Those are two international organizations. One supports Ukraine, UKR7.com. And the other, WCK.org, World Central Kitchen, is actually based in New York City but they're active internationally and nationally. Right now, they're handing out food to people who were losing food stamp benefits. They're just a fantastic organization. But if you want to do something more local, there's always local people who are looking for help. But even something as simple as a smile to someone you meet on the street can change someone else's day for the better in ways you can't possibly imagine.

As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting and useful, please pass it along and please subscribe and hit that like button. If not, please drop me a comment as to what you'd like to hear. Have a great week. Remember to live the life that you dream of, because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com.