My first task of 2018 is to try to help my patients, friends, relatives and readers, to improve their lives this year.
If you are looking to become healthier than you were last year, here are my top 10 health related New Year’s Resolutions for 2018. There are many more, but even if you just follow a few of them, you will be better off. Trying to do all of these at once may be overwhelming, so if you just implement one new resolution a month, you will be done by Halloween!
1. Embrace a ketogenic way of eating.
This isn’t a “diet”, it is a totally different way to eat. By eating this way you won’t produce the free radicals and oxidative stress that the standard American diet produces. In my opinion this is an anti-aging diet. The highest number of calories should be from healthy fats and the least from carbs. I recommend Dr. Mercola’s Fat for Fuel Ketogenic Cookbook.
2. Try intermittent fasting,
by eating during an 8 hour window a day and fasting for 16 hours. You should also not eat during the 3 hour window before going to bed at night. This will turn your body into a fat burning and not a carb burning machine and ward off type 2 diabetes to boot. At least half of Americans are diabetic or pre-diabetic.
3. Get sound, restful and consistent amounts of sleep.
By going to sleep and getting up the same time every day, you will synch your biorhythms. Certain hormones should be released at certain time of the day and this will help that to happen. Your body knows how much sleep you need. When you wake up refreshed and without an alarm clock, you had enough sleep. To help this to occur, I highly recommend the Tourma®Blanket from FIR Industries, which promotes healthy sleep patterns. The Tourma®Blanket contains nano-meter tourmaline crystals. These crystals help the body to produce more serotonin, the “feel good” hormone and also increase alpha brainwaves. Users of the blanket have consistently reported that after a period of time, they sleep less and feel like they slept more.
4. Get out in the sun more.
The sun isn’t our enemy, it is your friend.All life on earth depends directly or indirectly on the sun. By getting healthy amounts of sunshine on our skin, we increase our vitamin D levels and produce countless healthy biochemical reactions in our bodies. Too much sun is when you turn pink or red. Getting your sun exposure mid-day is the best time. You get the highest ratio of healthier UV-B to unhealthier UV-A rays during this time. Also, using sunblock stops these beneficial chemical reactions from happening.When you had enough sun, cover up or just get out of the sun.
5. Optimize vitamin D levels.
I like to see vitamin D levels between 70 – 100 ng/ml. If you supplement, make sure to take 10 mcg of the MK7 version of vitamin K2 with every 1,000 IU units of vitamin D3. This gets the calcium into the bones and teeth where it belongs and not into the soft tissues and arteries where it doesn’t belong. If you are on blood thinners, consult your physician before taking any form of vitamin K.
6. Eliminate junk food.
Cook your own food from scratch and stay away from processed foods, fast foods, refined carbs, sugar and unhealthy fats, such as; corn oil, canola oil, soybean oil and cottonseed oil.
7. Lower stress levels.
If you don’t like your job, find one that you love! If you don’t like an aspect of your life, come up with a game plan with action steps to make a change. If you have toxic people in your life, avoid them as best as you can.
8. Reduce toxins.
Take a look at what you drink, eat, breathe and what comes in contact with your skin and try to do your best to reduce your toxic load. This can be best accomplished by having your body exposed to the least amount of manmade chemicals as possible. The average American takes into their bodies over 13 pounds of manmade chemicals a year!
Reduce your exposure to toxins by; eating organic, using filtered water for cooking and bottled in glass mineral water for drinking, using green cleaning products and skin care products, getting a good quality air filter and having items in your house that don’t off-gas toxins. Also, beware of taking unneeded drugs. They all have side effects, so always ask your doctor if a drug is absolutely necessary before taking it
9. Exercise regularly.
I recommend high intensity interval training (HIIT). This builds the longevity hormone HGH and also lengthens telomeres, which are the tails on your chromosomes. We start off with about telomeres made up of 20,000 extra nucleotides (building blocks of DNA) on the ends of our chromosomes. Every cell division breaks off 50 – 200 nucleotides. When we reach 5,000, we die of old age.Lengthening telomeres is banking longevity!
I also like vibration platform training, which produces similar results as HIIT. Vibration training is great for the lazy people, since you are exercising the muscles involuntarily! Also, consult a physician prior to starting any new exercise program.
10. Limit usage of “dirty electricity.”
Bad EMF – AKA “dirty electricity” – This is a hot topic of debate.Certain frequencies of electromagnetic energy can disrupt mitochondria and trigger diseases. Diseases related to mitochondrial dysfunction include, but are not limited to; cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and dementia, autoimmune diseases, learning disabilities and neurological disorders. WI-FI, cell phones, cell towers, electronic devices all give off dirty electricity. Avoidance and using protective devices such as Q-Link products are highly recommended.
Q-Link products can negate some of the detrimental effects of dirty electricity.
Bonus: Help others, give back to humanity and perform random acts of kindness.
Not only will you be helping others, but when you do these acts, the beneficial physiological changes that occur in your own body have never been totally quantified. Helping others truly helps you to be healthier too!
If you implement these resolutions you could very well have the healthiest year of your life!
Happy New Year!