Four Pillars of Health: Keep Your Mind and Body Healthy

Eating better, working out more, and staying away from stress are always suggested to get a better lifestyle. Doctors and experts also recommend and consider exercise, good diet or nutrition, relaxation or mental health, and sleep are essential for a healthy lifestyle.

At the same time, these are known as the Four Pillars to keep your body moving and support your mental well-being. You might read or hear about diet, health, and lifestyle every day.

Although health is not complicated, people often get overwhelmed when they think about improving their health. Considering your health, you might come across some questions like Is coffee good for your health? Will red wine protect your heart or increase the risk of cancer?

In the real world, achieving good health works best if you simplify your approaches. This means you must focus on four essential aspects of health: develop well-being and increase energy and pleasure.

The four pillars: proper diet, quality sleep, movement, and relaxation are the foundation for becoming healthy, vibrant, and energetic. However, it would be best to remember that each pillar is essential and incomplete without the other.

You cannot exercise with a poor diet or connect happily with others when you are not mentally active or fit.

The Four Pillars of Health

Taking care of the body is suitable for a person’s physical health and can also improve emotional well-being. For best results, you need to balance these four components of wellness, and all these pillars work together to keep the body and mind healthy.

1. Nutrition– Make healthy food swaps like trading white rice, pasta, and bread for whole-grain versions. Set an aim for five servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

2. Exercise: Walking, weight training, yoga or pilates, and aerobic exercises are all excellent to acknowledge when starting a diet plan—a target for 30 minutes of exercise daily.

3. Sleep– Before bed, put your electronic devices away as their light can confuse your internal clock. Aim for a good night’s sleep for at least 7 to 9 hours.

4. Relaxation– Deep breathing, meditation, and visualization are all effective techniques for relaxation. Set a target for 10 to 20 minutes of deep breathing every day.

As you know that these pillars provide the base for healthy living, determining energy levels, physical strength, and mental flexibility. That’s why improving any of the pillars can influence the other.

In addition to this, you can also benefit your emotional, social, spiritual, intellectual, and financial health. In this article, we will briefly discuss all four pillars. So continue reading till the end.

Pillar One – Nutrition

A healthy diet not only affects your physical health but your mental health also. Moreover, a healthy diet promotes bacteria in the gut that helps ‘feel good’ signals get through to the brain.

What you put into your mouth not only decides how you feel- energetic, acidic, or lethargic- but also impacts your overall well-being.

A person’s diet, regardless of how much he exercises, affects not only his body weight but also determines his lifespan. But that doesn’t mean you have to start binge eating.

Just like having an inappropriate diet leads to malnutrition, overeating can result in obesity, leading to diabetes and heart disease. Therefore, the key lies in eating in the right proportion and at a convenient time.

You need to focus on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein for a healthy eating habits. It is always recommended to start your day with a wholesome breakfast and continue it with small meals every two hours. It is strictly advisable not to skip your meals or eat at irregular breaks as it can lower the metabolism and make you prone to stress eating. Not a single chronic disease isn’t powerfully affected by diet.

In most cases, dietary strategies can reverse the disease. That’s why the food you eat is the base for your long-term health, and the way to eat healthily is to include plants and healthy proteins in your regular diet.

Mediterranean and DASH diets are both known to be rich in fiber, vitamins, and minerals that help maintain blood pressure.

Moreover, these plant-based diets are loaded with health-promoting flavonoids, antioxidants, and polyphenols that positively affect the body.

However, healthy fats are a crucial part of such diets and include omega-3 fatty acids known to improve overall health, help in weight reduction, and longevity.

Nutrition habit at-a-glance-

Eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight every day.
Include more carbohydrates on your workout days.
Minimize sugar.
Drink 1 gallon of water each day and increase the amount on humid and hotter days.
Track your food every once in a while to ensure you are within a healthy range.
Eat one or two cheat meals each week like pizza, burger, and sandwich to balance.

Pillar Two – Exercise

Exercise has numerous benefits, but majorly it is effective in easing mental health issues like stress and anxiety. Any exercise can boost your mental and physical well-being, including self-esteem and cognitive function. Moving your muscles produces endorphins that help the brain deal with anxiety.

The human body is born to move; it is well known that a sedentary lifestyle is a risk factor for a wide range of chronic ailments, including heart diseases, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and depression.

So how much exercise is the right amount? Thirty minutes of moderate-intensity exercises, such as brisk walking three days a week, helps ease anxiety and depression. Walking may be one of the best magic pills for adding more movement to your life and stabilizing this pillar of health.

Moreover, exercise is as good as an antidepressant pill in beating the blues. Individuals who exercise daily lead longer and more productive lives.

In addition, exercise reduces the risk of heart disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and osteoporosis, among other conditions.

Yoga is another exercise that goes beyond melting fats and building muscles. They integrate the mind, body, and breath to improve overall health.

Deep breathing and meditation improve the oxygen flow to the organs and help to relieve stress.

As a result, one can get sharp memory, high levels of concentration, and cognitive function, even when one gets old. Moreover, yoga is effective in lowering blood pressure and overcoming depression and sleep disorders.

Any form of exercise can have an impact on the pillars also. For example, physical activity helps you sleep better and improve your mood.

So from this instance, you can know how potent physical activity is; a study conducted in the Prestigious Journal in 2008 found that if you are not moving enough, it can be as dangerous as smoking.

Physical inactivity leads to 5.3 million deaths yearly, while smoking causes 5 million deaths. Moreover, people addicted to drugs are likely to return to everyday life.

These people enrol themselves in rehabilitation centres where they involve themselves in certain activities, among which yoga and exercise are the most crucial.

Exercise habit at-a-glance-

Before exercising, warm up your body properly.
Listen to your body.
Don’t push yourself hard every day.
Go outdoors and perform cardio at least once a week.
Go for a walk with your partner or friend, or any family member.
Perform weight training every 1-2 weeks.

Pillar Three – Sleep

We all know that sleep is essential for survival, and it is the time when the body and brain repair. During sleep, your brain sends toxic waste out of the cells and brings in nutrients that restore the cells. You can also say that when you sleep, the brain cleanses itself much faster than when you are awake.

However, poor sleep can increase the risk of stroke, heart attack, obesity, and weaker bones. In addition, poor sleep is also related to lower cortisol awakening responses (CAR), which leads to increased inflammation. That also fastens the secretion of cortisol, an important hormone that helps prepare the body for the whole day.

Sleep deprivation causes changes to hormones that regulate hunger and appetite, creating more significant risks for chronic conditions. However, a night’s sleep lowers mental health conditions and improves concentration. And sleep even cleanses the brain and helps the risk of dementia.

Some strategies that help to get better sleep include turning off electronic devices an hour before sleeping, avoiding caffeine and alcohol, and sleeping in a dark, quiet room.

A good night’s sleep helps lower stress, improve concentration, and boost emotional stamina. Keep your sleeping and waking time the same everyday even on the weekends. This will keep your body in a natural rhythm, and you will find sleeping and waking up easier.

Sleep habit at-a-glance-

Go to bed and wake up within 30-60 minutes at the same time every day.
Sleep in a cold and quiet room.
Develop a pre-sleep routine like reading, showering, or working.
Turn off any electronic gadget 1 hour before your bedtime and turn off the lights 30 minutes before bed.
Wear a sleep mask or sleep tape every night.

Pillar Four – Relaxation

Relaxation techniques like massages, meditation, and deep breathing can help manage stress and overall well-being. Mentally resting can reduce stress and anxiety and increase energy and focus. Stress and inflammation can contribute to chronic illness and can end up in many forms.

A dangerous situation or work pressure can develop a stress response. However, there are some situations where you feel positive stress, such as your child’s birth. That’s why physical stress usually doesn’t last long in such cases.

Meditation is a great tool to help you manage your thoughts; if you haven’t tried the technique, it is highly recommended. Moreover, it can help you observe your thoughts from a new perspective.

Chronic stress is a near-constant state of heightened alertness, putting pressure on the body for a longer time, creating a risk of illness. However, some people believe in holistic approaches for improving their sleep quality for which they use certain seeds like cannabis that can be used as a medicine.

If you live in Arizona you can visit mesa dispensaries to know more about the cannabis seeds.

Relaxation habit at-a-glance-

Meditate in the morning every day.
Went out in nature for walks, hikes, or running.
Take a complete day.
Talk to family or friends every weekend.

Source: Unsplash.com

When To Focus on The Pillars?

Focusing on these pillars is essential at every age, as they work together to keep your mind and body healthy. Techniques from each area can be practiced a little bit every day, leading to better results.

If each of these pillars is strong, your health and well-being will have a sturdy foundation as you age.

Bonus Infographic

Infographic Provided By Family Dentist, Stephen Wallace DDS

Final Thoughts:

Your health can be affected by many internal and external factors, and in the above topic, we have discussed the factors that have external and internal effects. These four pillars are crucial to start if you want to become fit and healthy daily. Just remember you don’t have to be perfect; make a small start and try to modify slowly so that you can get better each day.