“What is the key to good health?”

This was a recent question asked on quora that also comes up so often when we’re working with patients in our Texarkana office. The underlying question is, “What can I do to improve my health?“

The truth is that there isn’t one key to good health but there are several important factors for most people.

5 Basic Keys To Improving and Maintaining Health

Diet is often considered just within the context of losing weight. What we eat and don’t eat can have a huge impact on our health and wellness. The exact diet might need to vary from person to person to some degree.

Generally I would recommend eating to keep blood sugar fairly low and stable. This will reduce insulin responses and help decrease the huge number of problems associated with higher insulin.

So eliminating all the added sugars that creep into our diets and depending upon the person very likely eliminating or significantly reducing all the processed junk food that is by in large made with grains.

Reducing or eliminating all the highly processed ‘vegetable’ oils that are made from various seeds is also important.

Exercise is critically important with both resistance training/weight lifting and higher intensity ‘cardio’ activities.

Sleep enough which is a growing problem today for so many people. This is exceptionally important.

Socialization and getting out doing things you enjoy doing with others. This too has been under attack particularly lately with the coronavirus and government restrictions.

Stress reduction which is a benefit of all the things I mentioned above. Additionally things like meditation, prayer, and working on a positive mindset all help as well.

Improve Root Causes Of Underlying Health Issues

Finally I have to say one of the critical things about improving health is to identify and correct the underlying health problems that plague us today.

This doesn’t just mean take a pill for every symptom you experience, but to see a healthcare practitioner who can go well beyond that approach to identify even early problems and correct them before they become bigger issues as well as improve the underlying causes of those things that do become greater problems. This is important for musculoskeletal problems, neurological problems like various headaches, stomach problems, etc.