Healthy Living, Part Two

Remember your Mom? "Eat your breakfast; eat your veggies; go to sleep early; get some exercise; don't eat so much junk." Well, guess what; she was right. Every one of those old dicta, familiar to most of us, has a significant effect on wellness. Let's take a look at those, and a few others to see what we know about their relation to health.

Breakfast

For many years, people in public health knew that breakfast was an important part of healthy living. In fact, it was known that people who regularly ate breakfast actually tended to live longer than those who didn't. Was this relation a specious correlation owing to the fact that people with regular habits tended to have a generally healthier lifestyle? No, it's not; now, we know that breakfast has a significant effect in its own right. Regularly eating breakfast is, in fact, an important health habit, in and of itself. Why? Probably because of the setting of the sugar regulation and overall metabolism for the day. Not eating breakfast has a deleterious effect on metabolic processes. The body tends to burn fewer calories because the metabolism slows down and this, in turn, predisposes to weight gain. Most people who don't eat breakfast don't actually take in many, or any, fewer calories for the whole day, but they do burn them less efficiently. If you're trying to lose weight by skipping meals, breakfast is not the one to skip. Make it oatmeal - but that's another story.

Diet

We are not what we eat, but what we eat has a significant effect on what we are. There are such things, of course, as healthy and unhealthy diets. Let's start with Mom's Vegetables. Yes, it's really a good idea to eat them. They supply a welter of nutrients in a form that has little downside. Vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants, sure, you can take these in a pill, but fiber/bulk takes more than a pill and these are necessary for good digestion. Moreover, they tend to supply some needed calories (you really do need some) without having high simple sugars or 'bad' fats. Fruits have similar benefits, although they tend to be higher in sugars, of course, a little of which is OK, unless you're diabetic.