Nobody wants to be sick, or to gradually become less and less functional as they grow older. Sometimes sickness is unavoidable, such as when a sick coworker sneezes on you, or you grasp a doorknob that they have just touched. There’s not much you can do about that, aside from becoming a hermit and living alone in a cave on a mountaintop. However, there is much that you can do to maintain good health most of the time. You can decide to avoid exposure to toxic substances and dangerous situations. You can eat healthy foods. You can keep active. There are many things that you can do to increase your odds of living a long and healthy life, one in which you retain your health well into old age.

This newsletter is about the things you can do to maintain robust good health. There are choices you can make that could make a tremendous difference in the quality of the life that you live. There are a multitude of factors that affect a person’s health. Being aware of what those factors are, and what effect they have, puts you in a position to change what you do to mitigate the bad effects and expand upon the good effects. In this weekly newsletter, I will be discussing these factors, and how they might affect your health. In some cases, a factor that I discuss, such as for instance, stress, may not apply to you, because you lead a stress-free life. However, in other cases, what I cover will speak directly to you. Hopefully, you will benefit from the material that applies to you, and you can pass on to others, the ideas that may apply to them.

There is a good reason why diet and exercise are probably the first two things that come to mind as contributors to the quality of one’s health. The reason is that, for most people, diet and exercise are the two most important factors that govern health. What you put into your body in the way of food and drink determines the building blocks that your body uses to maintain itself. If you are consuming the right building blocks, that work together to give you a strong body and a clear mind, your body will have no problem putting them to productive use. The opposite is also true. If you feed your body things that are harmful to the body’s health, it will not work as well and will function progressively less well as time goes on.

I’m sure you are familiar with the adage, “Use it or lose it.” This is true in all kinds of areas. For example, I studied Mandarin Chinese for a semester prior to making a business trip to China. I can’t claim that I was fluent over there, but I was able to converse with people and buy things in the shops. However, after I returned to the USA, I no longer had occasion to use my new-found language skill and it slowly drifted away. Nowadays, just about all I remember is how to say is “Hello” and “Thank you.” Oh, I can also say “I don’t speak Chinese.”

It’s the same with our bodies. Muscles atrophy if we do not use them. Breathing capacity diminishes if we spend our days sitting rather than engaging in vigorous exercise. Brains get dulled if we don’t challenge them.

The bottom line is that if we don’t eat healthy foods, don’t avoid unhealthy foods, and don’t get enough exercise, our bodies will operate less effectively and will lose strength and vitality.

Bio:

Allen G. Taylor is a 30-year veteran of the computer industry and the author of over 30 books, including Develop Microsoft HoloLens Apps Now, Get Fit with Apple Watch, Cruise for Free, SQL For Dummies, 8th Edition, Crystal Reports 2008 For Dummies, Database Development For Dummies, Access Power Programming with VBA, and SQL All-In-One For Dummies, Second Edition. He lectures internationally on astronomy, databases, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He also teaches database development and Crystal Reports through a leading online education provider. For the latest news on Allen’s activities, check out his blog at www.allengtaylor.com or contact him at allen.taylor@ieee.org.