Healthiest You Ever

“Yet this is health:To have a body functioning so perfectly that when its few simple needs are met it never calls attention to its own existence.”

Micro-plants consisting of blue-green algae, chlorella, spirulina, wheat grass, and barley grass contain more vitamins and minerals than kale and broccoli. They are an excellent source of two important phytochemicals: chlorophyll and lycopene. Micro-plants, commercially known as green foods, contain a concentrated combination of phytochemicals, vitamins, minerals, bioflavonoids, proteins, amino acids, essential fatty acids, enzymes, coenzymes, and fiber. They support your body’s ability to detoxify heavy metals, pesticides, and other toxins, plus boost your immunity to disease. Here’s a very green smoothie that combines a variety of greens for the very best benefits! Spinach, kale, and wheatgrass are packed with vitamins and minerals that work hard to maintain your health.

1. Combine spinach, kale, wheatgrass, celery, lemon, garlic, and 1 cup of tea in a blender and blend until thoroughly combined.

2. Add remaining 1 cup of tea as needed while blending until desired consistency is achieved.

“When your muscles are challenged to lift something heavier than they are used to, they respond by growing stronger to meet the challenge.”

—Shirley S. Archer, fitness professional, Stanford University School of Medicine

Like jumping squats and lateral pushes, jumping lunges are plyometric exercises that involve using your own body weight to build strength. You will want to be very comfortable doing lunges before you attempt these, and, as always, you should start slowly and build up strength before adding them to your daily workout. Here’s how to do jumping lunges:

1. Start with you feet hip width part, as you would for a regular lunge. Bend your knees slightly and do a small jump, landing at the bottom of a lunge, with one leg bent at the knee and the other stretched out behind you.

2. From the bottom of a lunge, jump up evenly with both legs, switch your lead leg while in the air, and land in a lunge with your other leg forward.

3. Upon landing, stabilize the lower body then repeat this lunge on the other side. Try to make this exercise fluid when jumping from one lunge to the next.

You may find it helpful to swing your arms from one lunge to the next. This can also be done without any arm swing to further challenge your leg power. Try making each repetition fluid and controlled, with soft landings from one jump to the next.

“Everybody seized upon a bit of the beast. The Sultan claimed the liver, which, when dried and powdered, is worth twice its weight in gold as medicine.”

Copper is found in all tissues in the body but is concentrated in the brain, heart, kidney, and liver. It helps the body make hemoglobin (needed to carry oxygen to red blood cells) and red blood cells by aiding in the absorption of iron. Copper is part of many enzymes in the body and helps produce energy in cells. In addition, copper helps make hormones that regulate a variety of body functions, including heartbeat, blood pressure, and wound healing. Most deficiencies are due to a genetic problem or from too much zinc.

Copper is found mostly in organ meats, especially liver, and in seafood, nuts, and seeds. It can also be found in poultry, legumes, and dark green leafy vegetables. Here’s a recipe for pesto that contains copper-rich nuts, as well as other nutrients:

Serve over greens, pasta, or vegetables. Substitute pumpkin seeds, walnuts, or hazelnuts for pine nuts. Cilantro, parsley, or arugula can be used in place of basil. For variation, add sun-dried tomatoes, black olives, capers, lemon rind, coriander, mushrooms, or artichoke for a different flavor.

1. Roast pine nuts and walnuts separately in a dry skillet until lightly browned, about 8 minutes each. Grind pine nuts and walnuts in a blender or food processor and pour into a small bowl.

2. Combine garlic, lemon juice, miso, olive oil, water, and tahini in blender and process. Chop basil leaves finely, add to blender, and process. Add nuts and blend until combined. Slowly blend more water or oil into sauce until desired consistency is reached. Store, covered, in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

“Another hour on the erg; after a while, this monastic existence becomes familiar and almost comforting. I feel like every day is spent more carefully; when I do go out with friends, the experiences are much more meaningful, thanks to the structure placed upon my life.”

One popular cross-training machine is the ergometer, or rowing machine. As scullers have known for centuries, rowing is a terrific all-body exercise, strengthening your back, buttocks, and legs and developing your shoulders and arms. Rowing involves a two-stroke movement referred to as the drive and the recovery, which together produce a smooth and continuous action. It’s important to follow good form on a rowing machine, so make sure you ask your health club to show you how to use it properly. This is another highly beneficial activity to do on a rest day. It strengthens the hips, buttocks, and upper body while sparing your legs.

“When you inhale, you are taking the strength from God. When you exhale, it represents the service you are giving to the world.”

The lunge pose begins on all fours. Look forward, and bring your right leg forward, planting your right foot between your hands. Place your fingertips alongside your right foot. Spread the toes and balls of your feet, and lift the arches. Your right shin is perpendicular to the floor, with the knee over the heel. Extend your left leg from the hip to the heel with the toes tucked under. Lift the back thigh away from the floor slightly, to ensure that the thighbone is feeding into the socket, rather than hanging out of the socket (hanging from the hip joint is detrimental to the health of the joint and its surrounding ligaments and tendons). Ground your right foot and toes of your left foot. Maintain the extension of the spine from the tailbone to the crown of your head. Press into your fingertips and stretch your arms up into the shoulder sockets to support your upper body. Be in the pose for several breaths. Then release and repeat on the left side.

You can also try bending the back knee and resting it on the floor. This action will increase the opening and lengthening of the groin and the front of the back thigh. Place blocks at an appropriate height under the hands to increase comfort and ease in the pose and to maintain the length of the arms and the extension of the spine out of the pelvis.

“There are really only two plays:Romeo and Juliet, and put the darn ball in the basket.”

Playing pick-up basketball provides a way to have fun while getting aerobic exercise. It’s a great cardiovascular workout; all that running and jumping really works your heart and lungs. One moment, you’re on one side of the court passing the ball, moving left and right and forward and back trying to get the ball through the hoop. The next moment, you are sprinting down to the other end of the court as possession of the ball changes hands. Though this may seem like continuous movement, your heart rate fluctuates a great deal depending on what is occurring at any given moment in the game—and you are strengthening your muscles, increasing your flexibility, and burning fat. Additionally, you are increasing your speed and agility, building endurance. It’s also a way to hang out with friends, or make new ones. All in all, pick-up basketball on an otherwise lazy Saturday afternoon provides so many health and relaxation benefits that we can’t think of single reason not to pick up the phone and rally your buddies.

IT’S ALSO REALLY, REALLY GOOD FOR YOUR KIDS

If you’ve got children who can join in the game, playing pick-up basketball offers opportunities to teach them teamwork, sportsmanship, and unbridled enthusiasm. Have a blast and use the game as a teachable moment by modeling and reinforcing the desired behaviors. You can even opt to let your kid be the captain.

“The healthy, the strong individual, is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he has an abscess on his knee or in his soul.”

Because the word stress can mean so many things to so many different people, it’s logical that before any one individual—that means you—can put an effective stress management plan into practice, a Personal Stress Profile is essential. By determining the unique stressors you experience in your life, your personality’s stress-related tendencies, and how you personally tend to cope with stress, you can design a Stress Management Portfolio that really works for you.

For example, someone who is physically drained by too much interaction with people may not be helped by strategies that encourage increased social activities with friends. Someone else who is stressed by the lack of a support system might find profound benefit in increased social activity. Some people are deeply calmed by meditation; others find it excruciating. Some people find assertiveness training a relief, but a naturally assertive type might benefit more from learning to sit back and let other people handle things.

You can think of your Personal Stress Profile, or PSP, as something like a business proposal. You are the business, and the business isn’t operating at peak efficiency. Your PSP is a picture of the business as a whole and the specific nature of all the factors that are keeping the business from performing as well as it could. With PSP in hand, you can effectively create your own Stress Management Portfolio. Before you know it, you’ll be running smoothly, efficiently, and productively (not to mention happily).

Once you’ve identified the problems causing your stress and have a game plan in the form of your Stress Management Portfolio, create an action list of things that you can do to begin to resolve your stress on a daily basis.