Healthiest You Ever

“Nearly one-third of the U.S. population is walking around in a state of chronic mild dehydration…. If a person is dehydrated up to two percent, a proper fluid balance can be restored by taking in fluids within six hours. Once a person is past three percent it can take up to twenty-four hours to restore balance.”

Water is essential to cellular function. Water regulates body temperature, lubricates joints, assists in elimination of wastes, and protects body tissues. Approximately 60 percent of an adult’s body weight is water. Of all the nutrients, water is most essential to survival. Every system in your body depends on water to function. It makes sense that systems are affected by dehydration. Your muscles can’t perform effectively if you’re dehydrated. Thirst is not a good indicator of hydration. We often become thirsty far beyond the point when we should have started to replenish fluids. And, as we age our thirst mechanism loses sensitivity.

Here’s a “fluid plan” to make sure you get your daily eight to ten cups of water:

• Carry a water bottle with you all day. Know how much it holds so you know your consumption when you empty it.

• If you’re a skier, walker, or long distance runner, carry a back pouch with water. Regularly wash and disinfect your water bottles and pouches.

“My dream is to become a farmer. Just a Bohemian guy pulling up his own sweet potatoes for dinner.”

Even though being an avid athlete means focusing on the healthiest foods that provide ideal nutrition calorie for calorie, cravings for sweet treats creep up every once in a while. Calm those cravings with combinations like this that satisfy with sound nutrition!

1 sweet potato, peeled and cut for blender’s ability (if you don’t have a blender capable of handling a raw sweet potato, cook it for 2-3 minutes in your microwave first).

1. Combine walnuts and 1 cup of water in a blender and blend until emulsified and no walnut bits remain.

2. Add spinach, sweet potato, pumpkin pie spice, and remaining 1 cup of water while blending until desired consistency is achieved.

WALNUTS FOR ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE

Just ¼ cup of walnuts contains almost 100 percent of your daily value of omega-3s. Not only a tasty, protein-packed morsel, the walnut helps athletes perform at their best by improving circulation and heart health, controlling blood pressure, providing essential amino acids, and acting as a powerful antioxidant.

“Spanish cooking is drier, more singular, not as diffused. It’s about one ingredient tasting very good, like tossing sardines with garlic and parsley and leaving it alone. Even when chefs riff on it, they don’t put a lot on the plate.”

Anything that benefits heart health, particularly cholesterol levels, blood flow, and blood pressure, is also vital for your brain. CoQ10 has been shown to be useful in alleviating the effects of abnormalities involving the heart’s ability to contract and pump blood effectively, such as congestive heart failure and a number of heart muscle diseases. Coenzyme Q10 also appears to protect vitamin E, which helps prevent the oxidation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or “bad” cholesterol). It’s believed that oxidized LDL can lead to plaque buildup, clogged arteries, and an increased risk of heart attack or stroke. CoQ10 may reduce the ability of blood to clot, thereby decreasing the chance of a blood clot getting stuck in a clogged artery and causing a heart attack or stroke. Other heart-related conditions for which CoQ10 supplementation shows promise include hypertension and heart valve replacement.

Supplements are readily available, but consult with your doctor before adding them to your daily supplements.

CHOOSE FOODS WITH COENZYME Q10

To bulk up on CoQ10 eat sardines, mackerel, nuts, organ meats, beef, broccoli, chicken, oranges, salmon, or trout.

“I ran on the treadmill some and ran on the elliptical. I’ve done the stair-master the past couple of days, ridden the bike and shot around.”

For those of you who hate the treadmill, but want a full-body workout on an aerobic machine, check out the elliptical trainer. By combining cross-country skiing with climbing stairs and walking, the machine is able to provide an excellent cardiovascular workout without hurting your joints. The motion works all of the major muscle groups in your legs and offers the option to move backward and really focus on those glutes. Another great benefit of the machine is that you can adjust the program to your strength level, which allows both beginners and more advanced athletes to get a solid workout as they increase the resistance.

OR YOU COULD JUST GO THE STAIR CLIMBING ROUTE

You can also add to your leg strength and endurance with stair climbing. Find a building tall enough to allow you to climb for two minutes at a moderate pace (between simple climbing and a sprint). If two minutes on the stairs is too much at first, start with one minute and build up. Once you can do two minutes, repeat six to eight times once a week. If you don’t have access to a tall building, perhaps there is a stadium you can use for stair running. Go up and down five or six times once a week.

“If you understand the force of intelligence in the body, its mechanical operation and structure, you can work on any part of the body you can reach with your hands.”

If you learn about acupressure, Swedish massage, reflexology, and many other techniques, you can perform massage on yourself. You can massage your own neck, scalp, face, hands, feet, legs, arms, and torso. Many yoga postures also result in internal and external massage by bending the body in certain ways against itself or by using the pressure of the floor against certain parts of the body.

Treat yourself to a variety of massages until you find the particular methods that deliver the best results in decreasing muscular or joint pain and in providing relaxation. Then, create your own unique brand of massage and use it on all the areas of your body that you can reach—head, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, chest, stomach, lower back, legs, and feet.

Experiment with oils to see which ones feel or smell particularly good to you. Some oils are invigorating, like peppermint, while others can be restive, like lavender. You can also use pain-relieving creams if your muscles feel particularly stressed.

Follow your self-massage with a warm bath filled with Epsom salts, and you’ll likely wake up the next day feeling refreshed and invigorated.

“I was always singing and dancing for my mother when I wasn’t glued to the television watching I Love Lucy or The Carol Burnett Show.”

Even if you have two left feet, turn on your CD player or put your iPod in its docking station and start moving. Whether it’s in your bedroom or your living room or a local club or studio, dancing is great for your overall health because you move quickly and use all of your limbs. The funny thing about dancing, too, is that all you really need is a sense of rhythm and an enjoyment of music—you can be good at it no matter what your size or shape. Dancing also happens to be an incredible cardio workout and can help you release stress and tone your whole body through movement. Even if you start out with two left feet, after a handful of weekends out dancing at a club or in a scheduled course, you’ll start to have some rhythm and more confidence out on the dance floor. Dancing is a win-win activity: It’s exercise—and it’s fun!

BURN, BABY, BURN

Go out for an evening of dance and try to put in at least an hour on the floor. Because whether you have enough stamina to keep it up for an hour or you need to slow down your moves from time to time, you’ll be lighting those metabolic fires. Take a look at what a 150-pound person burns on average for an hour for these different dancing styles:

• Aerobic dance/nightclubbing: 442 calories

• Fast Ballroom: 374 calories

• Ballet, Jazz, or Tap: 326 calories

• Medium-Speed Ballroom (Polka, Line): 306 calories

• Slow-Speed Ballroom (Waltz, Tango, Mambo): 204 calories

“The yoga mat is a good place to turn when talk therapy and antidepressants aren’t enough.”

Yoga is also a powerful, holistic, transformational tool that calms and focuses the mind and develops innate intelligence and awareness. The postures, breath awareness, and relaxation techniques develop your natural intuitive intelligence, and help your mind to focus on one thing at a time instead of jumping around like a hyper monkey. When the mind is focused, the nervous, circulatory, and respiratory systems respond by slowing down. The body and mind start to relax. You feel calmer, think more clearly, and feel centered and grounded. Over time, the mind and the intelligence are able to spread throughout the body, focusing on many points at one time. This is meditation.

As the mind quiets, the body opens to release unnecessary tension and long-held emotions. The emotions become balanced and moderate. The body develops balanced strength, and with strength comes flexibility and a stable core. You experience emotional equanimity and poise, like a tree that sways in the breeze but always come back to center. Life will always have its sunny days and stormy, windy times, but yoga creates a strong foundation with which you can endure life’s unpredictable weather.