Get Healthy Fast

Sometimes, we just can't afford to get sick. What choices must be made to get healthy fast? The following 10 essential healthy actions will, in most cases, reverse your sickness and boost your health very quickly.

Please note, these are not a treatment for any serious ailment like cancer or a chronic degenerative disease. Primarily, these actions are an ideal regimen for dealing with colds, flu, fatigue, and stress. Following these guidelines, you'll get healthy and get over your sickness in three to five days instead of two weeks. No specific vitamin, herbal, or dietary recommendations are given as they would be different for each health concern.

Healthy Habit #1 - Stop negative thinking as soon as you notice it and count your blessings.

Negative thinking and negative self-talk are normal activities of the mind. But let's remember, we live in an energetic universe. Any negativity has an effect on your energy. It weakens you. It drains you. It creates a wide gap in your energetic immunity. Sooner or later, negativity manifests in your physical health.

Stop it as soon as you notice it. Turn your attention to all the good things you have. Every mistake has a lesson in it. As soon as you catch yourself blaming or regretting, stop. Instead, appreciate what you already have.

Healthy Habit #2 - Get plenty of restful sleep, and practice Deep Relaxation.

Plenty of restful sleep is absolutely essential for healing fast. The time between 10pm and 2am is the most healing and detoxifying time to sleep. During this crucial period, our body does the most cell-repair and cell-rejuvenation, getting rid of toxins within the cells.

If we go to sleep at 1am or later, we miss out on this natural anti-aging habit. Sleep researchers agree that "one hour before 2am is worth two hours after 2am". This means that sleeping from 10pm to 2am would be equivalent to 8 hours of sleep!

In addition, practice Yogic Deep Relaxation (Yoga Nidra) at least once a day and as you prepare to sleep at night. Yoga Nidra removes many physical, emotional, and mental tensions, thereby freeing up vast amounts of internal energy available for healing.

Healthy Habit #3 - Drink plenty of fluids. "Dilution is Solution to Pollution".

When you must get healthy fast, drink more than you think you need. Detox. Get the fluids moving. This includes water, teas, and vegetable juices.

It DOES NOT include coffee, milk, fruit juice, or soda drinks. All of these are too acidic: either dehydrating (coffee), toxic (soda), sugary (fruit juice), and processed (soy milk).

Normally, drink eight 8oz glasses a day, or half of your body weight in ounces. If you are 128 lbs, half of that in ounces would be 64oz. That equals eight 8oz glasses. When getting over a sickness, drink even more than that!

Healthy Habit #4 - Sweat.

You may be one of those people who just don't like to sweat. Guess what? ... If you want to get healthy fast, you must!

Perspiration is a natural way for the body to detoxify itself. And it's one of the most effective ways. In many cultures, sweating is a treatment of the first onset of cold/flu symptoms. Chinese and Ayurvedic medicines make very good use of it for a good time-proven reason.

Sweat through exercise or by going to a sauna. Preferably both. If you are already feeling sick, avoid any strenuous exercise, and sauna may be your only option.

Healthy Habit #5 - Mild Exercise.

There are numerous health benefits of exercise, ranging from better cardiovascular system and heart health, to healthier muscles, bones, and joints, to better digestion and stronger immune system, and to the overall sense of well-being due to the release of exercise-induced endorphins.

The intensity of exercise depends on how well you feel. Strenuous exercise is contra-indicated during an illness. However, a mild restorative yoga sequence would help relieve stress and muscle tension and shorten your recovery time.

As you start feeling better and better, increase the intensity of your short workouts and include some form of cardiovascular exercise such as brisk walking, swimming, dancing, and flowing yoga.

Healthy Habit #6 - Practice Abdominal Breathing.

Abdominal breath massages the internal organs, stimulates the blood flow to the organs, encourages good digestion and elimination, relaxes the nervous system, provides more oxygen intake, makes you feel deeply energized, and just feels good.

Practice abdominal breath to get healthy, to stay healthy, and feel rejuvenated all the time. It's OK to do it whenever you think of it, but it's also a good idea to have a consistent breathing practice. In the morning soon after waking up, or at night before bed, are ideal times. Often, it helps to place one or both hands on the belly to begin the practice.

Healthy Habit #7 - Eat three small and simple meals a day.

Digestion of food takes more energy than any other activity! If you eat a lot, you'll be over-working the internal organs, missing the essential internal rest, and using up all the energy needed to get healthy. So eat small meals. Three times a day.

The more simple your meal, the fewer digestive enzymes your body needs to use, the less energy it needs to spend, and the more energy is available for healing.

Simple meals are easy to digest. Choose only a few types of food at a time.

Best choices are:
- simple grains (quinoa, brown rice, millet, buckwheat, and oats);
- cooked beans;
- lightly cooked, steamed, or sautéed veggies.

Healthy Habit #8 - Consume fresh green foods full of live energy and enzymes.

No matter how well you eat, how 'clean' your food is, and how many vitamins you take, if you are not eating live foods, you will be lacking in optimal health.

Life needs to be nourished by life.

In my personal experience, I have skipped this essential habit, only to struggle longer to get healthy when I needed to. On the other hand, every time I include fresh green foods in my diet, I feel their vibrant energy in my body, rarely get sick, and recover quickly.

Best examples:
- Wheatgrass juice;
- Other fresh vegetable juice (greens like parsley, spinach, and kale mixed with the sweeter beets or carrot juice);
- Green salads;
- Fresh fruits;
- Fresh berries.

Healthy Habit #9 - Eliminate all sugar and sugary foods, all dairy, caffeine, and processed foods from your diet.

Do it for at least a few days while you are getting well.

Sugar kills your white blood cells, the immune system fighters. All cancerous cells feed on sugar. Eliminate it as much as possible for at least a few days. Even starchy and sugary fruits (bananas, mangos, melons, pineapple) aren't recommended.

Diary is a non-food, i.e. it's not intended to be eaten by humans by nature. It's for baby cows only. Even mature cows don't drink milk. Would you drink your mother's milk at your age now?

But besides that, it lowers our immunity as much as sugar. That's why it's so mucous-forming. The mucous is the dead white blood cells.

All diary is also very acidic, meaning that it leaches alkaline minerals (calcium, magnesium) from your tissues and bones. That's how dairy consumption causes osteoporosis.

If you are addicted to dairy, skip it for a few days when you are trying to get healthy.

Caffeine is also very acid-forming. Thus, coffee consumption can make your bones brittle, too. Your immune system has to struggle harder when there's caffeine in the system to deal with.

Overly processed foods (just look at the labels) contain many toxic and harmful ingredients, not intended to be consumed, but are still used for coloring, flavoring, creating a desired consistency, getting you addicted, etc. If the list of the ingredients is longer than five or six, and many of the ingredients have long unpronounceable names, don't eat it.

Healthy Habit #10 - Take antioxidant supplements when you have a high degree of oxidative stress.

Take vitamins at least during the healing process. Once you get healthy, nutrient-rich foods can suffice.

Sickness/Disease = Oxidative Stress

To avoid oxidative stress, you want enough antioxidants to handle the free radicals that create the oxidation.

Surya Kolpakov is a Certified Yoga Therapist and a Licensed Massage Therapist. He teaches yoga and meditation around Boston area, and loves to learn and share his knowledge about the 'yoga lifestyle'. For more information on the yoga lifestyle, visit Surya's website at http://www.yogalifestylecoach.com

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