11 Pillars of Health, Wellness, and Longevity

Ever wonder why some people seem to be healthy all the time? Why some people look and act younger than their age? Why some people are a bit overbearing regarding their health?

When you examine the lives of older, healthy people, you find they all share certain things in common—what I like to call the pillars of health, wellness, and longevity.

What are the qualities and conditions you should be striving for if you seek a long life of health and wellness? Keep reading, but remember that while this article provides an overview of what needs to be done, you do not need to make drastic changes to your life. You can start with one pillar… and even just one idea from one pillar. The key is to get started.

Pillars of Health, Wellness, and Longevity

1. Healthy Diet of Real Foods. Your diet is the most important factor in improving health and living a long healthspan. Until food marketers change back to more nutritious foods, you must stay away from most convenience foods – fast foods, prepared foods, packaged foods, and frozen meals – because they contain added refined sugars, inflammatory seed oils, and unknown chemical additives. Remove refined sugars and seed oils from your diet. Focus on preparing foods at home from scratch using the healthiest ingredients. Start reading ingredients lists on foods and only buy foods with simple and known ingredients; don’t buy any food with an ingredient you don’t recognize. Please read my articles, Change Your Grocery Shopping and SAVE Your Life and Healing Your Heart Starts With What You Eat.

2. Daily Movement/Exercise. Close behind fixing your diet is the importance of physically moving your body throughout the day, especially if you have a desk job. It is not enough to just get in your daily steps or a weekend full of activity; most research clearly shows the benefits of regular movement. I suggest what I call “Exercise Snacks,” which are 5-10 minutes of movement every hour on the hour. Some should be aerobic, such as taking the stairs or walking around the block or dancing to a few favorite tunes, but others should focus on resistance, such as lifting weights, performing pushups or planks, doing a few squats or reverse lunges. You can still do the big exercises you enjoy on the weekends, such as riding your bike, long runs, jumping jacks, playing golf, etc. Read my article, Do You Have a Sitting Disorder?

3. Plentiful Healthy Hydration. Are you dehydrated? Studies show that the vast majority of adults across the world are chronically dehydrated because they simply do not drink enough water or other healthy fluids. Drinking water (or non-sweetened, flavored water) is fine, as is coffee and tea, but make sure you also watch your electrolyte balance by also drinking coconut water or adding a healthy electrolyte mix (such as Ultima Replenisher) to your water. Finally, please use a quality filter to remove the toxic chemicals lurking in your water, including the ever-increasing threat of microplastics. Hydrate like your health depends on it. See my article, How Thirst Often Confuses People Into Eating More.

4. Quality, Consistent Sleep. One of the most common mistakes people make is thinking they can stay up late throughout the week and catch up on the sleep over weekends, but that is unhealthy thinking. It’s during sleep that the body, brain, and gut conduct most of their restorative work, thus it is important to have good sleep hygiene: fairly regular bedtime, dark and cool room, comfortable bedding, and regular wakeup time. If you are hitting the snooze button every morning, you need to look into adjusting your sleep schedule and focusing on building a good sleep practice. See my articles, Trouble Sleeping? Five Plant-Based, Natural Sleep Aids and 10 Quick Sleep Tips for Helping Stay Healthy.

5. Habitual Gratitude Practice. Most of us have many things to be grateful for, but when life gets tough, we often forget about the good and focus on the bad. Establishing a habit of realizing and appreciating the good things helps flip a switch in your brain so when the bad stuff does come, it does not have such a negative effect on you. I try to practice gratitude every hour as I am doing my exercise snack, as well as during other moments throughout the day, and then a final time as I have my evening meditation and prayers. Research shows that a consistent gratitude practice can reduce stress and improve physical and mental health. See my article, Establishing a Daily Practice of ThanksLIVING!

6. Regular Times in Nature. When was the last time you sat on the grass and watched the clouds? Or the last time you went for a hike in the forest? Or the last time you sat on a park bench and basked in the sun and surroundings? We are nature – and nature is us. Spending time in nature has many restorative benefits, including the power of inhaling cancer-killing cells found in plant phytoncides. Try to find time every day to get outside, whether for a walk around the neighborhood, a visit to a local park, or an expedition to a state or national forest. See my article, Want to Lead a Happier, Healthier Life? Get out in Nature!

7. Supportive Community. We all need supportive people in our lives. Some are blessed with a wonderful and loving family, but for the rest of us, we need to build our own family of friends and loved ones. Remove people from your life who are negative and unsupportive and strive to find and maintain friendships with people who understand you and want to see you succeed. Because of the growth in social media and the pandemic, people have become more isolated at a time when we need community the most. See my articles, The Dangers of Loneliness -- and Tools for How to Overcome It and Why Relationships Are KEY to a Healing Journey.

8. Reduction of Chronic Stress. Stress is not something to be taken lightly. Being in fight or flight mode for continuous periods of time will corrode you from the inside out because of the amount of stress hormones released to fight the enemy! The fight or flight response is an ancient survival mechanism driven by the sympathetic nervous system, back when people were in the fight for their lives. Excessive and ongoing stress has shown to be a killer and debilitator. But it’s not just stress alone; you need to heal from past trauma wounds because the energy you are spending internally to ignore the trauma (whether you are consciously aware or not) is sapping away years from your life. See my article, 10 Tips for Coping With Life's Stressors.

9. Mediation, Reflection, Prayer. We are spiritual beings, but often get too caught up in organized religions to focus on our spirituality – which is what we do when we spend time meditating, reflecting, and praying. So many people are searching for something more and have rejected organized religions in search of a personal connection, whether to God, the Universe, or the Divine. Having a spiritual practice provides a sense of purpose, inner peace, and connection to something greater than ourselves, with more than 3,000 studies indicating that religion and spirituality have a potentially beneficial effect on health and wellness. See my article, 10 Tips to Grow and Deepen Your Spirituality.

10. Safe, Secure Housing. Having a protected place to call home is a basic human necessity. How can you address your health and healing if you do not have a safe, regular place to live – but that’s the case for hundreds of thousands of people. For many of us, we are just one injury, one mistake, one loss from being unsheltered. When we have a safe and secure place to live and sleep, we can move to higher level issues, such as health and healing. Research also shows that shelterless adults experience accelerated aging, with premature onset of chronic medical conditions, while also suffering from a high prevalence of substance use and mental health disorders and physical risks such as exposure to violence.

11. Removal of Toxins. We live in an ever-increasing toxic environment, from our air, soil, and water to the inside and outside of our homes. There’s not a whole lot we can do about the outside environment, but we need to detoxify of our homes to remove all the chemicals. Inside our homes, we use chemical air fresheners, cleansers, soaps, detergents, and fabric softeners. We also use way too much plastic, from cutting boards to plastic food containers, all releasing microplastics. Outside our homes, we spray chemicals on our lawns to make them look pretty and place toxic chemicals around our houses to protect us from pests. See my articles, Want to Heal? Detox Your Home... and Yourself and Are the Chemicals in Your Home Killing You?

Final Thoughts on the Pillars of Health

You may be overwhelmed with the changes you will have to make, and that’s completely understandable. Our culture has been focused on convenience for decades, and unfortunately, we are discovering that convenience is often dangerous to our health – whether that’s from convenience foods or a sedentary lifestyle or wanting our homes and clothes to smell “fresh.”

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, take one step at a time. Change is always difficult, but it is nearly impossible when everything needs changing. Set a goal or a timeline and work your way through all the pillars.

If you want a healthier, happier life, please start building your own pillars of health today!

Additional Health and Longevity Resources

• Is Your Healing and Health Your Top Priority?

• Life Fitness Planning: Becoming Fit and Healthy in All Aspects of Your Life

• Metabolic Health and Metabolic Syndrome

• Purge Your Pantry For Health and Healing

• The Healing Benefits of Laughter

• 35 Most Toxic Household Items Hiding In Your Home

• The 7 Pillars of Health: The Keys to Lifelong Wellness, Happiness and Longevity

• The Pillars of Health, the Foundations of Self-Care

• The 12 Pillars of Health

• The Longevity Lifestyle: 10 Pillars for Living a Long, Extraordinary Life