A state of health can only be achieved through cause and effect. If you want the effect of being healthy, you need to find the causes and follow them. This philosophy is in direct opposition to the more conventional philosophy of medicine that believes disease is a matter of bad luck, where people have "risks" of disease that only occur by chance. The whole idea of health insurance, for example, is based on the idea that diseases just strike people by chance, which is utterly false.
While conventional medicine likes you to think that disease is a matter of chance, the reality is that disease (or a lack thereof) is almost entirely under your control. If you wish to be healthy, there are certain things you can do that reliably and consistently produce a healthy outcome. And if you wish to be diseased, there are other things you can do to reliably and consistently produce disease. Those disease-promoting things, by the way, are followed by most people today, which explains why disease rates are so high in industrialized nations.
Over the last year, I've spent another thousand hours researching these causes of health, which brings the research time I've spent on nutrition and health to around 5000 hours. And in that time, I've also written hundreds of articles on health, reviewed thousands of news reports, and researched items on the relationships between foods and health and the true causes of disease. And out of all of that research, the most astounding thing I've discovered is not one particular herb or nutritional supplement, but rather that the best and most powerful healing strategies, or what I call health habits, are available to you free of charge.
Think about this for a moment: what if you lived in a world where the most potent and advanced medicines were available to you free of charge? What if you didn't need a prescription to get them, you didn't have to pay to use them, and their effects were automatic and strongly correlated with enhanced states of human health? What if you could do that? That would be a nice would to live in, wouldn't it? Imagine if people could avail themselves of disease prevention habits and treatment strategies that cost absolutely nothing, were easy to obtain, and worked to improve the health of everyone, regardless of genetic makeup or background.
It may surprise you to learn that you live in such a world today. These things are available right now. The trick is, almost no one knows about them. These strategies and solutions are right in front of us, but they are not promoted because they make money for no one. I have collected the five most powerful strategies that are either free of charge or relatively low-cost. All five are easy to follow. In fact, out of a survey of 763 people, all of these were rated as easy to stick with.
In contrast, there do exist many potent health strategies that work well, but are simultaneously difficult for people to stick with. For example, we know that jogging three hours a day is good for your heart, if you can work up to it and tolerate it, but who's really going to jog three hours a day? Nobody I know is going to do that, including myself, and I do spend hours a day in physical training. We've got to get realistic about things that work to prevent disease and treat illness, and "realistic" means relying on habits that people can stick with. Thus, this survey has revealed the habits that people find achievable.
These are things that take five minutes instead of three hours, and more often than not, they require little or no exertion. In fact, the most vigorous exercise strategy in this entire list is walking. That's something that virtually everyone can do. And if you can't walk because you have bone-wasting disease or muscle aches and pains, there are some other habits in this book that can often help those conditions and get you back on your feet walking again.
So I pulled together the five most powerful yet effortless health strategies and put them into one book called "The Five Habits of Health Transformation." This book is available for immediate downloading at www.truthpublishing.com. And as you may have guessed from the title of this book, it's all about things that busy people can do to take care of their health. I'll reveal one of these five strategies later in this article.
This is a book for working professionals, parents and people who have a million things on their "to do" list and simply don't have time to go to the gym for three hours a day. They don't have time to sit and do breathing, meditation or yoga for six hours a week, but they want to get at least 90 percent of the health benefits of all that without expending the time and effort that would normally be required.
If this sounds like some kind of shortcut book, let me correct that right now. If you've read any of my work over the years, you know that I don't believe in "miracle" shortcuts to health. There is no such thing as a magic weight loss pill. There is no such thing as a contraption you can strap onto your abdomen that will suck out your body fat and make you look athletic. There is no such thing as results without effort. However, there are some strategies that are far smarter than others. There are strategies that have a big payoff, versus others that have a small payoff.
What "The Five Habits of Health Transformation" focuses on are those strategies that have the biggest payoff with the least amount of effort. It's not about taking shortcuts; it's about being efficient.
Let me give you an idea of where all this comes from in my own experience. In 1993, I launched Arial Software, which has since grown into one of the most successful permission e-mail marketing companies in the world. I've since launched another company called Relemail (www.Relemail.com) which certifies ethical, professional e-mail practices for some of the best-known companies in the world.
By the time I was 30 years old, I had achieved business success, but I was in terrible health. Even though I learned how to successfully launch, grow and operate a business, I didn't know how to take care of my own body, and I found myself fighting obesity, borderline diabetes and severe, chronic and debilitating back pain. I got into this situation because for most of my life, I had decided that I was going to sacrifice everything to achieve purely financial goals. I had decided to sacrifice good health for the sake of financial gain.
I suspect you might be in much the same situation. You might be following a career path, or maybe you've decided to spend more time with your family and your children than you spend taking care of your own health. Maybe you own a company, or maybe you're in real estate or sales, and you have burdensome time demands. You're pulled in a million directions and can't seem to find time to take care of your own health.
If you're in that situation, this book was written for you. It's written by a guy who knows the value of time, and who has achieved success in both the corporate world and in personal life based on doing things efficiently -- getting the most results for the least amount of required effort.
This book is not written by some kind of research intellectual who's going to bore you with a bunch of nutritional theory. It's also not written by some fitness trainer who can bench press 350 pounds, yet who has no concept whatsoever of the value of time. It's written by a guy who understands the professional demands placed upon you and who shares your pursuit of health, happiness, clarity of mind and the absence of disease.
Before you decide to get this book, let me give you a real example of what you'll find in it. Let me share with you what I think is one of the most powerful health strategies of all. It only takes 5 or 10 minutes a day, it does not involve exercise and it costs absolutely nothing. You don't need a prescription for it, and it prevents so many chronic diseases and enhances your life in so many ways that if this were a drug, it would be called a miracle drug and it would be front-page news in every newspaper and magazine in the world. What is this health habit?
Don't laugh when you find out how simple it is. Let me reveal it by explaining that this involves a nutrient that is crucial for your mental and physical health. This nutrient, when it is circulating in your body, prevents and even helps reverse early stages of prostate cancer and breast cancer. It prevents ovarian cancer, it prevents and treats osteoporosis and even the severe stages of the bone wasting disease known as osteomalacia. It prevents depression and schizophrenia, enhances brain function and the function of the pancreas. It even increases insulin sensitivity in the body, which means it helps diabetics. In my own experience, this nutrient even helps you lose weight and sleep better while giving you far more energy during the day.
At the same time, this is a nutrient that is chronically deficient in most Americans. People simply aren't getting enough of this nutrient. It is underrated in the conventional medical community, and it is thought of as old news, but I believe it is the single most important nutrient for overall health. What is the nutrient, and how do you get it into your body? Here's the interesting part: this nutrient is manufactured by your body. Your body is a vitamin factory, and it can actually synthesize this nutrient in your skin. From there, it gets circulated throughout your body where it plays special functions in your kidneys, liver and other organs.
What is this nutrient? It's called vitamin D, and it is automatically produced by your skin when your skin cells are exposed to the healing rays of natural sunlight. By simply exposing your skin to ultraviolet light, your body automatically produces this nutrient, and then circulates it throughout your body to prevent all these diseases and enhance the function of your body and mind. This is an astounding truth about health, and it just goes to show you the innate healing potential of the human body when it is granted access to natural healing modalities found in the natural environment.
It's also interesting to note that your body automatically produces just the right amount of vitamin D. If you get more sunlight than you need, you cannot overdose on vitamin D. Your skin will produce only what's needed, and no more. But the truth is, people don't get enough of this nutrient, and thus they suffer from diseases like depression, schizophrenia, breast cancer, prostate cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and many others as a result.
Now here's the best part of all: how much does it cost you to get sunlight on your skin? Last time I checked, it was free of charge. You walk outside, get some sun on your face and arms, or, if it's the right time of year, maybe you can get some sun on your legs or even your back. Get a sensible amount of sunlight -- just five to ten minutes a day -- in order to produce vitamin D in your body.
And the best part is, if you skip a day, you can actually make up for it the next day because your body stores this vitamin D. In fact, you can go a couple of months without renewing the vitamin if you have a full storage of vitamin D in your body, because remember, the human body is designed to make it through the winter and still be healthy. You can stockpile this nutrient by getting extra sunlight when the chance arises.
Unbelievably, people in this culture have been taught that sunlight is dangerous and that it will kill them. They have been taught to wear sunscreen at all times, and to never get any exposure to the sun. And although this may seem a bold statement, that outdated information on sunscreen is right now causing the untold death and suffering of hundreds of thousands of people. It's bad information, and it is information that's already being overturned in the minds of medical authorities around the world. In the UK, for example, it has been announced to doctors that they should stop telling people to avoid the sun. They're finally being taught that irrational avoidance of the sun is causing far more disease than sun exposure might cause. What people need is sensible exposure to the sun and its healing rays.
This is just one strategy out of five that can dramatically enhance your health, and yet require little or no effort and are available free of charge. This information is not being promoted simply because nobody makes money when you walk out and get some sunlight on your skin. No one can rent you the sun. They can't restrict the sun and then sell it back to you in pills. But you can bet that if they could, they would; and the sun would be the number one selling drug in the country. That's how good it is, because it enhances your health to such a high degree.
So if you're a busy person and want to prevent disease, there are ways to do it that don't take three hours a day. There are ways to do it that only take you a few minutes. Each of these strategies is discussed from time to time in various articles on this site, but if you want it all in one place, ready to download and digest right now, it's all in the book, the Five Habits of Health Transformation at the Truth Publishing website.
About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, and he has created several downloadable courses on survival and preparedness, including his widely-downloaded course on personal safety and self-defense. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In mid 2010, Adams produced TV.NaturalNews.com, a natural health video sharing website offering user-generated videos on nutrition, green living, fitness and more. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also the CEO of a highly successful email newsletter software company that develops software used to send permission email campaigns to subscribers. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and martial arts training. He's also author a large number of health books offered by Truth Publishing and is the creator of numerous reference website including NaturalPedia.com and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. His websites also include the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the innate healing ability of the human body.
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