Be happy for the sake of your health

Improve health by being happy.

 How happiness improves your health

Being happy can have major physical health benefits. The connection between your emotional state and your physical state is quite profound. Happiness and positivity can help to prevent many diseases like chronic pain, inflammation and heart disease. Happiness also helps to reduce the negative physical effects of stress. It can also boost the immune system. Happiness can even increase your life expectancy! 

In short; the happier you are, the healthier you can be.

Your mood affects your body.

How to be happy

What makes people happy? What is the difference between happy people and those who need a little cheering up? There could be a whole range of answers to that question (I'm already thinking about genetics, upbringing, hormones, exercise, nutrition, chronic diseases, medications etc.)

Let's make it as simple as simple as we can. Happy people have different habits. Happy people act and think differently to those that aren't so happy. This is called deliberate happiness.

In all truth, happiness doesn’t depend on whether you’re rich or poor, or whether you drive a sports car or take the bus. It doesn't matter whether you’re the best looking person in the room or just an average Joe.

This sounds like a bunch of over-used phrases, but it's actually good news! It means that your happiness lies in your own hands. You can be happy right now. And it doesn't have to cost you anything. If you want to be happier, you can simply implement one or more of the following habits into your life.

1. Be optimistic

Negative situations and having to deal with uncomfortable things are, unfortunately, a part of life that we can't avoid. Thankfully, this doesn’t have to define you or your happiness. You should always try to find the silver lining in every situation.

Start by realizing that you can change the way you think. It will take a little effort at first, but you can train your brain to be positive about almost everything that you encounter. 

A positive outlook will inspire feelings of trust and allow you to connect with others better. It will also give you the motivation for longer term life changes (like exercising and eating healthy).

It is easier to make better choices when we aren't running away from an emotional black hole. It is almost impossible to make healthy choices when you're battling with depression.

A positive outlook will also reduce the amount of stress that you face in tough times.

Drop negative thinking. It doesn't serve you. Let go of negative thoughts and emotions. Learn to see problems as challenges and opportunities. If you can't figure something out at work, see it as an opportunity to improve your skills.

Instead of pondering over what’s impossible, think about what is possible - and how you can make it happen.

A better mood leads to better decisions.

2. Focus on what you can control

Too many people worry about things that are far beyond their control. It could be a debilitating illness, a disastrous storm, or an unstable job market. This kind of thinking is exhausting.

It will drain what little energy you have left - and that's why you feel like you don’t have any energy left to think positive and feel happy.  

The next time you catch yourself thinking about things that you don't have any control over, let go of them as soon as you notice it and turn your thoughts into things that you can control instead.

I can't control how my boss treats me, but I can control how many positive things I notice about my job.

The one train of thought makes you feel like a victim to circumstance. The other makes you feel like the superhero of your own destiny.

Negativity drains you.

3. Practice self-acceptance

You are almost always your own worst enemy. You need to accept yourself before you can be comfortable with who you are. You can't feel good if you don't feel good about what you are as a human being.

One of the biggest things that make us unhappy with ourselves is what we see from other people around us. If you compare yourself to others and focus on your own flaws in comparison, it will color your world in a terrible shade of negativity.

Know this: We all have flaws.

Embrace this fact to become happier with yourself. Ironically, this will also help you to accept other people for who they are as well.

Be happy with what you are - today, in this very moment. 

Find ways to be a better version of yourself instead of comparing yourself to other people.

Happiness starts with the way that you see yourself.

4. Be kind to others

This is by far one of the most common habits of happy people. It's also quick and easy to do. Doing things for others and small acts of kindness will give you more than just fuzzy feelings. There is a very real effect on your own happiness when you show kindness to others.

There’s more to kindness than just giving money to charity. Kindness includes donating your time, energy, and experience for the benefit of others. It can also include smiling to someone as you walk past them, saying thank you or helping a co-worker that seems to be struggling with something.

Along with boosting your happiness, kindness will strengthen your social connections and improve your health.

You get what you give.

5. Make your physical health a priority

Our general state of physical health is a good predictor of our personal happiness levels. This is especially true since hormones, happy hormones (dopamine, serotonin, endorphins); genetics and energy directly affect your mood.

We don’t normally take note of how big of a role our health plays on our happiness. This is mostly because we don’t pay attention when things are normal. Think about the fact that as soon as you get sick, it immediately affects your attitude, mood, and outlook very drastically. When the body ails, so does the mind.

This can range from simple headaches to chronic pain or other health issues. 

If you want to be happy, you need to take care of your health. Getting enough sleep restores your vital physical and mental functions. Eating nutritious food keeps your body and mind functioning at its best. Regular physical exercise will keep you in shape and release happy hormones (like dopamine, serotonin and endorphins) to ease depression, stop stress and enhance your mood.

The brain and the body are strongly connected.

What makes you happy? Let me know in the comments below!

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Benefits of cold exposure

Discover the health benefits of being cold

Benefits of being cold

Cold exposure is good for your health. It challenges the body to adapt and become stronger - much like exercise. A process that challenges the body and makes it stronger in the long run is called hormesis.

Examples of hormesis

There are many types of hormesis. Here are a few of them:

1. Exercise
2. Heat exposure
3. Cold exposure
4. Fasting
5. Mental challenges
6. Sun exposure

Adversity creates strength.

1. Cold exposure reduces muscle pain and speeds up recovery from exercise

Cold water immersion reduces muscle soreness when done within 24 hours after exercise. The cold acts as an anti-inflammatory agent within muscle tissue. This reduces swelling and speeds up the healing process.

Cold showers reduce muscle pain

I use cold exposure to speed up the healing of a certain muscle group if it takes too long to heal on its own. Cold exposure prevents blood from pooling in muscle tissue.

Blood pooling stops new blood with fresh nutrients from reaching the muscle and stops old blood with by-products of the healing process from circulating away to be cleansed.

Inflammation isn't always a bad thing. It is the signal that tells our muscles to grow and get better. Exercise produces the inflammation that eventually leads to an increase in muscle size and strength.

Cold therapy to speed up muscle recovery

If you need to recover as soon as possible (like from a strenuous sports event and there's another one coming up shortly), I'd recommend using cold therapy as soon as you can.

If you want to increase your fitness level, I'd recommend using cold therapy a few hours after exercise so that your body can learn to deal with inflammation on its own.

Cold therapy is also good to speed up muscle or joint recovery because of its anti-inflammatory effects.

Use cold for exercise performance.

2. Cold showers reduce depression and increase energy levels

This study investigated whether cold showers could be used as an effective treatment for depression. The results were astonishing. Depressive symptoms were reduced almost instantly and the cold showers showed no indication of dependence or addiction.

The study proposes that one of the major causes of depression is a lack of hormesis that challenges our brain and body (just like how exercise reduces depression). Cold showers challenge the brain to switch on certain areas that aren't stimulated enough with our current, comfortable lifestyles.

A 2-3 minute cold shower of 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) was done once to twice a day. This was enough to elicit the mood-enhancing effects of cold exposure.

The same study showed that cold reduced pain in the same way as pain medication (via an analgesic effect).

A short, cold shower has lasting benefits.

Cold exposure activates the sympathetic nervous system

The study showed that cold exposure (in the form of cold showers) activated the mechanisms in our bodies that cope with physical stress. These are the same mechanisms that are activated during exercise. Increased energy production throughout your body creates an energizing effect.

Hormones released through cold exposure

Cold exposure increase blood levels of beta-endorphin and noradrenaline. This leads to a mood-enhancing, euphoric and energized feeling. These hormones explain why some people claim that cold showers wake them up better than coffee.

Cold showers are better than coffee.

3. Cold therapy increases metabolism

Cold exposure can increase your metabolism by 16%. It costs energy to warm the body up or cool it down. Your body will take this energy from fat stores. The increased energy levels and activation of the sympathetic nervous system, as we have discussed in the previous point, will also increase your body's energetic burn rate.

How much weight can you lose in one cold shower?

Not much. The amount of fat that you burn in a single cold shower is minuscule. You can't sit in a cold shower until you've lost a certain amount of body fat. You will enter into hypothermia before you lose any noticeable amount of fat.

The weight loss effects of cold training are adaptive. This means that your body will burn more fat mass per cold session over time as it adapts by learning to burn more fat to create heat. The more often you take a cold shower, the more fat storage you can burn per cold shower.

The metabolism-boosting effects of cold exposure persist afterwards because of sympathetic nervous system activation and the release of endorphins and noradrenaline.

Do it regularly (like exercise).

Benefits of cold exposure

The above findings tell us that cold exposure has the following benefits:

1. Better ability to respond to stress
2. Decreased recovery time for muscles and joints
3. Prevents blood pooling from strenuous exercise
4. Better elimination of the by-products of muscle recovery
5. Anti-inflammatory: Reduce pain and swelling
6. Increased ability to turn fat into energy
7. Increased energy production
8. Better mood and a sense of euphoria
9. Protection against depression

Cold is good for you.

It seems like we have been too successful at making ourselves comfortable. Doing things that make you uncomfortable from time to time will help your body to stay strong and fit. It is okay to feel cold from time to time.

Remember to never push your body further than it can handle. You can want to strengthen your body - not break it down.

I stop my cold therapy as soon as I start to shiver. Your body will get stronger and be able to endure more cold before it shivers as you go on. Stay Strong!

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I end my water fast at 103 hours (4 days and 7 hours)

Here are the results of my 4 day water fast.

4 Day water fast disclaimer

This article is not meant to encourage you to start fasting. It is not meant as medical or health advice in any way, shape or form. I simply share my own experience with fasting in order to report on the effects that it has on my own body. This article is purely meant for anecdotal evidence. Do your research and consult a health professional if you want to consider fasting for yourself.

See the results below.

Why did you end your fast at 103 hours?

You will notice that I did not give a particular amount of time that I was planning to fast for. I wanted to see how my body felt and fast for as long as I felt comfortable. I had the sense that it was time to end my fast at 103 hours, so I did.

That was over 24 hours ago. I wanted to wait before writing this final entry about my fasting journey so that I could write more extensively about the physical effects of the fast.

Re-feeding plan after a long fast

You should follow a good re-feeding plan after a longer fast. Some people say that you only need to implement a re-feeding plan after 5 or more days of fasting, while others say that it should be from 3 days onward. I did not follow this protocol.

I simply ate a relatively small meal with bread, stew, muesli, a banana and an apple. I ate like normal (as if I hadn't been fasting) after I slept.

I had no digestive issues at all. It seems that I would personally need to go for a longer type of fast before I need a re-feeding plan, but everybody is different. It is good to remember that this is my third longer-than-24-hour fast.

You can learn to tell what your body needs.

How much weight did you lose after fasting?

I was at a 4.5 kg (10 pound) loss after the end of my fourth day (on the 96th hour). More than 24 hours after my fast (and with plenty of food and hydration), I am still 4 kg (9 pounds) lighter than I was when I started. I weighed 73.5 kg (162 pounds) at the beginning. Now I weigh 69.5 kg (153 pounds).

Weight loss wasn't my goal, but the reduction in fat is not unwelcome.

Muscle strength after long water fast

I did my first workout today since I started my four day water fast. I did not lose any strength. It looks like I didn't lose any muscle at all according to how I look in the mirror.

It seems that the 1300% increase in human growth hormone (referenced in the report of my fourth day of fasting) must have preserved my muscle mass.

It makes sense that the body will try to preserve muscle mass in challenging times like when there is no food available. If we withered away as soon as we couldn't find food, we would have died out as a species a long time ago. That is exactly what fat is there for.

Our bodies do well on the edge.

Hunger and appetite during long water fast

My hunger wasn't that bad throughout my water fast. Most people think that hunger gets worse after each day, but hunger actually gets less and less after each day of fasting.

Did your allergy or asthma symptoms improve after 4 days of water fasting?

Unfortunately I did not lose my allergies or my asthmatic symptoms. I had close to zero asthmatic and allergic reactions during my entire fast. My tight chest returned within 24 hours of the end of my fast. I am actually writing this post right now because my tight chest woke me up in the middle of the night.

I linked to a documentary about how fasting has cured many people with asthma and allergies. I think that I would need to fast for a longer period of time to see permanent results. I could have fasted for longer, but I felt like my body was telling me to stop. I will probably attempt a longer fast sometime in the future.

There are no quick fixes.

Benefits of water wasting

I did notice some positive changes during my four day water fast. Here are some of them:

1. I lost 4 kilograms (9 pounds) of fat
2. My skin looks clearer
3. I have a hard-to-explain, more positive outlook on life
4. I feel motivated to change a lot more about myself
5. I have more energy than I did before the fast
6. My muscles look a little more toned than they did before the fast
7. My teeth are whiter

Read about my first day of water fasting.
Learn about my second day without any food.
Check out my third day of water fasting.
This is my experience right after the fourth day of fasting.

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