The top five tips for staying healthy in the summer are the same top five things that you should be doing winter, spring, summer or fall.
- Exercise: The top of my list is certainly going to be exercise. Exercising is going to keep your body strong and keep the muscles strong. It makes your body more efficient at processing calories. You are going to need your strength, your endurance, and proper structure throughout the course of your lifetime. The better you take care of your body the longer it is going to last and the stronger you are going to be.
- Eat a Healthy Diet: Number two is eat right and have a healthy diet. You don’t have to be super strict; it doesn’t have to be 100% organic, although that would be ideal. I try to teach people to use reasonable guidelines. For my personal life, I try to get 70% of my calories from organic foodstuffs. As I have said many times before, if you invited me over for dinner and you weren’t serving an organic chicken I wouldn’t say, “No, I’m not going to come over.” It’s fine, I’ll eat the chicken, you know? I will just make sure that I’m a little bit better the rest of the time. Also, be sure to eat fresh fruits and vegetables.
- Drink Water: Hydrating is another important tip. Make sure that you are drinking enough water. I know it sounds like common sense, but when you’re dehydrated, your blood gets thicker. It makes your heart work harder, and your electrolyte balance can become off. In the summer you’re certainly going to be exercising more and you’re going to need more water and more balance for the electrolytes.
- Get Plenty of Rest: Rest is when our body recovers. When I ask people, I look them right in the eye and I ask, “How does your body heal? And when does that happen?” Very often they’ll look at me blankly, but the truth is your body heals when you are at rest. Your body heals by replacing damaged cells with healthy new ones. And that is really important. So, if you put the right stuff into the body and you’re getting enough rest, which is when the body heals, your body is going to be good at repairing itself. It is always regenerating itself constantly and as long as you regenerate your body faster than you break it down, you’re going to go on and have a happy, healthy life.
- See a Chiropractor: Lastly, I might be biased on this one, but get your spine checked regularly. The reason that’s important is if you think about what your spine does, it is designed to give your body support, keep you upright, but it is also designed to protect your central nervous system. Your brain and your spinal cord are totally protected by your skull and the spinal column. Those bones are designed to protect your central nervous system. Unfortunately, stress, tension, poor posture, accidents, and falls can cause those bones to misalign and irritate the spinal nerves. And if your spinal nerves are irritated, it affects the way your body communicates. Running and regulating your body is a big thing for that computer that we call a brain. We want to make sure that those pathways are clear and that there is no interference to your nerve system. The better your nerve system works, the better you work.
Dr. Gregg D. Rubinstein, D.C., is a midtown Manhattan chiropractor with over 20 years of experience providing customized chiropractic treatment services to a wide range of clients in the Midtown Manhattan/West New York City area. Dr. Gregg Rubinstein and 57th Street Chiropractic can be reached at (917) 534-6484 and is located at 119 West 57th St. in New York, NY.
Click here to receive more information & to schedule your consultation.