How to Practice Healthy Habits

The U.S. spent close to $3 trillion on health care in 2012, according to the National Health Expenditure Account. This is over 18 percent of the gross domestic product, and the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, predicts it will grow to 25 percent by 2025. By 2082, the CBO says half of all money generated in the U.S. will be spent on health services.

But there is something that can be done. The American Medical Association reports that 75 percent of all health care costs are used to treat preventable chronic conditions. This makes striving for health a matter of personal and community responsibility.

Step 1

Adopt one new healthy habit at a time by breaking a major health goal into steps. For example, there are five parts to the process of creating a healthy body mass index, or BMI, for life -- a wise goal for the 72 percent of Americans who are overweight or obese: getting seven hours of sleep each night; calculating your target number of calories; investing those calories in healthy, nutrient-dense foods; walking 10,000 steps, or 5 miles, daily; and integrating more movement into all parts of your life. Each one of these is a separate habit, and it takes three to four weeks to make a new behavior a natural part of your life.

Step 2

Frame your goal in a positive way. Change is more effective when you are moving toward what you want rather than away from something you fear. For example, you're much more likely to brush and floss daily because you want to attain a beautiful smile than you are to do the same action to prevent gingivitis and the heart disease that it causes. In the same way, don't try to lose weight -- rather, aim to recreate a svelte, lean, body with a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9.

Step 3

Write down your goal in very specific terms. Imagine mountain climbing without knowing where the summit is; there would be no place to stop at the top and celebrate your achievement. The same is true of health goals. For instance, determine the weight you want to achieve and when, at a safe weight loss rate of one pound a week. Visual people might find that it helps to have a picture that symbolizes your healthy goal posted where it can be seen throughout the day.

Step 4

Immerse yourself in planning for goal achievement as a way of optimizing the results you'll attain. According to Dr. David Krueger, psychiatrist and professor of health coaching, the more you take control of designing your own strategies for reaching a goal, the more likely you are to succeed. Rather than joining a diet group, in which others have done the work of planning for you, research nutrition using sources you trust and create an eating plan that you can live with for life.

Step 5

Try using a coach. Professional health coaches work with clients to facilitate health goal achievement . Having a certified health coach provides you with a source of sound medical knowledge who will help you set attainable goals and serve as an accountability partner in a relaxed, nonclinical way. And that's good for the economy too. A study of 174,120 insured Americans, published in the September 23, 2010, issue of the "New England Journal of Medicine," concluded that health coaching provided a 10.1 percent reduction in annual hospital admissions. The participants, who used the services of a health coach in short, phone-based sessions, averaged 3.6 percent lower total annual health care costs than those who did not utilize this service, making engaging a coach a fiscally prudent health strategy.

Too little sleep, and too much, affect memory

When it comes to memory, sleep is a Goldilocks issue: both too much and too little aren’t good. Aim for “just right,” says a new report from the Harvard-based Nurses’ Health Study.

“Our findings suggest that getting an ‘average’ amount of sleep, seven hours per day, may help maintain memory in later life and that clinical interventions based on sleep therapy should be examined for the prevention of [mental] impairment,” said study leader Elizabeth Devore, an instructor in medicine at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, in a news release.

A group of women taking part in the Nurses’ Health Study were asked about their sleep habits in 1986 and 2000, and were interviewed about memory and thinking skills three times over a later six-year period. Devore and her colleagues observed worse performance on brain testing among women who slept five hours or fewer per night or nine hours or more, compared with those getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night. Their findings were published online in theJournal of the American Geriatrics Society.

The researchers estimated that undersleepers and oversleepers were mentally two years older than the women who got seven to eight hours of shut-eye a night.

Beyond memory

Although this study couldn’t prove that getting too little or too much sleep causes memory and thinking problems, it’s in line with other work showing the potentially harmful effects of poor sleep. Previous research has linked poor sleep with higher risks of heart disease and stroke, type 2 diabetes, and depression.

How might sleep affect memory? People who are persistently sleep deprived are more likely to have high blood pressure, diabetes, and narrowed blood vessels. Each of these can decrease blood flow inside the brain. Brain cells need a lot of oxygen and sugar, so blood flow problems could affect their ability to work properly.

Poor sleep could affect the brain in another way. Sleep-deprived mice develop more deposits of a protein called beta amyloid in the brain compared with mice allowed to sleep normally. In humans, beta amyloid deposits in the brain are linked to declines in memory and thinking and also increase the risk of dementia.

What about people who sleep too much? People who spend more than nine or 10 hours a night in bed often have poor sleep quality. So for both too little and too much sleep, the important number may be the hours of quality sleep.

Another possibility is a two-way street between sleep and memory: sleep quality may affect memory and thinking, and the brain changes that cause memory and thinking problems may disturb sleep.

Getting better sleep

Here are 12 tips for getting better sleep:

• Establish a regular bedtime and a relaxing bedtime routine—examples might include taking a warm bath or listening to soothing music.
• Use your bed only for sleeping or lovemaking. Avoid reading and watching television in bed.
• If you can’t fall asleep after 15 to 20 minutes, get out of bed and go into another room. Do something relaxing, such as reading quietly with a dim light. Don’t watch television or use a computer, since the light from their screens has an arousing effect. When you feel sleepy, get back into bed. Don’t delay your scheduled wake-up time to make up for lost sleep.
• Get plenty of exercise. Build up to 45 minutes of moderate exercise nearly every day. Get your exercise early in the day. Try some easy stretching exercises or yoga to relax your muscles and your mind at bedtime.
• Whenever possible, schedule stressful or demanding tasks early in the day and less challenging activities later. This helps you wind down at the end of your day.
• Don’t go to bed hungry, but don’t eat a big meal right before getting into bed. If you want a bedtime snack, keep it bland and light.
• Limit caffeine and consume none after 2 p.m.
• To decrease middle-of-the-night urination, don’t drink any fluids after dinner.
• Avoid alcohol after dinnertime. Although many people think of it as a sedative, it can get in the way of quality sleep.
• Be sure your bed is comfortable and your bedroom is dark and quiet. Consider a sleep mask or earplugs.
• Don’t take long naps during the day. If you need a nap, restrict it to 20 to 30 minutes in the early afternoon.
• Practice relaxation breathing. Use slow breaths, especially when you exhale.