Combat the Rising Cost of Healthcare with Sleep

This is part 3 in the three-part series: Combatting the Rising Cost of Healthcare.

In the last post I shed light on how exercise provides long-term financial payback. I also explained the economics of a healthy diet.

Getting sleep is the third way to protect our health, and protect our financial future from the rising cost of healthcare.  It's free. If we get enough of it regularly, it can help prevent weight gain, improve our brain function, and lower our risk for illness and disease.

Getting enough sleep is imperative to maintaining a healthy weight.  It also aids in losing weight. When we don’t get enough sleep our body makes more of the hormone grhrelin, (activates hunger pangs), and less of the hormone leptin (reduces hunger pangs). Without enough sleep that hormone imbalance makes us hungry!  In response, we usually look for a quick energy fix like sugar or caffeine or both. This cycle of lack of sleep, hunger, and eating more sugar and caffeine contribute to our risk of obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, and puts a kink in our weight loss plans.  

While sleeping, our stress hormones go down and our repair systems go up.  Long-term exposure to stress hormones puts a damper on our immune system and increases our risk for diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and alzheimers'.  When we get the appropriate amount of rest, our body gets the time to take stress hormones out of circulation and put those involved in renewal and repair into play. 

Deep sleep brings a fountain of youth. During deep sleep our body releases growth hormone. This little gem helps us to recover from our workouts, our hard days at work, and the stress we endured through the day. It's the reason for glowing skin, shiny hair, toned muscles, and a sharp mind. We’ve got to give that hormone time to do it’s work, and during deep sleep is when it works best. It's not an old wives' tale, there's a reason for the term "beauty sleep".

Speaking of mental sharpness, a lack of sleep can bring on mental deficits like poor memory, reduced reaction times and lower levels of motivation. It can also worsen anxiety and depression. 

In light of rising healthcare costs in the US, and the fact that an answer to the problem isn't around the corner, we need to take our health into our own hands. When we don’t take steps towards prevention we end up paying for it in the form of more health expenses and higher healthcare prices. Not to mention our energy and well-being is compromised.

Exercise, healthy eating and getting enough rest are three, very simple prevention measures we can take advantage of, and they're free. Improving habits in these areas will improve our health now and ensure a future filled with many more years of life and vitality.

Creating healthy habits in these three areas can seem like an easy, basic task, but many people don’t know where to start. If this is you, you're not alone. 

Most people don't have the time to invest in learning how to make these changes on their own, or the money to hire a professional for personal guidance. This is why I created MindBodyBlast. It's a 6-week course online, where I help a small group of students take small steps towards healthier food choices and exercising on their own. It adds up to a a big step towards greater health and fitness by the end. Participants not only get healthier, but they get educated in the basics of being healthy for the long run. It's a small group format so the price is incredibly low for the amount of individual attention, education and guidance participants get from me. If you're interested, come on over and take a look.

My next class starts May 26th . Whether you choose to join class or not, I will still be here to help. This blog is where I give out reasonable fitness and health guidance for the average, busy person. Follow along and you can learn a lot- and get healthier too!  

Have a special topic you'd like me to address? Ask me here.

Combatting the Rising Cost of Healthcare: Why it Makes Financial Sense to Exercise and Eat Healthy foods

This is the second in a three-part series about how you can protect your financial future from the rising costs of healthcare while at the same time improving and protecting your health for little to no financial investment.

In my last post I described how some very simple, even short bouts of regular exercise can have a profound, positive effect on your health.  Exercise is free, and produces better health now, which means we will spend less on doctors' visits and medications now.  For that same reason, it provides a big financial payback in the long run.

How does exercise provide long term financial payback? 

Every economist will tell you the money you have now is worth more than that same amount of money in the future. You can buy more with it now than you can later because the value of money depreciates. The longer you put off having to pay for any type of healthcare due to illness, the more money you get to keep for yourself and invest into something else of value that will last into the future.

You could even use some of the savings to learn from a professional how to eat better, how to exercise, how to dance, swim, meditate, or any other activity that will improve the quality of your life, help you to remain self-sufficient, independent, and happy for the long run.

If you're currently dealing with a health issue, you can still save money with exercise.  Exercise can the amount of medication you need and cut down your visits to the doctor.  I’ve seen diabetics reduce the amount of insulin they need after establishing a regular exercise program.  I’ve seen people on blood pressure and depression medications reduce or completely eliminate the amount of medications they have to take because of exercise.  I've watched people reduce the incidents of headaches, wipe out neck and back pain, and eliminate the need to see specialists because of a well-rounded workout program.

Healthy eating reduces risk and effects of disease just like exercise does.  Eating healthy includes consuming an abundance of fruits and vegetables, reducing your exposure to processed foods, eating whole grains when you do eat them, and choosing dairy and meats from animals that are treated well (humane), fed well (organic), and hormone free.

Eating in this way increases consumption of vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and antioxidants and reduces exposure to harmful chemicals.  This in turn decreases your risk for a number of cancers, heart disease, stroke, alzheimers’ disease, diabetes and many other debilitating illnesses.  It improves the health of your immune system, brain, eyes, heart, lungs, blood and skin, and all other functioning organs.

It's a common misconception that we have to spend more money to eat healthier.  One of the most effective ways to eat healthier is to make more meals at home.  When you make your own meals you are in control of the quality and types of ingredients going into our food.  Here you have a choice as to the quality of protein, the types of oils, the freshness of the plants, the amount and types of chemicals, and how much processing your food goes through.

Not only is it healthier, but eating at home puts money back into your pocket.  When comparing a good meal eaten out to a good meal eaten at home, eating at home is always cheaper.  On the other hand if you’re comparing a cheap, fast food meal eaten out to a more expensive but healthier meal made at home, the cost savings is still significant in the long run because of the long-term health effects I mention above.

In the interim, you’ll benefit from feeling better, looking better, sleeping better, and performing better in life when you eat better, which is something you can't put a price tag on.

Don't want to spend too much time in the kitchen? You don't have to. There are plenty of fast, easy healthy ways to cook.  I post regular articles on cooking healthy, delicious and fast here.

Stay tuned.  Tomorrow I'll be back to share about how sleep, also free, fits into the picture of combatting the rising cost of healthcare.

Combatting the Rising cost of Healthcare and Keeping more of Your Money for Yourself

Health insurance premiums are rising, and health care costs are rising as well. Small businesses are struggling to pay health insurance for their employees and the rising costs becomes detrimental to their growth. Those who are self-insured are also watching their premiums go up. It doesn’t matter if you’re healthy or not, everyone is watching these costs go up, and having insurance isn’t a guarantee that you'll get much relief if you have to have serious treatment of any kind.

This isn't the first time we're being disappointed by the healthcare system, and it won't be the last.  I remember my grandfather talking about his disappointment in the system and saying “Just don’t get sick”.  I felt like it was an over-simplistic thing to say, but now I realize it’s one of the most realistic answers we have right now.

About a month ago Time Magazine published an article “The Bitter Pill” exposing how much healthcare can cost even when health insurance is involved. The article focused on a couple seeking treatment for the husband’s cancer. The author went through their hospital bills with a fine-toothed comb and found many items were repeatedly overcharged by thousands of dollars, to include aspirin that cost $100 per pill. It left most readers scared, wondering how they'd survive financially if they were to get seriously ill.

There is something you can do to protect yourself from the rising cost of healthcare. If you’re not already in a state of chronic disease, you’re in a position where you can significantly protect yourself and your money.  If you're already afflicted with health issues, you can drastically decrease your need for medications and lower the amount you spend on healthcare.

In fact, there are three, very easy, very accessible steps we can take to improve and protect our health and also protect our bank account from rising healthcare costs.  Not only will these 3 items help us to save money, but they will also provide us with significant financial payback now and in the long run.

It's going to knock your socks off when I tell you what these seriously effective steps are because they're already a part of your life (or easily can be), and they're free: 

• Regular exercise
• Healthier eating 
• Regular Sleep

Reading those three little bullets may have caused you to yawn and pre-emptively get bored with the rest of the article.  But I'm going to ask you to indulge me here and read on for just a few more seconds before clicking off the page because you mind find something useful. 

First, allow me to wow you with the health and financial benefits of exercise.  Exercise can be done with little to no financial investment.  In fact, you can start walking in the shoes and clothes you already have.  And research is showing that you don't even have to break a sweat to start getting the benefits.

Did you know that 5 minutes of brisk walking has been shown to significantly improve your mood? Regular walking and regular exercise can reduce depression.

Ten minutes of brisk walking has been shown to reduce blood pressure and keep it down for 9 hours. Walking 2x per day for 10 minutes would give many people a lower blood pressure reading over all.

Regular strength training can make us more insulin sensitive. Meaning, insulin resistance (pre-diabetes) can be reduced or eliminated with regular strength training.  Muscle has receptors for insulin so by increasing our muscle mass we create more insulin receptors and gain a greater ability to absorb sugar from the blood into tissue other than fat.  You don't have to get crazy, you just have to do a few simple strength exercises to cover the total body 2-3x per week and it can really change your body on the inside and out.

Cardiovascular exercise done for just 30 minutes 5x per week or 20 minutes daily will drastically decrease your risk for heart attack, stroke, alzheimers, cancer, diabetes, and more. This type of exercise can be anything from walking or running to playing basketball, swimming or dancing. It just needs to be an activity that makes you breathe heavier and increases your heart rate a bit  - yet be comfortable enough to do for 20- 30 minutes at a time.

All of these benefits of exercise can be attained with little to no financial investment.  By drastically reducing our risk for disease and illness, and the amount of time we spend at a hospital, a doctors' office, or a nursing home, we get to keep more of our own money and do other things with it.  That's just the tip of the iceburg on how exercise reduces our financial risk.  Come back tomorrow and I'll tell you about the other financial benefits that exercise brings and how eating right can do the same. 

How to Succeed in a Workout Program: Tip #3

If you're wanting to lose weight, run a marathon, or accomplish anything else that you're proud of this is an important thing to know if you want to succeed.  So many people forget this little step when they're planning for their big success and it leads to a big failure!


This is a discussion I led for a corporation a little while ago involving weight loss, success in fitness, and long-term health.  If you'd like me to speak to your group or organization let me know by connecting with me at Luci@luciFit.com

How to Succeed in a Workout Program: Tip #2

Unrealistic expectations are one of the biggest reasons people fail after starting a healthy diet and exercise plan.

I share a few realistic expectations in the video above.

What does it take to lose those last 5 lbs?  Watch for it!