Five cheap changes to save your life
5 cheap changes to save your life. Transmitter 42. Of the many methods available to all of us to help us improve our well-being, some cost quite a lot, some not so much, and a few cost nothing. During these trying economic times of inflation eating away our purchasing power, Kimberly Huggins again joins transmitter 42 to share 5 things we can do to begin our journey to better health without breaking the bank. As better health can lead to lower health care costs, these free tips offer superb return on the investment.
Speaker 1:Let's all welcome back Kimberly Huggins. Welcome back, Kimberly. I like cheap changes.
Speaker 2:Most people do.
Speaker 1:Let's see where that takes us in our discussion this evening. Well, I'm imagining it's smoking has got to be one of the easiest ones. And I'm sad to say that a lot of people I know still smoke. It's way lower than it used to be. But
Speaker 2:True. I would we put this one first because there's really not a lot to say about it. It's just something you need to do if you wanna be healthy. For every story that you hear out there or maybe your grandpa smoked till he was 90, smoked a pack a day till he was 90, and it didn't bother him one bit. Chances are he had something else, whatever it could be going for him in his favor.
Speaker 2:Most people, that does not go down that way. And if you're looking for something that you can do that doesn't cost you anything, quitting smoking is kind of a no brainer. You're it puts you at, a fourfold rest to have a heart attack, and that's if you don't have anything else wrong with you. So it's just kind of a no brainer however you can figure out to stop. I actually think cold turkey is the best.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was never a smoker, but the research shows that the people who quit cold turkey have the most success. Most people who try and taper off or they try and use a patch or or something to help them quit, they usually go back.
Speaker 1:I remember your father when he quit cold turkey once or twice, but I mean, when he did, we don't know about the latent damage that might still be there. But as far as the acute issues of coughing and all that, that went away within a month.
Speaker 2:Right. And and I was just getting ready to say, you really do have a lot of improvement with most of your improvement comes within the 1st year of quitting smoking. So, yeah, definitely something something to do. I however you find a way to do it, you know, you may need to taper off. You may need to go cold turkey.
Speaker 2:You know, prepare ahead of time. Find something to do to fill your time. Find something to do with your hands because there is a a muscle memory kind of thing there involved. Drink a lot of water. Whatever you need to do, you know, set up, set, make a plan because you're gonna need a plan.
Speaker 2:But yeah.
Speaker 1:It looks like the smoking cessation industry is there to help as well.
Speaker 2:Right. I mean, I think, like I said, that can be a little, you know, moneymaker type thing. But if it keeps you if it gets you to quit and keeps you from smoking, it's all good.
Speaker 1:So no more smokes.
Speaker 2:Right. No more smokes. And that'll save you lots of money.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. The taxes the way they are. Yes, sir.
Speaker 2:Right. Right.
Speaker 1:Well, we can't quite quit food, but I imagine that's got to be on the list of things to change.
Speaker 2:It it is. And, this one's gonna be quite a little bit more to say about than smoking, because it is a larger subject, and there's quite a bit of it involved. But, what you eat is more really more important to your health and your lifestyle, what you eat. And I and I I didn't coin this phrase. I picked it up somewhere, but it really is true.
Speaker 2:You can't outrun the kitchen. And what I mean when I say that is we've we've been trained for so long that we automatically think, oh, if I need to lose weight, I just need to eat less and move more. But you cannot do enough exercise. Now, maybe if you need to lose £10 and that's all you need to lose. But if you have a considerable amount of weight you would like to lose or you want to lose for whatever reason, you're not going to do it by exercising.
Speaker 2:Because which I would say there are reasons to do exercise and we'll get to that in a minute. But you can't exercise enough to undo whatever is happening to your body if you're eating poorly. Second thing about that is exercise, which is really good for you and you need to be doing it. It just, you know, depends on what kind. But it's going to make you hungry.
Speaker 2:That's just your that's how your body responds. Every human's like that. You make demands of it. You make demands of your muscles. You need more energy, so it makes you hungry.
Speaker 2:And hunger is going to win in the end. You may be able to restrict calories for a while while you exercise. You may drop 10. It may even £20. But eventually, you're gonna respond to your body wanting more sustenance.
Speaker 2:So what I'm talking about what you need to do with food is you need to pay more attention, to what you're eating. Because right now, most Americans and and this is actually a worldwide problem, but I'm I'm just gonna be speaking mostly about Americans because we live in the US, and that's what I'm gonna be mostly focusing on. But we are living in a time where the majority of the food in our food system is not real food. It's a food like substance. It's a food like product.
Speaker 2:When you pick up name, whatever, you pick up let's say, you know, Kraft macaroni and cheese. And you look what's in the ingredients on the back of that. K? That there is not a, you know, Kraft macaroni and cheese plant. It is a list of chemicals, additives.
Speaker 2:Even things to make, like, we just think about basic flour or to make pasta. Okay. Flour is a processed food. And it's nothing like the flour that our great great grandparents used, you know, a 100 years ago. So this is a really difficult, although I will will say, I mean and the reason it's on the list is because you can make this change and it won't cost you anything.
Speaker 2:Yes. You do have to buy food, but you're gonna have to buy food anyway. My point is you need to be purchasing food that helps you nutritionally. K? And that means real that means getting real one ingredient food as much as possible.
Speaker 2:One ingredient. K? So I know it's difficult for people if your life is crazy, which a lot of us in America are. It's work, work, work, work, and then get in the car, and then you gotta drive the kids to, you know, sports practice, and you gotta pick up such and such, and you gotta do this, and you gotta run here, and you gotta run there. So you just go in the drive through to McDonald's or Chick Fil A or whatever, and you pick up dinner, and that's what you do because that's American.
Speaker 2:And unfortunately, we are we have become slaves to the convenience of food. Not just in drive through, but in the grocery store because everything comes instant, ready made, stick it in the microwave for 2 minutes, stick it in the, you know
Speaker 1:Shelf life.
Speaker 2:Yes. So most of our food is not real food. It's what I call Franken food. K? And you hear a lot of talk about everything in moderation, that there's no bad foods.
Speaker 2:Okay? But if a food hurts you, then it's a bad food. So it's important and and this is something you will probably not be able to do cold turkey, like smoking. Changing your food and how your family functions with food can be a an undertaking. But it's something you've got to do if you want to get control of your health, if you want your kids to be healthy.
Speaker 2:K? And, if you are listening to this, anyone who's listening to this, and if you have children, k, I want you to understand this is it's it's it's real for a lot of different reasons, but this is truly an emergency. We have now kids are 80 to 90% of their diet right now is processed food. Okay. And that's unacceptable, not just because I say so, but it's unacceptable for their health.
Speaker 2:Because we have children now, children, 10 years old, who are type 2 diabetics. Okay? Now, type 2 diabetes, now they're call now the thing to call it is type 2. But originally, it was always adult onset diabetes. Okay?
Speaker 1:My whole life.
Speaker 2:Right. And this was something that you didn't get until you were older. K? So and this is a whole another episode, but this in and of itself, if we have 10 year olds getting type 2 diabetes, that proves it's not an adult disease. So as far as your food goes, cut out as much junk as you can.
Speaker 2:And when I say junk, you've got to read labels. Don't look at the nutrition facts. Look at the ingredients. If there is anything on there that you legit don't know what it is, you should not be eating it. Now trust me, that is a whole lot of things that are in the grocery store right now.
Speaker 2:And I didn't say it was gonna be easy. And I didn't say your family might not be happy with you. K? But
Speaker 1:Your family's health might be, though.
Speaker 2:Right. And I would also say if you have a if you have a spouse that is not down with this, k, you just do it for you. And then when they see that you feel better and you've lost some weight and you were then they might change. Now they might not. That's true too.
Speaker 2:K? But now as far as your kids, you have to be the parent. You are the gatekeeper. Whoever buys the groceries is the gatekeeper, and that's usually the woman. That's usually the mom in the house.
Speaker 2:Not trying to be sexist, but just being reality. Usually, it's the mom. Okay. You are in charge of what comes in your house. Do not go shopping with your kids if you can help it.
Speaker 2:Do not go grocery shopping with them. K. You need to be able to make the decisions without their input. K? And just because they like Little Debbie Ho Hos, you know, Pop Tarts.
Speaker 2:I mean, soda, whatever it is. You don't have to bring it in the house. And, actually, that's the easiest way for everybody. If you don't bring the unhealthy food in the house, nobody's gonna eat it.
Speaker 1:And those foods have changed since we were kids even though they were bad then, but they were even worse now, I would imagine.
Speaker 2:They are. And we haven't really talked about this before. We've touched on it. But the companies know what they're doing as far as these foods are purposely created to addict people. So they've used the same model as they did with the cigarette industry.
Speaker 2:As a matter of fact, couple of cigarette industries bought some of the major food companies, but that's a whole another show. But for those of you who maybe aren't old enough to remember, you know, when the the cigarette scandals, whatever you wanna call it, came out. And it it came out that they were purposefully putting things into cigarettes to make them more addictive to people. Because cigarettes, like, way like, cigarettes back in the day, my grandfather smoked. I mean, I I grew up in where there was a period of time where everybody smoked.
Speaker 2:Like, I mean, I would say, what, probably thirties to sixties, seventies. Everybody smoked. And I mean, there was no smoking sections. People smoked in the doctor's office, in the lobby. People smoked
Speaker 1:In restaurants, in airplanes.
Speaker 2:Right after you
Speaker 1:Even on the Hindenburg, believe it or not. You were
Speaker 2:in an airplane, people were smoking in the plane with you. You were breathing it. Everybody, you know, you couldn't get away from it, and everybody smoked.
Speaker 1:Before we go on to our, our next topic, we're gonna go segue into snacking. I have a question about grocery stores.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Used to be that you could do the perimeter of the store and be healthier and stay out of the middle of it doing your shopping. Is that still true?
Speaker 2:Pretty much. I still think you need to read labels because we have a issue now where, some some items that were okay before, they're adding stuff to them now because, you know, everything costs more. So they're cost cutting. They're trying to, you know I mean, every business runs on the bottom line. But, for instance, I'll use this as an example.
Speaker 2:So cream. You wanna go to the grocery store. And I'm I'm not talking about what people think is cream. I'm not talking about, like, Coffee Mate because that's not creamer. Even though it says Coffee Mate
Speaker 1:creamer brightener.
Speaker 2:It's a Frankenfood. So the number one ingredient in most coffee creamers, like coffee made or, I think one's called delight. I don't know. I don't know all the names. Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I've heard.
Speaker 2:But it's soybean oil.
Speaker 1:You're probably hydrogenated to get it to be a solid. Right?
Speaker 2:So, you don't want that. So and I would say that's another thing you need to think about when I when I say when I say about changing your food. Okay? You need to get away from seed oils. And and that's soybean oil, palm oil, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, canola oil.
Speaker 2:That's a huge one because we were all taught canola oil is heart healthy. Nope. All seed oils this is a whole another episode too, but all seed oils are junk oil from industrialization that they have repurposed, repackaged, marketed because they want to they want to make a buck off of everything. So it's surely a waste product. But now it's getting ahead of myself.
Speaker 2:There's so much food in our food system now. Has seed oil in it that it is difficult to get away from it. And and I'm hoping we'll see that change, but this is one of the reasons why you have to limit extremely limit your fast food consumption. I don't really eat fast food out at all. And this is coming from someone who, yes, love me some Chick Fil A back in the day.
Speaker 2:But everything is made with seed oil because it's cheap. Mhmm. Right? And it's a killer for your body because it just inflames your body because your body doesn't know what to do with it. It's actually a foreign invader as far as your body's concerned.
Speaker 1:So to round out snacking, their modern diets often tell us that we should be snacking. What is your advice about the topic of snacking?
Speaker 2:Well, snacking would be number 3 on the list, as far as something you can stop doing to change, you know, a habit you can change to impact you. So snacking is not needed. I know everybody's head probably just kinda blew up right there because we're frequently taught. I would make an exception right here if you have, low blood sugar. If you're hypoglycemic, I'm not talking to you.
Speaker 2:But everybody else in America is taught eat often. This keeps your blood sugar stable. You know, we're bombarded all the time. Every time you turn on the TV, you can't go 2 minute, 2 seconds without some food commercial being on there. And it's always snack food or fast food, something like that.
Speaker 2:But one of the problems in our society is, we're eating too much and we're eating too often. K? And humans are not meant to graze. Who grazes or what grazes? Cattle graze.
Speaker 2:Okay? And there's a reason cattle graze.
Speaker 1:Horses.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But cattle specifically. Okay. If you think of it this way, you just need to tell yourself. If weight is an issue for you, cows eat all day and cows are big.
Speaker 2:You don't need to do that because you don't wanna be big. You're eating every 2 hours. If you wanna look at it from a health point of view, every time you eat, every time you put food in your mouth, you're elevating your blood sugar. You're elevating your insulin. So you want to do that as few times as possible.
Speaker 2:Because in the long run, high blood sugar and high insulin is the root of all problems. So stop snacking. You know, you don't need to snack. You don't need to eat more than 3 times a day. And I would say most Americans probably only need to eat 2 times a day unless your I mean, your kids eat 3 times a day.
Speaker 2:But most adults, because we have a carbohydrate rich food system that we're eating too much of. So that would be the third thing. And just that kinda goes back to the food. You have to make sure then that what you're eating is what your body needs. K.
Speaker 2:Your body does your body needs nutrients. Your body doesn't need fake food. It doesn't get nutrients from fake food. If you've ever wondered why you eat and then, like, just an hour later, you're hungry again, your body is starving. You didn't give it what it needed.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, for the second time, let's move on to number 4, movement.
Speaker 2:Okay. This one this one's actually pretty simple too. You just need to move, pick whatever works for you. Walking is the simplest thing you can do. There's nothing to learn.
Speaker 2:There's no equipment. There's
Speaker 1:And we're designed to do that indefinitely almost.
Speaker 2:We are. And we're meant to move every day regularly throughout the day. So our lives are set up that we move as little as possible. K? And I would also say that everybody also thinks they're moving more than they really are.
Speaker 2:I'll use myself as an example. I got my little and I recommend you do this. Get one of these cheap little watches. It doesn't have to be the fancy, smantchy ones, like, you know, Apple or Fitbit or, you know, whatever. Because those cost a lot of money.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you wanna get that, that's fine. But there are cheaper ones that exist. And you don't even have to have one. You know what? I was saying these are cheap ways.
Speaker 2:So you don't even have to have one, but the goal is to move more than you have been. And most people think they're moving more than they are. So when I first got mine, I was like I mean, I hadn't really had any idea how often I was moving. But when I actually checked and it it turned out it was like about 1800 steps or 2,000 steps. And just for reference, we're supposed to be getting about 10,000 a day, every day, not just on the weekend.
Speaker 2:So and I mean, even if you have kids and you think you're moving all the time, you're not moving as much as you think you are. Now, if you are a nurse and you work the floor and you're constantly, you know, you're in the ER and you probably never sit down. Yeah. You're getting your steps in, but that's not all of us. And you just need to and a lot of people will say, well, I just don't have time to exercise.
Speaker 2:I'm telling you, you don't have time not to. You pay now, you pay later. That's just the way it is. And if you don't use it, you're gonna lose it.
Speaker 1:In my experience, when I've picked up walking, the first thing that is remarkably improved is blood pressure. I mean Totally. 20 points easy.
Speaker 2:Right. If you do it regular. And I will also add for any of you who are type 2, diabetics, the best thing you can do to lower your sugar is walk after you eat. And you don't have to put you don't have to walk like an hour. 15, 20 minutes after a meal in the evening is perfect.
Speaker 1:Might do that tonight. I bought a watch as well to check my steps, everyone. So I'm joining the free here with my wife.
Speaker 2:And, you know, there's other ways to track your steps. I mean, honestly, if you're gonna take your phone with you, I'm sure there's an app that tracks your I mean, I think Apple does it on the health thing that's just built in the phone. So, there's ways to do it, or just do it by time. Usually, if you and, like, if if you walk an hour, you've probably got your steps in for the day. Now maybe you can't do an hour at one time, but if you can do 20 minutes in the morning, and maybe you do 20 minutes at lunch, and maybe do 20 minutes in the evening, k, you got your time in.
Speaker 2:But you the important thing is you do it.
Speaker 1:And I guess swimmers might have an advantage as well. Although, I I know swimming is is not the same kind of exercise, but it is nonetheless movement. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, any movement is good. I I just like walking because it don't cost anything.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you're going if you're going swimming, you have to pay to get in the pool. I mean, unless you have your own lap pool in the back, most people don't.
Speaker 1:All that is money.
Speaker 2:Right. So,
Speaker 1:you know, walking is cheap.
Speaker 2:And I would even say walking, there's something special about walking because while you should be getting other exercise, like, white berry exercise is especially important, but that's a topic for another day. We're lots of times, we we're not thinking about just this movement. There's something to the movement throughout the day that we're supposed to be doing. So if you save up and try and get all your exercise like the weekend warrior on the weekend, doesn't really work.
Speaker 1:K. For our last topic, sleep.
Speaker 2:Okay. This is another topic. It's not gonna cost you anything, generally. But most of us, that live in America, our sleep is disrupted. Now your sleep can be disrupted for a lot of different things.
Speaker 2:Obviously, if you have a new baby, for all of you remember, your sleep's disrupted. Okay? And it's gonna be like that for a while, and you do the best you can till you, you know, you get to the point where the baby's sleeping. But it's really important to get on a sleep schedule that corresponds with natural daylight. K.
Speaker 2:Now I get if you have to work nights, I'm not talking to you right now except try and get off nights as soon as you can for a whole another host of I know a lot of people who work nights love it. A lot of people who work nights get paid extra or there's perks to working at nights. But the statistics show, sorry to burst everyone's bubble, you don't live as long if you work nights. And you have a high risk of getting cancer and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. So moving back to the topic is that our sleep is frequently disrupted because we have lights on all the time.
Speaker 2:We have the wrong kind of lights on all the time. You need to move away from blue light. It does matter the kind of lights you have in your house. It matters to the animals outside, actually. There's some research out now that if you have blue lights in your house is that what it's called?
Speaker 2:Blue lights, cool light, white light, whatever you wanna call it, people are more at risk of AFib from that. And they have tracked us in animals. So when you see the white lights outside on people's houses or or wherever, the animals are suffering from that. The animals legit get AFib.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think these lights are classified as daylight color. I think it's the versus soft white, which is really yellow.
Speaker 2:Right. So, you know, you need to you you the best thing you can really do to help that, help your sleep, is expose yourself to sunlight in the morning. Now I know a lot of peep a lot of people are saying, well, I'm up at 5 o'clock, and, you know, so I I'm doing okay. You've got to have the sunlight. Right?
Speaker 2:So get your sunlight. It's important for your vitamin D, and it's important for your sleep as well.
Speaker 1:Doing great. Thank you very much, Kimberly. I hope these 5 inexpensive, cheap steps will help people get on the bandwagon to improve their own health and do it quick because society is not helping us at the moment. Thank you to the Transmitter 42 listeners here on WBCQ and our podcast website. Archives of this broadcast are available on our website at t42.am.
Speaker 1:If you have a comment about this episode, please send an email to radio show at t42.am or mail a note to Transmuter 42 PO Box 100 Remington, Virginia 22734. Thanks for listening. Join us again. Transmedritive 42.
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