Guest Post: Getting Your Family on a Green Path to Health and Wellness

February 28, 2012 by Brenda
Filed under Guest Posts, Health, Nutrition & Beauty, Top Picks

Healthcare is something that many families are concerned with these days. With the costs of medical care and prescription medications skyrocketing and fatal illnesses like cancer and heart disease on the rise you are likely looking for ways to ensure the health and well-being of your own brood. And you’re in luck because there are all kinds of ways that you can see to the needs of your family through nutrition, exercise, and greener living. Here are just a few ways that taking the road less traveled can be a step in the right direction for your own health and that of your family (while also reducing your carbon footprint). As it turns out, eco-friendly living can benefit you as well as the environment.

The first thing you’ll want to address is nutrition. The items you ingest probably have the biggest impact on both your health and your day-to-day wellness. In truth, adopting a green diet is both easy and beneficial. You can start by checking out a basic food pyramid to see what you should be eating each day (and keep in mind that nutritional needs can differ between children, adults, pregnant women, and those with any special dietary needs).

You will observe that just about every food pyramid contains daily serving recommendations for meats, dairy (or other animal products), whole grains, fruits and veggies, and a very small amount of fats and sugars (generally of the healthy variety). It is noteworthy that nowhere on the food pyramid will you find suggestions for servings of processed foods. This is because they’re bad for you. Try to eat as much natural food as possible for optimum health and wellness. Of course, this is great for your body but that doesn’t necessarily make it green. So in addition to choosing natural options you should also seek organic products. You don’t really want all of those chemicals fouling up your food and storing in your fat supply anyway.

Exercise is the next step and it’s easy to go green here. All you have to do is avoid gyms (which guzzle electricity night and day), electrically-powered machinery, and workouts that require the use of electronics (videos and video games, for example). Instead, get moving out of doors by walking, jogging, hiking, biking, swimming, and playing sports. As a bonus, you can work some of these activities into your daily routine while simultaneously cutting out heavy polluters like driving. Ride your bike to work and have the kids walk to school to cut down on the amount of greenhouse gases you’re emitting each day; this will improve the health of your family both physically and by making the air you breathe a little cleaner.

Finally, consider how making your household greener can aid to your efforts on behalf of your family’s health and wellness. You don’t need to look into mha degree programs to know that removing toxins from your home (chemical cleaners and beauty products, bug sprays and fertilizers, and so on) is good for your health. So research ways to make your entire home environmentally sound and you’ll see that your efforts result in a healthier, happier family (and planet).