10K Minutes of Health and Wellness Education

I am often asked, how does one adopt a healthy lifestyle. How many times must I work out? What is the proper diet? How do I take better control of my health? These are question that we all have asked ourselves. Yet we continue to struggle and our health is declining from lack of knowledge. Consider this, we live 525,600 minutes a year, we spend less than 40 minutes a year (4 (10) minutes visit a year) with a primary physician and we expect our health to improve. There are 1,440 minutes in a twenty-four hour period. We sleep, eat, work and play within those 1,440 minutes. But we don't educate ourselves on being healthy.

We all accept the truth that education improves lives. We must also accept the truth that health and wellness education improves health. Health and wellness education is the foundation towards adopting a healthy lifestyle. Let me give you my personal example, ten years ago I was diagnosed with diabetes. What I knew about diabetes could fit in a single paragraph and what I knew about living healthy was a sentence. I knew that if I wanted to live long and free from complications I would need to educate myself on what "healthy living" really means. And over the past ten years I have continued to educate myself, becoming a health expert on Tim Anderson's health.

I am not an expert on health, but an expert on my own health. I understand how my body functions, I understand how food both heals and harms my body. I understand the benefits of exercise, the type, the duration and how my body's response creates an overall feeling of well being. I read about living healthy, I attend programs like cooking demonstrations, I read about diabetes involving medication, diet and exercise. I don't profess to have all the answers, but I do believe that educating myself has prevented me from experiencing serious complications from diabetes. This health and wellness education foundation has formed the basis for me adopting a health lifestyle.

I am urging you today to allocate 10k minutes per year for health and wellness education. It is less than two percent of your total minutes per year. And it will improve the quality of your total minutes of your life. Make that investment of 10k minutes per year, it breaks down to less than 1/2 each day.

Here's how you get started:

Read, Read, Read! Buy a book about eating healthy or exercise or disease management!
Attend health and wellness programs.
Attend health support groups or start one.
Read food labels when purchasing food.
If you take medication read the affects of the medication's pros and cons.
Have a list of questions for your doctor on your next appointment.
Investigate alternative medicine for health and wellness.
Track your 10k minutes

Should you begin these simple steps in educating yourself, you will be on your way improving your health. Health and wellness education in combination with physical activity and proper diet support the adoption of a healthy lifestyle.

Write back and tell me what you will do with your 10k health and wellness education minutes.