Top Health Tips for 2010

The secret to living a healthy life starts with a healthy mind. Our experts give you the best health advice for 2010.

By SOBeFiT Staff; Illustration by Sean Freeman

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JOSEPH ZUCKERMAN, MD
Professor and chairman of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center
   
1. The best habit to adopt is daily exercise. But don’t perform the same exercise every day. Have three or four different regimens, and rotate through them.
    
2. The simple act of taking a daily “baby” aspirin (81 mg) can decrease the chance of heart attack, stroke and other serious health problems in higher-risk patients. But always check with your doctor.
    
3. The key is to achieve balance between work and your personal life, because when all is said and done, your legacy is your family and the people you love.
    
4. Get a physical in 2010! And those who have had regular checkups should not stop!


PASCAL GOLDSCHMIDT, MD
Dean of University of Miami Miller School of Medicine

5. Happiness is the least known health tip. It’s not that unhappy people will always live shorter lives. But when an individual has a happy life that is well balanced with family, love, a great career and interesting hobbies, they will live longer.
    
6. My best advice: Restrict your calories. You can make up all the stories you want about different diets, but the only thing that truly counts is how many calories you eat a day.


JAMES BECKERMAN, MD
Cardiologist and WebMD resident cardiology expert
    
7. Wellness is a verb. Think of health not as a target, but as a journey that has no end.
    
8. Avoid smoking. That’s something we all know about and give lip service to, but it’s just truly devastating what smoking can do to people, and yet amazing what quitting smoking can do to people.


PAMELA PEEKE, MD
Author, spokesperson, professor, and nutrition and fitness correspondent for Discovery Health Channel
    
9. Laugh a lot—why? It will put you in the right mood to not take life so seriously. We spent years studying cortisol, and when you laugh stress hormones plummet.

10. Have a rich social life.
    
11. Take a mini-chill. Hubert Benson, founder of Harvard’s Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, taught me to incorporate mini meditations throughout the day. It allows the mind and body to have a moment to just turn it off.
    
12. Avoid toxic stress—meaning any stress with feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and defeat.
    
13. Use your head. The secret to living a healthy life starts with a healthy mind that must be maintained throughout your life. It’s gotta be worked.

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