It’s simple: The healthier you are, the better you feel and the more you accomplish in all areas of your life, including your freelance writing.
If you’re sick, you obviously don’t feel well and you won’t get much done, writing or otherwise.
Avoiding Communicable Diseases
For starters, minimize your risk of catching communicable illnesses. These include colds and the flu, and also intestinal and other diseases, that are transmitted by others. Viruses are most commonly transmitted through the air and also from touching surfaces that contain infected bodily fluids. Other communicable diseases such as many intestinal ailments are transmitted primarily through contaminated water and food.
Here are 8 tips for avoiding communicable diseases:
1. Wash your hands frequently, especially after shaking hands, touching surfaces such as door knobs and other items often touched by others, preparing food, being around sick people, or any time after you’ve touched something icky.
2. Minimize the amount of time you are in close proximity to people who have colds or the flu. You can catch these just by breathing in airborne viruses.
3. Get flu shots every year, as early as possible. They are quite safe, although a small minority can have a reaction that is similar to the flu. I’ve gotten flu shots just about every year since the mid-1990s and I haven’t had the flu since.
4. If you get a cold or the flu, do the world a favor: stay home and minimize contact with everyone, including household members. Always sneeze or cough into the crook of your elbow or into a handkerchief. Basically, keep your saliva and snot away from others as best as you can.
5. Drink water that has been adequately filtered or treated to remove or kill pathogens.
6. Eat fruits and vegetables that have been thoroughly washed with clean water.
7. If you eat meat, be sure it has been properly processed, stored, and cooked.
8. Make sure that all the other foods and drinks you ingest have been handled and stored properly.
Avoid Major Diseases
Do what you can to avoid the biggy diseases that can really get you down, and even kill you. Here are the major diseases that kill people in the West and how you can decrease the chances you’ll get them:
Heart disease. Eat a heart-healthy diet, minimize stress, and get regular and moderate exercise.
Cancer. Eat a good diet rich in vegetables and whole grains. Minimize exposure to cancer-causing chemicals.
Lung problems. Don’t smoke. Do everything you can to breathe air that’s as pure as possible. Exercise regularly.
Note: For all health issues, you should get advice from your doctor. You should also get regular check-ups. I get a physical on a nearly annual basis.
Stay Healthy
Here are 8 general points on staying healthy:
- Eat the right foods in the right quantities.
- Maintain your proper weight.
- Drink lots of water.
- Exercise in moderate amounts.
- Enjoy loving relationships.
- Relax.
- Minimize stress.
- Read books by qualified professionals on the latest research related to all of these, and apply what you learn.
No One Has Perfect Health…
Including me. The point is to do the best you can and keep improving. And if you have a serious health issue, follow your doctor’s advice on the best ways to treat it and stay as active as possible.
Your Take
How does your health impact your writing — and other areas of your life? What are you doing, or what will you start doing now, to improve your health?
John, this post is so true! I was plagued with food allergies for well over a year and my productivity suffered greatly. Excessive napping and fatigue kept me from reaching my goals.
Now I make living healthy a priority and doing so has helped my writing business. I’ve resumed my running routine without feeling guilty that I am not at my desk.
I’ve implented a stress reduction program. Stress led to the worsening of my allergies and leads to a host of other diseases, including heart disease and diabetes.
I eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables and take supplements. And if I miss any of these for a few days, I notice the difference in fatigue and generally feeling unwell almost immediately.
This is an important topic and I was glad to see your post on it!
Mandy, I’m very happy to hear that making positive changes in your health habits has improved your productivity.
Reducing stress is a biggie, and it’s one of my top priorities. A key part for me is getting enough sleep. When I’m well rested I can handle life’s challenges much better.
The way to stay healthy is to have a healthy immune system. There are three things we can do to have a healthy immune system:
1) Eat good, nutritious food
2) Get plenty of sleep (8 to 10 hours)
3) Get moderate exercise
That’s it! All else is waste of money and time.
We can’t avoid everyone to keep from catching a virus. Flu and cold viruses are everywhere, in quantity and variety. We need exposure to viruses to develop natural, long-lasting immunities. Flu vaccines only produce antibodies to specific viruses. One can be vaccinated for a virus and catch the next one to come along. I have never had a flu vaccine and I haven’t had the flu since I was in high school in the 60s.
Eat real food, not food products. Real food, the kind your grandmother served, is absorbed more readily into your body than processed foods. Real food has no additives, hormones, antibiotics or empty calories. Avoid sugar and carbonated drinks. Processed sugar is empty calories, that rots your teeth, especially in the acidic environment of carbonated drinks. If that stuff on your plate comes from a box and has more than three ingredients you can’t pronounce, don’t put it in your body!
It is natural for your body to be healthy. Don’t do things to make it unhealthy.
I overall eat a very healthy diet, with occasional minor lapses. We cook most of our meals at home with fresh veggies and whole grains, mostly organic.
I avoid almost all sucrose, but I do put a teaspoon of sugar in my morning cup of half-caf.
Hey, I do half-caff, too! I find I get too jittery with pure-caff. And, yeah, sweetener is a must on that for me, too. I just put in 2 tiny scoops of stevia and although it doesn’t taste as good as with sugar or honey, it gets the job done, which is to give me a bit of energy to get work done on days when I’m particularly tired.
I’m actually gradually switching to quarter-caf.
I also drink a cup of tea in the afternoon, a habit a started a couple of months ago to replace afternoon coffee. I drink tea black with no sugar.
I may eventually switch to black unsweetened tea in the morning, and then I’ll be completely done with coffee.
Hi John! I started writing a reply, but it got so long, I just turned it into a full-blown entry on my own blog. 🙂 The gist of it is that eliminating sugar from my diet has made a huge improvement in my health and I rarely get sick anymore.
Here’s the blog entry you’ve inspired:
http://holy-sheepdip.blogspot.ca/2012/10/since-i-quit-sugar-i-am-healthier.html
I’m glad my post inspired you to write your own post. That’s happened to me before too. I started writing a comment that was so long that I decided to put it on my own blog instead.
As I said to Michael above, I avoid most sugar. Besides the problem of the quick absorption of table sugar (sucrose) and related quickly metabolized simple sugars, they often come in foods that have many other unhealthy ingredients, like white flour, saturated fats, food colorings, etc.
Being healthy has made a huge difference in my life. Stress was killing me, and in fact, was what pushed me (finally) into freelancing.
I walk 5-6 miles every day, unless weather absolutely prevents it. Then I use my cardio DVD. I prefer walking. 🙂
Great tips, John.
Exercise is my prime way to relieve stress.
I exercise between one and three hours a day. I do 15 minutes of yoga in the morning, and then anywhere from 30 to 120 minutes of tai chi. I also lift weights 2-3 times per week and hike and walk frequently.
I don’t know if there’s a YMCA in your town, but I joined the one here in Ashland, Oregon. It’s especially great on those rainy days.
I was reading along, nodding wisely, and then I got to the advice to wash your hands after touching “anything icky” and I cracked up. That’s about what I do, and I define all kinds of things as icky, like the handles of shopping carts. When I get home from shopping I can’t wait to wash my hands.
The sugar thing is the biggest struggle for me. I feel better when I eat less, and yet I keep eating too much. Arg.
When I finish working out at the Y I wash my hands before I leave. I also do the same when I eat or shop at my local co-op.
And sugar is a tough one for many of us. I find I just feel better when I don’t eat it.
I’d been clear off sugar for maybe 6 months until Sunday… when I had some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had at a farmer’s market with my son, daughter in law and younger grand kids… everyone enjoyed watching nanna get high as a kite, well almost. And I was surprised at just how high I got behind sugar!
Anne, I find that I occasionally go off the sugar wagon, and summer time is the biggest temptation, primarily because of cold ice cream on a hot summer evening.
Mark Sasson (sp?) of Mark’s Daily Apple says 80% is probably good enough…
Hi John,
I like your synopsis of how to stay healthy, however I have to agree with many of the points Michael A. Lewis made above. “Catching” any bacteria or virus is only a concern when your immunity is low. If your body is healthy a strong person will not be susceptible to disease. This is a proven fact.
However, what goes with this statement is the universally accepted rule that if one is in close proximity to a sick person, then automatically you will get sick. Because this belief is accepted by most people, it becomes a somewhat self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you really want to delve down deep, one could say that physical illness and disease only manifests after a mental or emotional imbalance. There is a lot to know about physical diseases than just the chemical make-up of cells, bacteria, viruses, etc. It has to do with energy and the overall holistic view of our health energy balance.
To improve my writing I try and stay motivated with a positive outlook on what I hope to achieve in small goals for the week. I find that this keeps me moving steadily forward.
Hi John,
Unfortunately, I’m a walking/talking flu magnet. I try the usual on a regular basis: eating lots of fruit and vegetables (well-washed), exercise, stay away when I have the cold or others have it…I even try to stay as motivated and happy as possible.
But I’m one of those people who gets the flu after the flu shot, and no shot has prevented me from getting other colds. While colds aren’t the worst health problem, they definitely decrease productivity. Frankly, I’m thinking about moving to a warmer, more stable climate with less people in it. That has to protect me a bit more.: )
Pinar, I have two suggestions:
1. Wash your hands frequently during cold/flu season and be sure you don’t touch your mouth or nose much.
2. Make sure you get enough sleep. A tired body is more susceptible to infections.
Hi John! Been a long time. =)
I can definitely get behind you on health impacting one’s writing. I have gluten sensitivities, and if I’m exposed even to cross-contamination in my food, I am sick for days. I’m very studious about washing my hands often, but stop just short of OCD. I’m teaching my daughter to wash her hands, and she asks all the time now, which is great!
I had purchased a juicer back in the spring and try to make our own juice daily. That, and drinking about 100 oz of water a day, has done a lot for my health. I feel more alert and have more energy to tackle my projects at night after I’ve put the munchkin down for bed. When I’m sick, or if I start to feel run-down and slack on some of my healthy habits, I definitely feel it. Very little, if any, writing gets done.
Cheers!
Glad you’re back Delena!
I rarely get sick, but when I do it definitely means I get little writing done.
I like the idea of juicing, but I rarely do it now. I did it frequently in the 1990s when I lived in Chico, California and could easily grow a huge garden. (I miss those tomatoes.)
Health is wealth. Especially bloggers and freelance writers should take utmost care, since all of the income is really based on their health and also since they’re the ones who spend most of the time sitting in front of a computer.
Eating a balanced diet, working out regularly and staying safe from flu-like (annoying) diseases should be a regular routine of our life.
“Health is wealth.” I totally agree Jane.
Nobody pays a freelancer writer when she’s sick.