How can a healthy diet help you to live longer and stronger?

A healthy diet not only impacts the longevity of your life but also it’s standard. Selecting healthy foods and eating nutritionally helps avert chronic disease such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases among others, hence enhancing your lifespan. Also, limiting your calorie intake may lead to a longer life.

Here is how eating healthy expands your life span and makes you stronger:

1. Averts cardiovascular diseases

Cardiovascular diseases include heart failure, stroke, and arterial diseases. The risk factors that contribute to these diseases include high cholesterol, high blood pressure, being obese or overweight and diabetes. Each individual risk factor directly relates to your diet. One can prevent obesity and high cholesterol by limiting their calorie and fat intake, and diabetes can be managed by minimizing refined grains.

Each of these factors is affected by the person’s diet, hence keeping your diet in check helps reduce premature death from such cardiovascular diseases.

2. Reduce cancer risk

It estimates that roughly half a million Americans succumb to cancer each year. Having a healthy diet can prevent an individual from acquiring cancer. Focusing on plant-based foods such as whole grains, vegetables and fruits can help do just that. Other than increasing your veggie intake in your diet, also limit calorie intake to prevent gaining excess weight. Also, opt for freshly prepared foods as opposed to canned or processed foods which contain chemicals and preservatives.

3. Procrastinates aging

Aging is a life cycle everyone must undergo. However, the tendency of the years you get to live can be determined by what you eat. There is one aging theory that relates to calorie intake; quoting from the book “Physical Dimensions of Aging,” restricting your calorie intake may slow the rate of aging. For this diet to be successful, one should minimize their calorie intake from the normal consumption to two-thirds, but also must still supply the body with all the nutrients, minerals and necessary vitamins it requires.

When the body consumes all the vital nutrients, it devotes itself to sustain your body’s functionality resulting in the reduced aging process and elevated life expectancy.

4. Bone health

Your bones are usually the strongest when you are young, but it grows weaker as one age. This is why you’ll find that you used to heal faster from an injury when you were young, but not that you’re older, it is not the same; you tend to take longer to heal. The joints become fragile and weak as we age. Usually at mid-30 is when one starts to lose bone density, which is, of course, is normal. However, this process can be delayed by having a calcium-rich diet and regular exercise, hence reducing the risk of acquiring fractures as well as keeping your bones healthy. You can have low-fat milk, Greek yogurt, cheese, soybeans, spinach, kales, sardines, and grains just to mention a few. Other than enhancing your bone structure, calcium diet is said to prevent osteoporosis as well as enhance weight loss.

Vitamin D is also vital to bone health, so spare some time in the outdoors to catch the sun.

Conclusion
It is recommended that one should consume calories that match up to their energy expenditure in order to maintain a healthy weight. As much as peoples’ lifestyles may differ, -some more active than others, -it is always important to eat healthy not only for prolonged life but also be proactive and remain strong every day. Always limit your consumption of cholesterol, sodium, processed grains and added sugars, while focusing more on plant-based proteins, vegetables, whole grains and unsaturated fats for a long, healthier life