Healthy Happy Life Hacks
Quick, easy tips to make living a healthy lifestyle simpler and sustainable over time.
#1 What You Can, When You Can
When life gets in the way of your Healthy Habits and routines, instead of scrapping, them do what you can, when you can. This video shares the basic principle of this Healthy Happy Life Hack. In the video, I give a nutrition example, but it works equally well for physical fitness and general wellness goals. For example, if you have a weekly movement plan of three times in the gym for weight training and two long walks but have a week when you don’t have long stretches of time to devote to physical movement (sick kids, busier work schedule, etc.), do what you can when you can. Maybe you do 5-10 minutes of body weight exercises before you shower and again when you get home in the evening or walk around your house or office when taking phone calls. You could do squats while waiting for the coffee to brew or take 5-10 minutes from your lunch break and go for a walk at a brisker pace than usual. The “What You Can, When You Can” principle allows you to be consistent which is key to sustaining a healthy lifestyle over time.
#2 Boosting the Probiotic Effects of Yogurt
This video shares a super simple Healthy Happy Life Hack. In the video, I’ll tell you all about two new studies out of the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign that show the adding honey to yogurt helps more of the good bacteria stays alive through the digestive process. If you want to read the studies for your self go here for the petri-dish study and here for the human subject study. If you can eat dairy, yogurt can be healthy for your gut microbiome with or without the honey, the honey may just give it a boost!
Sources:
Alvarado DA, Ibarra-Sánchez LA, Mysonhimer AR, Khan TA, Cao R, Miller MJ, Holscher HD. Honey Varietals Differentially Impact Bifidobacterium animalis ssp. lactis Survivability in Yogurt through Simulated In Vitro Digestion. J Nutr. 2024 Mar;154(3):866-874. doi: 10.1016/j.tjnut.2024.01.010. Epub 2024 Jan 12. PMID: 38219862; PMCID: PMC10942848.
Mysonhimer AR, Brown MD, Alvarado DA, Cornman E, Esmail M, Abdiel T, Gutierrez K, Vasquez J, Cannavale CN, Miller MJ, Khan NA, Holscher HD. Honey Added to Yogurt with Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis DN-173 010/CNCM I-2494 Supports Probiotic Enrichment but Does Not Reduce Intestinal Transit Time in Healthy Adults: A Randomized, Controlled, Crossover Trial. J Nutr. 2024 Aug;154(8):2396-2410. doi: 10.1016/j.tjnut.2024.05.028. Epub 2024 Jun 1. PMID: 38830472; PMCID: PMC11375456.
