The systems that control life energy in our bodies and minds are built to work together. What happens to our natural state of healthful balance as we travel life's path? We begin to make choices that throw our bodies and minds out of harmony. "The 9 Visual Rules of Wellness" show, for the first time, the inner workings of these intricately connected systems.

If we eat too much bad fat, we may see the damage not just in our arteries, but in our pancreas, lungs and heart as well. If we get too little sleep, we can harm our immune strength and upset the hormone cycle that regulates our appetite. If we smoke, we assault our lungs, our veins, our eyes.

We have the power to reclaim the natural harmony that insures our well-being. The first step is to better understand how every facet of our bodies and minds are designed to thrive in balance. Then we will know how to build our own physical and mental pathways to health and wellness.
Contents: The 9 Visual Rules of Wellness

Rule 1: Baseline Your Health
A simple blood test, administered by your physician, is an essential tool in this process. You will measure your levels of cholesterol, sodium, glucose, and potassium. You will have a count of your various blood cells and factors. Analysis of your urine, skin, even your hair also help tell the story of your current health. Other basic facts—your height, weight, age, habits, history—complete the baseline picture.
Click to learn more

Rule 2: Define Your Wellness Mission
Changing your life and habits to improve your health and well-being requires resolve, dedication, and a strong sense of purpose. Why have you decided to improve your health habits now? To feel stronger and more resilient each day? To live a long, healthy life with your family? To set a good example for your children? To look better? You will need a personal mission statement for motivation as you transform the way you live.
Click to learn more

Rule 3: Develop and Maintain Nutritional Balance
Eating is yor chance to choose new building blocks for a stronger body. You cannot choose your genes. You cannot choose the experiences that have built your current body. But you can choose the foods that will help you build a better one. Learning about nutrients, and how to balance your choices, is essential to building health and wellness.
Click to learn more

Rule 4: Get Aerobic and Anaerobic Exercise
Exercise builds up skeletal muscle cells at the expense of fat cells. It also leads to secretion of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor. BDNF protects existing neurons and axons and encourages growth of new neurons. Aerobic exercise—jogging, swimming, cycling—is sustained activity powered by large amounts of oxygen. It improves circulation, increases lung capacity and red blood cells, and strengthens the heart. Anaerobic exercise—weight lifting, sprinting—is performed in bursts too intense and short to be powered by incoming oxygen. Anaerobic exercise builds skeletal muscle and bones.
Click to learn more

Rule 5: Never Smoke. If You Smoke Now, Quit
The ravaging effects of tobacco smoking on lung tissue are common knowledge. But the harm is far-reaching. Smokers are more likely to suffer vision loss from cataract development or macular degeneration. Expectant mothers who smoke expose the unborn child to grievous harm. Nicotine causes the uterine blood vessels to narrow. Overall fetal growth is slowed, often resulting in low birth weight, and incomplete brain development. Smokers' risk of sudden death from a heart attack is twice that of nonsmokers. After quitting, repairing the damage is possible, but it takes years.
Click to learn more

Rule 6: Take a Moderate Approach
When we eat, have sex, feel nurtured, we also feel pleasure. Our brains have a unique mechanism to give us positive feelings that reinforce these behaviors, all of which enable the species to continue. This pathway is also in play when we overdo it. The ventral tegmental area (VTA) contains the powerful feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine. In drug addiction, we activate this pathway repeatedly with substances, even though we know their use is harming us. Some of us overeat, even as we risk our health by packing on fat. Addiction is a complex issue. But most of us can learn to gain pleasure from things that benefit us, rather than the destructive triggers that activate the pathway of addiction.
Click to learn more

Rule 7: Make Sleep a Priority
Lack of sleep can make you feel sluggish, less alert, irritable or depressed. Over time, sleep debt can impair your memory, and compromise your immune system. Chronic sleep deficiency can also interfere with the way key hormones communicate with your brain. The hormone leptin is secreted by certain fat tissue. It communicates with the brain's hypothalamus to control your appetite. Another hormone, ghrelin, takes the opposite role of stimulating the appetite. Loss of sleep interrupts these hormonal conversations, and is associated with lower leptin levels, elevated ghrelin levels and weight gain.
Click to learn more

Rule 8: Manage Your Stress
The emotional response to stress is immediate and familiar. You feel helpless, frustrated, depressed. But stress also does a number on your body. Dendrites, the tiny, signal-receiving spines on nerve cells, shrink and disappear from certain brain neurons in response to stress. The stress hormone cortisol is associated with increased fat around the organs. Telomeres are the tail-ends of chromosomes. As we age, the telomeres get shorter. Stress speeds up the unraveling of telomeres. Stress also weakens the body's immune function. Minimizing stress is vital to emotional and physical health.
Click to learn more

Rule 9: Embrace Joy
Take time to laugh, share closeness with loved ones and express joy at life's pleasures. There are concrete, positive effects on your health. Positive emotions help people recover their normal heart rate more quickly after exercising. After a good laugh, people have higher blood levels of certain immune factors. We all feel better when we slow down and savor the best things in life.
Click to learn more

The Cardiovascular Continuum; Heart Health
See a timeline showing how the choices and habits you make determine your cardiovascular health, and your capacity for activity, as you age. Good nutrition and exercise keep your blood vessels clear and your heart strong.
Click to learn more

The 9 Visual Rules of Wellness Press Room
Do you need more information about "The 9 Visual Rules of Wellness" initiative for press coverage or future collaborations? Please visit our Partnering Site for background details and contact information.
Click to learn more