Four focus areas for better health

PROVIDENCE OREGON – Want to reset or refocus on your health? There are four main areas that work together for our overall wellbeing.

Tzumin Weng, N.D., from Providence Bradley J. Stuvland Integrative Medicine Clinic, shares with KATU the importance of sleep, diet, movement and waste elimination. Ignoring just one can affect the other three, so Dr. Weng provides tips for understanding and approaching them all.   

Sleep

Dr. Weng encourages her patients to get six to eight hours of sleep. For quality rest, it’s important to fall asleep within 30 minutes of going to bed and sleeping through the night.

To help achieve that, Dr. Weng says the most important factor is putting down your phone or tablet, and turning off the TV, for one hour before going to sleep.

She suggests winding down with activities that are not too stimulating, such as reflection, journaling or gentle yoga.

“That hour is really for yourself,” she says.  

Diet

When it comes to the food we eat, Dr. Weng stresses moderation, and advises her patients to really think about how they divide up their plates.

For each meal, one half of the plate should be vegetables – but not starchy vegetables, there will be a place for those later. A quarter of the plate should be lean proteins, including lamb, pork, chicken, or plant-based alternatives like beans or tofu. The remaining quarter of the plate should be filled with whole grains, or this is where you can incorporate a starchy vegetable like potatoes or sweet potatoes.

Eating healthy starts with shopping, and Dr. Weng recommends reading all product labels, especially to avoid any added sugar.

“It’s important not to bring unhealthy food back home,” she says. “Because once it’s in our house, we tend to just think, ‘oh, I need to finish this up.’”

Movement

Dr. Weng uses moderate intensity and maximum heartrate to help patients achieve proper movement and exercise. To calculate maximum heartrate, take your current age and subtract it from the number 220. Moderate intensity is then 65-75% of that number.

For example, if you are 35 years old:

• 220-35=185
• 185x.65=120.25
• 185x.75=138.75

So, moderate intensity movement or exercise for a 35-year-old is having a heartrate between 120 and 138.

The next variable is how long and how often to perform moderate intensity movement or exercise. Since everyone is different, Dr. Weng suggests starting at once per day and building from there, and moving until you have a thin layer of sweat forming on your body.

Elimination

In addition to sweat, Dr. Weng says we also need to pay attention to the other ways our bodies remove of waste and toxins – specifically in the bathroom. If there are issues present, it’s important to get them checked out by your doctor.

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KATU l Reset your health and tips for a healthy lifestyle with Dr. Weng

More information

Bradley J. Stuvland Integrative Medicine Clinic