In looking for ways to save money, most of us focus on budget discipline and cheaper alternatives. But we may overlook the very basic but popular expenses: healthcare! Nowadays it costs an arm and a leg to stay in a hospital. Yet even regular doctor’s visits can substantially trim off your savings as well. Although you may have a very good health insurance plan, you will very likely end up getting bills for co-payments and other non-coverage charges, which can really add up to a sizeable expense. Furthermore, if you still have a job, you’ll have to use at least a few work hours to read old magazines at your doctor’s office, the precious hours that would be used to earn more money in your paycheck.

So needless to say, being healthy is not only about high quality of life, but also about saving a bunch of cash. What can you do to stay healthy? Here are a few basic tips:

Keep germs under control. Everyone wants to be germ-free. But the reality is that you can’t. Even if you work hard to keep your home clinically clean, germs can get to you when you are at work, when you go shopping, or you can often get them from your kids who get germs from school. So even if you are a real germ-freak, you simply can’t stay away from them. They are everywhere! But think about it, you don’t have to act like a germ-freak to keep them under control. Think about  doctors who constantly in contact with patients. How can they keep themselves from germs? Well, basically, they use hand sanitizer and wash their hands with soap as soon as they have a chance. So if you train yourself the good habbit of washing hands with soap regularly and use sanitizer once in a while during the day, you can be pretty much germ-free! I put one bottle of hand  sanitizer at home and one at work, and found that it wasn’t that hard to remember using it. My co-workers are encouraged to use it as well.

Eat healthy. When talking about eating healthy, many people think about vegetables and fruits. But “men can’t live on vegie alone!” We are considered carnivores, not herbivores like cows or horses. I don’t know how Buddhist monks handle it, but I did try pure vegetarian dishes for a  few weeks. It drove me crazy! Well, based on what I learned from my doctors and basic biology, the key to healthy eating is not about vegie or fruits, but about BALANCE and VARIETY. Let me explain. A balanced meal should carry good portions of carbohydrates (like in potatoes, rice, noodles, etc.), proteins (meat/fish/soy products), and vegetables, which act as good sources of vitamins and fibers. As you can see, human body needs all of those, just in different quantities. So a properly-proportioned plate of food (balanced meal) will provide your body with about  enough major nutritions and ensure that nothing’s too much and nothing’s too little. Since no human being, or even machine, can calculate the exact amount of each nutrition type the body needs, a variety of food is necessary. Choosing a wide variety of food will ensure that you have the highest chance of getting all the necessary nutritions for the body. Imagine that you have only potatoes, beef and broccoli every single meal, all your life! You would be bored to death.  And like most people, you will feel like you’re missing something. Eventually, I believe, you can get sick because of mal-nutrition.

Do exercise daily. Similarly, the term “exercise” may give you the ideas of weight lifting or working out with a treadmill, or running like crazy around a public park. The real purpose of  an exercise is to help your blood better circulate around your body and stimulate your muscles to keep them healthy and functional. So in effect, any movement of your body is considered an  exercise. For example, a good exercise can be taking a warm shower, walking your dog, walking up or down a stairway, or even cleaning the floor. While any movement of your body can be  considered an exercise, not all exercises are good enough. A good exercise should cover the  whole body, not just certain parts like your hands or legs (i.e. typing or driving your car  are not good enough). As a matter of fact, people who sit at their working desk too long and rarely walk around may experience problems from low circulation to back pain. A simple exercise to help with that situation would be just walking around every now and then, or whenever one has a chance to do so. If you work in a farm, I doubt that anyone ever worry about lack of  exercise. But the city life gives rise to the problem, where modern conveniences such as  automobiles and elevators take away the needed daily exercise. Therefore, it’s important that you find alternative ways to move your body.

Avoid excessive eating. The recent study revealed during international obesity conference on 5/8/2009 in Amsterdam suggested that over-eating, not lack of exercise, is blamed for the American obesity epidemic. I think that is just common sense. If you want to satisfy your crave and eat too much, there can hardly be any exercise to spend all the excess Calories. Another setback is that doing more exercise may also increase your appetite or craving, which in turn forces you to eat more. Well, there would be a whole universe between eating and obesity among Americans, so it’s never enough to talk about body weight. What I think may be helpful to curb food craving is to focus on something else. For example, I’m a bit workaholic, so if I concentrate on working, I can easily skip lunch with much suffering. So I think if you can focus on what you like to do (beside eating and drinking), then you should be able to balance out your food intake. Everyone has  some kind of hobbies or interests. Find yours, then try to shift your attention to that whenever you feel like to eat more than necessary. That may help.

It’s in everyone’s interest and benefit to stay healthy. As I mentioned above, staying healthy not only improves quality of life, but also saves you lots of money.