Your heart beats 100,000 times a day. Your blood vessels, if laid end-to-end, would cover 75,000 miles. Your kidneys filter over 50 gallons of blood a day. You don’t think about any of it, and it still happens.
The human body is an amazing thing, and all you need to do to take care of it is exercise and eat right. But do you? You have the easy part of the deal. What if you were responsible for generating ATP inside your mitochondria millions of times a day?
It is amazing how hard we make things that are so easy to do, especially when it comes to taking care of our bodies.
Eat Right
What does that mean? It simply means providing your body with the nutrients it needs on a daily basis to accomplish the millions of functions that go on inside each of your cells. This is best done by eating a natural healthy diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables and plenty of protein. In addition, supplement with a good multivitamin. Multivitamins provide the nutrients you may not get on a daily basis from your eating. I like to call them “health insurance” because they bathe your cells in the nutrients they need when they need them.
Exercise
Your body needs exercise to stay healthy and strong. Muscles respond to stress applied during exercise. The more you work a muscle, the stronger it gets. The great thing about building muscle is you do not actually have to repair actin and mysin inside the cells. You do not have to regenerate protein from amino acids. Your body does that on its own, so long as you supply the exercise.
Simply take 30-60 minutes a day to provide your body with the training it needs to regenerate, grow, and improve. There are essentially three types of exercise, and all three are important. They are resistance training, cardiovascular training, and stretching.
Resistance training consists of using your muscles against some type of resistance. This can be body weight exercises like push ups and pull ups, or weight lifting. Resistance training increases muscle strength, bone strength and balance. It decreases the chances of osteoarthritis and is the natural fountain of youth.
Cardiovascular training consists of improving your heart, lung, and vascular system by increasing your heart rate for about 30 minutes. This can be accomplished through walking, running, swimming, biking, or any other exercise that increases your heart rate.
The difference between being old and being young is flexibility. This is why stretching is important. Young people are flexible and movable. As you age, if you are not careful, you become stiff and inflexible. Stretching 10 minutes a day once or twice a week can help keep you flexible and prevent injuries.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Tim's new book, The Green Beret Doctor's Health Plan for Life, is now available on his website. To order a copy, click here.]
Dr. Tim Reynolds is the managing parter for HealthCare Express. He is also the president and CEO of Dr. Tim, International, a company he founded in 2009 to allow him to share his passion for Living Every Minute with others. He dedicates countless hours each week to helping other people change their lives through mentoring, life building, giving inspirational talks and writing for his motivational newsletter, Adventures with Dr. Tim.
Dr. Tim was the first member of his family to graduate high school. He joined the military shortly after graduation. Dr Tim was a graduate of the Special Forces Q-course in July of 1982. He served as a Green Beret medic on an A-Team, as the Battalion medic and eventually as a Special Forces Battalion Surgeon for the 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne). He served both enlisted and as an officer for 17 years.
After getting out of the military, Dr. Tim was the first in his family to graduate college with honors. His passion for helping people inspired him to become a medical doctor, and in 1993 he graduated Summa Cum Laude with an MD degree from the University of Utah. He completed his Emergency Medicine residency at Texas A&M Scott and White in 1996 and is board certified in emergency medicine. Dr. Tim is the managing partner for HealthCARE Express, a group of urgent care clinics rapidly expanding across the United States.
Prior to starting HealthCARE Express in 2006, Dr. Tim held numerous positions across the medical field, including: medical director of the Wadley Regional Medical Center Emergency Department and level II trauma center; director, Texas College of Emergency Physicians Board of Directors; president of E-Med Services, LLP and of E-Med Billing Solutions, LLP; associate clinical professor for the Area Health Education Center at the University of Arkansas; founding member of the Greater People’s Clinic of Texarkana Board of Directors.
Dr. Tim speaks fluent Spanish, having lived in Guatemala and traveled throughout Central America.
In addition to his medical experience, Dr. Tim is also an entrepreneur and successful businessman. He is currently the chief executive officer of TL Reynolds Properties, LLP, a real estate investment company; and he is a managing partner of JJET Developments Ltd., a real estate development company.
Dr. Tim has served on numerous other committees and boards throughout both the medical and business communities and is published in various journals and publications. He is sought after as a presenter at many national conferences.
In his leisure time, Dr. Tim enjoys spending time on his Ranch in Atlanta, Texas, where he lives with his beautiful wife, Pam, and their five amazing children. He holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, is a SCUBA rescue diver, and a pilot. He also enjoys body building, golf, and hiking.
Dr. Tim is a world traveler, having visited six of the seven continents. He is a firm believer in living every minute of life and teaching others to do the same. His online website www.livingeveryminute.com allows him to reach thousands of people around the world as they subscribe to his weekly self-help and life improvement adventure newsletters.