Physical and Mental Health

Here’s Why and How I Diligently Refine and Strengthen 16 Lifestyle Habits As I Age.

I summarize the essential points of valuable habits that contributed to my physical and mental health for decades.

Purpose of the Article

Some discerning readers inspired me to post a story summarizing the key points that significantly improved my cognitive abilities, physical health, and mental health. Readers especially show interest in my habits to support healthy aging.

Some of my habits are unique and might not apply to everyone. However, the principles can be valuable to customize. My goal is to give an idea of habits that can serve us as we age and why we need to refine and reinforce them.

Even though I summarize my habits, my aim is to make this post helpful to the readers, highlighting their importance for health. Since these habits include over a half-century effort, they are comprehensive. Therefore, I only touch on the key points and link relevant articles as some are detailed, requiring explanations with examples.

I chose these specific habits as they cover various aspects of my life. I wrote hundreds of articles documenting my life lessons, including my habits, hoping what I learned could benefit the younger generation.

Why and how do I refine and strengthen my habits?

Why do I do this?

I refine and strengthen these habits for three reasons. The first one is improving physical health, the second one is enhancing cognitive reserves, and the third one is rewiring my brain for optimism, joy, and happiness.

Why do habits matter?

Habits make our lives easier. The brain works with routines and loves patterns. The brain’s neural connections get more vigorous when we establish, refine, and strengthen the habits with constant practice. We achieve more with less effort.

How do I do this?

I refine and strengthen these habits by measuring the progress and making incremental changes based on feedback from the data I gather objectively and subjectively. As the body and mind are connected (psychosomatic), I factor in the physical and psychological aspects of habit-building. I also use scientific studies to validate the principles I use.

A Summary of 16 Lifestyle Habits as Samples

In this section, I summarize the 16 habits I regularly refine and strengthen to maintain my physical and mental health. As they are comprehensive, I only focus on the essential items and link some points to relevant stories for readers interested in details.

1 — Nutrient Dense Foods with Time Restricted Eating

I start with nutrition, as our physical existence is the culmination of our eating, drinking, and breathing. I consider food, water, and air as nutrition for the body.

Like many people, I used to drink fruit and vegetable juices which did not work for me. Therefore, nowadays, I only drink water, bone broth, and kefir, refraining from other beverages. In addition to food and drink, I pay attention to getting fresh air daily.

I made three shifts in my diet. The first one is to increase bioavailable proteins and healthy fats. The second one is to eat only whole foods with minimal carbs. The third one is to consume food in a specific window.

Nutritional deficiencies primarily caused by low-fat diets in my younger years adversely affected my physical and mental health. However, I significantly improved when I customized my diet and followed a diet that suited my needs.

In addition, replacing carbs with healthy fats and practicing intermittent fasting helped me enter ketosis and gain more BDNF. Consuming omega-3 fatty acids and other healthy fats nourishes the brain by balancing metabolic hormones and neurotransmitters.

I gained more metabolic and mental health benefits by practicing one meal a day plan. Initially, skipping breakfast helped me to adapt to a longer fasting window giving me a fat-adapted body.

In addition, I occasionally perform extended fasting for up to seven days to initiate autophagy and mitophagy for cellular and mitochondrial health.

Furthermore, I use crucial nutrients in supplement form, especially for cognitive health. Some critical ones are CoQ10, lithium orotate, alpha-lipoic acid, n-acetyl-cysteine, acetyl-l-carnitine, magnesium, activated charcoal, Vitamin D, and citrulline malate. I documented them in this collection.

2 — More Resistance Training with HIIT

I have always been active in my life since childhood. However, some exercises, such as long-distance running and excess cardio, stopped working as I aged. I still do some cardio but in a smaller amount.

Barefoot walking around 10K steps and using a trampoline are the main cardio workouts I perform daily. The best approach to lower the amount of cardio was replacing it with high-intensity interval training.

As I got older, I understood the importance of resistance training to keep lean muscles, especially skeletal muscles. Resistance training in the form of weight lifting and calisthenics speeded up my metabolism and gave me a defined body that I couldn’t have in my earlier years.

Furthermore, resistance training improved my cardiovascular health by enhancing my heart rate variability and blood oxygen saturation levels.

3 — Special Attention on Restorative Sleep

Since I suffered from sleep deprivation, especially insomnia and jet lag, in my younger years, I learned that restorative sleep was crucial in every aspect of our health. When I experienced disturbed sleep, I felt dreadful.

I tried sleep aids like supplements and medication. But they made the situation worse. However, developing good sleep hygiene helped me. When I improved my sleep, I reaped many benefits, such as a better mood, enhanced memory, more energy, and greater libido.

The more restorative sleep I got, the healthier and happier I became. Therefore, I made sleep a critical habit. I summarized my sleep habits in a book chapter titled Smart Sleep Habits — Chapter 5.

I also documented The Critical Role of Cortisol in Sleep Disturbances. In addition, I posted an article titled Fix Hormonal Sleep Issues and Improve Sleep Quality in 3 Easy Steps. Here’s my comprehensive sleep regimen.

4 — Entering the Flow State at Work and Home

As neurotransmitters and hormones work in a more balanced way in the flow state, the body and the brain experience less stress lowering inflammation.

In addition to joy and happiness, the flow state is ideal for creativity and productivity since this state significantly improved my desired outcomes.

I achieve the flow state by improving my cognitive abilities like focus, attention, working memory, task switching, and problem-solving.

I find the flow state ideal for creating desired results with less time and effort, balancing my energies, and reducing stress while working or studying.

After wiring my brain for this unique state, it became effortless to taste joy daily, even in the middle of a perceived crisis. I documented my experience in an article providing three steps to enter a flow state.

5 — Meditating Regularly and Acting Mindfully

I have been researching mindfulness for decades. When I started, it was a controversial topic in the Western world. Fortunately, mindfulness practices, especially meditation, entered the mainstream and were embraced by health and well-being communities.

Meditation has been an excellent tool in my mental health first aid kit. It helped me instantly and contributed to my long-term health and well-being. Therefore, I made regular meditation a hobby. Nowadays, I meditate three times a day.

Meditation has become as important as food and water in my life. After practicing meditation for decades, I haven’t seen any side effects.

Regular meditation helps me balance my hormones and neurotransmitters. Besides, meditation helped me regulate my emotions and increase my cognitive flexibility. Consequently, it increased my creativity and productivity and improved my relationships.

I use meditation in my work for productivity. It helps me work in the flow state quickly. In addition, I use meditation as a creativity tool, as reflected in this story titled How I Perceive the 50th Century.

6 — Creating Intentional Neurotransmitter Spikes

All neurotransmitters play a critical role in our neurological and cognitive health. However, dopamine and serotonin have noticeable effects on our daily lives.

Creating dopamine and serotonin-boosting activities enhanced my mood and increased my creativity and productivity. I learned to increase the number of neurochemicals by giving a small reward for each achievement.

When the brain perceives a tedious task, it will naturally resist. Therefore, when I complete a small task, my brain recognizes the accomplishment and releases rewarding neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin.

Daily dopamine and serotonin with everyday achievements can build up and rewire the brain for happiness and joy. This is a fundamental approach to building healthy and desired mental habits. The neuroplasticity of the brain creates new neural pathways and strengthens them gradually.

Even though the natural boosting of dopamine is desirable and valuable, excessive dopamine spikes from unnatural sources can imbalance ΔFosB causing addiction and leading to mental health disorders.

7 — Leveraging the Power of Thermogenesis

Thermogenesis has been of great interest to me. I researched it intensely and documented my experience in an article titled Here’s What Happened When I Experimented with Thermogenesis for Decades.

Cold exposure has a noticeable hormonal effect on the body, improving mental health. Therefore I made it a habit. Replacing coffee with cold showers was an innovative solution for my vitality and health.

In addition, cold mixed with hot showers before bed also improved my sleep quality, reduced stress, and lowered inflammation.

I also leveraged heat therapy using dry saunas. They brought many benefits, as I explained in this article titled 7 Health and Fitness Reasons to Use Dry Saunas Regularly.

8 — Spending More Time on Planning

In day-to-day activities, I am not too stringent about creating extensive plans. I do a quick mental picture of the job at hand and jot down the major parts on my task list. Then, I mature the plan by adding or subtracting details while doing the task.

However, in my profession especially designing a new product or service, I make detailed plans considering all factors.

I found planning helpful for being creative and productive personally and professionally. Without having a plan, starting any task was daunting. Creating a plan was key to addressing procrastination. Pragmatic planning rewired my brain for better problem-solving.

Starting is the most formidable part of any project. The brain constantly tries to find ways to reserve energy, causing laziness and procrastination, preventing us from starting work. The critical point for me is rewarding the brain by completing small tasks first from the plan.

9 — Looking at the Mirror and Talking Compassionately with Self

When I feel an intense emotion, whether positive or negative, I have a self-conversation session to understand my feelings and record them in my journal. Self-talk served as an emotional monitoring tool.

What I learned from self-talk sessions has been valuable to me. It helps me make necessary therapeutic alterations for specific cases. It also contributes to my self-healing serving as a therapy for my cognitive and emotional health.

When I combined self-talk with dexterous writing on a paper, I gained an opportunity to activate both sides of the brain. These unique activities can integrate the left and right lobes for a better response from the subconscious mind.

My mood got brighter when I looked in the mirror every morning and had a compassionate talk. The body and mind need self-love and acceptance despite our vulnerabilities and mistakes.

Tapping into the subconscious mind using various mindfulness techniques can be invaluable for anyone. Of course, the techniques and methods can differ, but the principle is self-acceptance, self-awareness, self-care, self-compassion, and self-love.

In addition to healing, creativity, and productivity benefits, I use self-conversations and dexterous writing to improve my language skills.

10 — Regulating Emotions to Gain Cognitive Flexibility

Long ago, I used to hide my emotions. I feared expressing them. Learning the importance of expressing feelings in healthy ways encouraged me to make it a habit.

During this learning process, one of the crucial lessons in my life was to learn to slow down. I suffered from ambition and constant agitation toward perceived success.

When I slowed downed, I became more creative and productive. Slowing helped me feel and express my emotions better. Slowing down allowed me to enter the flow state faster and stay longer.

Emotional self-defense is crucial for everyone. Setting healthy boundaries significantly improved my relationships and mental health.

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to adjust our thinking when facing multiple variables in a situation or event. It can help us to observe, understand, and assess our thoughts before they turn into unpleasant emotions.

We can gain cognitive flexibility by acknowledging our thoughts and emotions without suppressing them. Staying optimistic and keeping hope with an open mind might also increase cognitive flexibility.

Cognitive flexibility also requires emotional regulation. For example, having a flexible mind without regulating emotions is not feasible.

By achieving cognitive flexibility and emotional maturity, I increased my chance to work and live in a flow state, bringing serenity, calmness, bliss, and joy to my life.

11 — Scheduling Fun Activities and Hobbies

Our primitive brain never stops worrying, even if there is nothing to be concerned about at a specific time. If left unattended, the old brain sends signals to the neocortex to manufacture problems, creates hypothetical scenarios, and increases anxiety.

However, the thinking brain can challenge false beliefs created by the old brain. So the new brain is at our disposal. Apart from logically challenging the primitive part of the brain, another effective way, from my experience, is to focus on enjoyable activities and schedule them with loved ones or friends.

By scheduling fun activities, we can overcome amygdala hijacks. I achieved this by not giving idle time to the old brain to worry so that the old brain assumed there was nothing to be concerned about when having fun deliberately.

The more fun I had, the more creative and productive I felt. Having intentional fun does not mean a hedonistic tendency. It means enjoying every moment of life with gratitude. Starting the day with a spark can be a valuable habit.

Even if some situations sometimes feel painful, we can accept them, take action, and focus on enjoyable activities in our lives. My bespoke hobbies help me have a joyful life improving my mental health.

Adding humor and laughter to our daily activities can stimulate the brain. We can laugh for no reason if we can train our brains. One of the options and learning opportunities is to join a laughter yoga club.

12 — Acting More Realistically and Pragmatically by Staying Away from Perfection

Like many educated people, I suffered from a perfection problem in my younger years. Living with analysis paralysis affected my creativity and productivity. Therefore, I chose imperfection as my perfection.

Imperfection does not mean producing sloppy work or unorganized results. Instead, we can define imperfection as striving for excellence. I achieved this goal by growing gradually and making incremental progress.

Fear of not reaching perfection can be detrimental to our psyche. Therefore, a realistic and pragmatic approach can be healthier. We can achieve more with less effort by being pragmatic and sensible.

13 — Improving Social Connections

Improving emotional intelligence by regulating our emotions can contribute to establishing better relationships with loved ones and others.

For example, my relationships with others improved when I gained emotional maturity and mastery, using intellect and intuition.

Compassion and empathy for others are critical capabilities for emotional maturity. In addition, self-love, self-compassion, and self-confidence can sharpen our emotional mastery contributing to better mental health.

The brain loves social connections. I learned a lot from centenarians about the importance of social connection. Therefore, I not only socialize with people I know and trust but also enhance my circles by meeting consequential strangers regularly and intentionally creating serendipity.

Even though I like some aspects of social media, I don’t consider it an authentic social connection. However, it can be a tool to meet people in real life and develop relationships. I perform occasional social media fasting to maintain my sanity.

14 — Focusing on Cellular Health and Hormonal Balance

Our health starts with our cells and mitochondria. In addition, our hormones determine our cellular and mitochondrial health. I improved my cellular health using four pronged-approached.

Firstly, I cleared accumulated garbage from the cells. Secondly, I fed cells with premium power. Thirdly, I rested cells to rejuvenate. And finally, I activated the self-healing mechanism for cells. I documented them in an article titled Here’s How I Formed an Endless Energy Source in Four Steps.

Improving cellular health can reduce chronic stress, lower inflammation, strengthen mitochondria, and initiate autophagy. As a result, our cellular health focus can improve metabolic, cardiovascular, immune, neurological, and mental health.

The most significant contribution to my cognitive health was balancing hormones and neurotransmitters. This item involved numerous activities in my life. Therefore, based on my research and experience, I coined a term called hormonal intelligence.

Balancing our hormones and neurotransmitters with healthy lifestyle habits is possible. Balanced hormones are critical for optimal health.

15 — Stimulating the Brain with Various Activities

We can stimulate the brain using many activities. For example, it is possible to turn daily chores into brain boosters. These activities involve cognitive capabilities such as focus, attention, task switching, and working memory.

Another activity that we can use is neurobics. This concept can be explained with the metaphor of brain gymnastics using daily activities.

The central premise of the notion is that repetitions can activate several parts of the brain, strengthen neural connections, and expand the neural network.

I use numerous daily brain boosters, such as dexterous writing, brushing my teeth with both hands, and barefoot walking on grass or beach sand daily. So my point is our hobbies, and fun activities can stimulate the brain.

Many people enjoy brain-stimulating games. For example, some of my friends are subscribed to several services, such as Lumosity and Elevate. I also use them daily without getting addicted.

As computers and video games can be addictive, I don’t spend too much time playing. As a result, I only allocate around twenty minutes daily to activate my neocortex.

I enjoy games like sports, racing, survival, chess, and puzzles to keep my brain active. However, I wouldn’t say I like games portraying violence. My goal is to increase my cognitive reserves as a precaution for neurodegenerative diseases.

16 — Adding Gratitude, Admiration, and Excitement to My Work and Hobbies

I left this spiritual aspect of habit to the end, as the previous points contribute to gratitude, admiration, and excitement in my life.

Gratitude is a captivating sensation nourishing the brain. Its effects on the brain are prominent. Therefore, mental health professionals suggest using gratitude journals as a therapeutic tool.

When we feel gratitude, the body and the brain work in a better balance. As a result, we don’t feel anger, jealousy, guilt, boredom, fear, or anxiety when we are grateful.

I made recording my blessing and showing gratitude a habit. I also show my appreciation to the people I interact daily. Showing gratitude can improve our relationship with others. I extend my appreciation to expressive writing for having a calming effect on the brain.

Another emotion I deal with daily is boredom. In my younger years, I found boredom challenging, unpleasant, and risky emotion. I lost interest in mundane things when I got bored. My job, chores, and even hobbies looked dull.

I also experienced anhedonia for a short while when I got extremely bored. During that period, boredom caused self-sabotaging behavior. I looked for instant gratification to find an escape from the effects of this unpleasant feeling.

I don’t see boredom as boring and destructive emotion anymore. After using a simple approach for many years, I no longer allow boredom to upset me. Instead, I learned to transform boredom into excitement.

When boredom enters my consciousness nowadays, it takes me minutes to neutralize it and turn it into the pleasant emotions I choose intentionally.

The third emotion I observe is envy. In my younger years, I used to envy people who were more successful than me. When I saw their incredible results, I used to feel a knot in my stomach even though I enjoyed and appreciated their outcomes.

However, when I learned to transfer envy to admiration intentionally, I felt a tremendous liberation in my psychological well-being. Nevertheless, it took me a while to rewire my brain for admiration and affection. I learned how to replace envy with admiration for a joyful life.

Conclusions and Takeaways

Habits run the show in our lives. Some habits serve a good purpose, and some might be destructive in life. My goal is to strengthen good habits and weaken the not-so-good practices or turn them into better habits.

Habits can make our lives easier as the brain loves patterns and routines. The brain’s neural connections get more vigorous when we establish and strengthen the habits with constant practice. As a result, we achieve more with less effort.

We need to observe our habits mindfully. As the body and mind are connected, we must factor in both the physical and psychological aspects of habit-building.

By gaining healthy lifestyle habits, we can improve our cognitive capabilities and enhance our mental health. In this article, I summarized the key points from my five decades of habit-building experience.

Despite many good habits, I still have some habits that do not serve me well. Therefore, I focus on them and refine them to be good habits. Learning and improvement never end. It is a lifelong process. Thanks to the brain's plasticity, we can build habits at any age.

Learning from the habits of other people can be invaluable. Therefore, I always read stories about the habits of other people, and I share my habits with pleasure.

As we are all unique and different in multiple aspects, something working for one might not work for others. However, principles can apply to everyone. Therefore, we can customize what we learn based on principles.

The bottom line is taking personal responsibility to improve our physical and mental capabilities. In addition, seeking help when needed and leveraging the experiences of others can be invaluable. For example, I felt terrific after calling lifeline for an issue bothering me.

I attempted to summarise five decades of work in a 15-minute article. I hope you find it valuable. Please share your thoughts about your habits and mention how you refine and reinforce them.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.

As a new reader, you might check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting on my reviews, observations, and decades of sensible experiments. I write about health as it matters. I believe health is all about homeostasis.

Sample Health Improvement Articles for New Readers

I write about various hormones and neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, GABA, acetylcholine, norepinephrine, adrenaline, glutamate, and histamine.

One of my goals as a writer is to raise awareness about the causes and risk factors of prevalent diseases that can lead to suffering and death for a large portion of the population.

To raise awareness about health issues, I have written several articles that present my holistic health findings from research, personal observations, and unique experiences. Below are links to these articles for easy access.

Metabolic Syndrome, Type II Diabetes, Fatty Liver Disease, Heart Disease, Strokes, Obesity, Liver Cancer, Autoimmune Disorders, Homocysteine, Lungs Health, Pancreas Health, Kidneys Health, NCDs, Infectious Diseases, Brain Health, Dementia, Depression, Brain Atrophy, Neonatal Disorders, Skin Health, Dental Health, Bone Health, Leaky Gut, Leaky Brain, Brain Fog, Chronic Inflammation, Insulin Resistance, Elevated Cortisol, Leptin Resistance, Anabolic Resistance, Cholesterol, High Triglycerides, Metabolic Disorders, Gastrointestinal Disorders, Thyroid Disorders, Anemia, Dysautonomia, cardiac output, and major disorders.

I also wrote about valuable nutrients. Here are the links for easy access:

Lutein/Zeaxanthin, Phosphatidylserine, Boron, Urolithin, taurine, citrulline malate, biotin, lithium orotate, alpha-lipoic acid, n-acetyl-cysteine, acetyl-l-carnitine, CoQ10, PQQ, NADH, TMG, creatine, choline, digestive enzymes, magnesium, zinc, hydrolyzed collagen, nootropics, pure nicotine, activated charcoal, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B1, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, Omega-3 Fatty Acids, N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine, Cod Liver Oil, and other nutrients to improve metabolism and mental health.

Disclaimer: My posts do not include professional or health advice. I document my reviews, observations, experience, and perspectives only to provide information and create awareness.

I publish my lifestyle, health, and well-being stories on EUPHORIA. My focus is on metabolic, cellular, mitochondrial, and mental health. Here is my collection of Insightful Life Lessons from Personal Stories.

If you enjoy writing and storytelling, you can join Medium, NewsBreak, and Vocal as a creator to find your voice, reach out to a broad audience, and monetize your content.

You may also check my blog posts about my articles and articles of other writers contributing to my publications on Medium. I share them on my website digitalmehmet.com. Here is my professional bio. You can contact me via weblink.

You might join my six publications on Medium as a writer by sending a request via this link. 19K+ writers contribute to my publications. You might find more information about my professional background.

If you enjoy reading, you may join Medium with my referral link for limitless access to my stories and other writers.