12 Healthy Recommendations for a Better Life

Time is your most valuable asset. Never waste it.

Photo: Andrea Piacquadio, Pexels

(OCCUPIED PALESTINE) - 12 recommendations for good health (physical and psychological) from an old student of science (aka scientist) who strives to do better and welcomes your views*:

1. Children of all ages need to be in nature. Play with dirt and smell nature. It improves immunity (latest epidemiological studies of those who died with COVID19).
2. Eat healthy seasonal food always. Not processed food.
3. Plant things, harvest, and enjoy (ornamental plants, herbal plants, fruits, vegetables. You can even do it on walls, ceilings, balconies and window-sills).
4. Walk a lot (important for all ages). Minimum one kilometer every day. Run if your health allows it. Preferably in natural areas.
5. Talk less and listen more (ask questions, art of attentive talking). No matter your age, listen to young people, listen to old people, listen to all people of all backgrounds.
6. Find your passion and follow it, be it music, poetry, agriculture, painting, biology, computers or whatever. Never study something or do a job because you think there is money in it. Follow your passion and money will follow (or at least follow your passion while doing a job that you can eat from temporarily). You also really do not need a lot of money to live a decent healthy life.
7. Corollary: be passionate about a cause bigger than yourself: political, human rights, helping disenfranchised people etc. Getting involved in something bigger than yourself makes you live longer and healthier (physical and emotional) and life.
8. Time is your most valuable asset. Never waste it.
9. Read a lot and challenge yourself to read more every year than the year before. Knowledge is power. You can also teach yourself or via the internet speed reading.
10. Challenge your mind and your body to do new things.
11. Make friends with people who care about society and about nature. Hang around them and have fun while doing productive work/service. (See #6).
12. Be kind to all and never give up (especially on the potentiality of the future) no matter the challenges. Keep the hope alive.

*Mazin Qumsiyeh started studying biology (including human biology) as a teenager over 50 years ago.

Since then published over 160 research publication and several books, became professor at medical schools including at Yale and Duke Universities (and now Bethlehem University), established and run clinical laboratories (those that study cancer and birth defects among others) and also institutions concerned with sustainability of human and natural communities (e.g. the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability http://palestinenature.org).

In these 50+ years, Qumsiyeh also read tens of thousands of scientific papers and thousands of books.

He learns and does new things every day and makes mistakes also everyday (the two are connected)!! So, please send your ideas to mazin@qumsiyeh.org.