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THIS WORKS.
Simple things that can help you live healthier.
Eat. Walk. Sleep. Talk.
Explore the research behind practical ways to improve health, prevent disease, and feel better.
is Works.
Find the things that actually help.
Eat. Walk. Sleep. Talk.
We collected research on simple interventions that can improve health and quality of life—and translated the evidence into things people can understand and use.
THIS WORKS.
Simple things. Real evidence. Better health.
Some of the simplest things we can do for ourselves are supported by surprisingly strong evidence.
Eat better. Move more. Sleep well. Connect with people.
Small things can have surprisingly large effects.
THE “THIS WORKS.” STATEMENT
You don't need to do everything.
You don't need a perfect diet.
You don't need to run a marathon.
You don't need to buy yet another supplement.
You don't need to transform your life by tomorrow.
Start with something simple.
Take a walk.
Cook a meal.
Get some sleep.
Call a friend.
Then do it again tomorrow.
THIS WORKS.
Thanks goes to our Health Care Professionals and scientists. Thanks goes to those who give generously to support research and education. Thanks goes to all who work to help others.
This Works! The so called "miracle" cure may be very simple:
Eat, Walk, Sleep and Talk correctly.
These can multiply the benefits of other healing therapies. In these pages you may find the medical studies that point to this.
WHAT DOES “THIS WORKS” MEAN?
It does not mean there is one answer for everyone.
It does not mean every study proves cause and effect.
And it does not mean you should replace professional medical care
with something you read on a website.
This Works means we look for evidence worth knowing about.
We ask:
What did the research actually find?
How strong is the evidence?
What are the limitations?
What might this mean in everyday life?
Then we try to explain it in plain English.
FOUR THINGS TO START WITH
You don't have to do everything at once.
Start here.
Food matters.
What we eat affects far more than our weight. Nutrition can influence heart health, diabetes, brain health, energy, and long-term well-being.
moderated by
William Gowen, RN
Valedictorian UNMT School of Nursing
previous computer certifications include MCSE, CNE5, CCNA
John Mitchell, PhD, of UCL Division of Surgery and Interventional Science and lead study author: "Other examples of vigorous activity—that is, anything that elevates your heart rate and makes you sweat—include sports, rushing up the stairs and carrying home heavy grocery bags. The take-home message is that for people already leading physically active lives, it's really important to maintain that level of activity as you get older."
https://health.yahoo.com/conditions/cancer/articles/replacing-3-minutes-sitting-daily-181907758.html
Source:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12916-026-05069-3
Permanent reversal of type 2 diabetes is possible in as little as 2 months. People who reverse their diabetes and then keep their weight down remain free of diabetes,” because “fat is removed from their pancreas, returning insulin production to normal”. In these examples, a weight loss of about 8 pounds was enough to trigger healing. "Type 2 diabetes can now be understood to be a metabolic syndrome potentially reversible by substantial weight loss, and this is an important paradigm shift." "If a person gains more weight than they personally can tolerate, then diabetes is triggered, but if they then lose that amount of weight then they go back to normal.” “Interestingly, even though all our volunteers remained obese or overweight, the fat did not drift back to clog up the pancreas.” “Even patients who have had Type 2 diabetes for up to 10 years can reverse their condition.” “The study also answered the question that people often ask me – if I lose the weight and keep the weight off, will I stay free of diabetes? The simple answer is yes!” As one grateful volunteer said: “My life has changed completely thanks to this research.”
source:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/22032016-reverse-your-diabetes-and-you-can-stay-diabetes-free-long-term/
“Humans are social creatures by nature. Perhaps this is why our minds and bodies are rewarded when we give to others.”
“Our results show that volunteerism among older adults doesn’t just strengthen communities, but enriches our own lives by strengthening our bonds to others, helping us feel a sense of purpose and well-being, and protecting us from feelings of loneliness, depression, and hopelessness. Regular altruistic activity reduces our risk of death even though our study didn’t show any direct impact on a wide array of chronic conditions.”
https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(20)30138-0/pdf
“Growing evidence documents strong associations between volunteering and favorable health and well-being outcomes.”
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“Kindness is much older than religion. It does seem to be universal,” said University of Oxford anthropologist Oliver Curry. “The basic reason why people are kind is that we are social animals.”
“We’re kind because under the right circumstances we all benefit from kindness,” Oxford’s Curry said.
“Doing kindness makes you happier and being happier makes you do kind acts,” said labor economist Richard Layard
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"Besides keeping diabetes, heart disease and osteoporosis checked, a good workout is a strong medicine for the aging brain, prevents and treats depression and boosts cognitive function."
"This is really exciting." "It contains the promise, the hint, the hope, that if people are more active that will protect their brains from aging and cognitive decline." "What this study shows is that we need to keep active even long into old age if we want to keep our brains active." "This study adds evidence that the opposite of an energetic lifestyle -- essentially, being a couch potato -- makes your brain sluggish, too."
"Exercise is also a great stress reliever, which can protect the brain from damage caused by stress, which can cloud memory and slow thinking. Even something as simple as taking brisk walks can increase creative thinking."
"What this study shows is that we need to keep active even long into old age if we want to keep our brains active."
"Think of workouts as a brain's best friend."
source: http://www.neurology.org/content/early/2016/03/23/WNL.0000000000002582.short
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Permanent reversal of type 2 diabetes is possible in as little as 2 months. People who reverse their diabetes and then keep their weight down remain free of diabetes,” because “fat is removed from their pancreas, returning insulin production to normal”. In these examples, a weight loss of about 8 pounds was enough to trigger healing. "Type 2 diabetes can now be understood to be a metabolic syndrome potentially reversible by substantial weight loss, and this is an important paradigm shift." "If a person gains more weight than they personally can tolerate, then diabetes is triggered, but if they then lose that amount of weight then they go back to normal.” “Interestingly, even though all our volunteers remained obese or overweight, the fat did not drift back to clog up the pancreas.” “Even patients who have had Type 2 diabetes for up to 10 years can reverse their condition.” “The study also answered the question that people often ask me – if I lose the weight and keep the weight off, will I stay free of diabetes? The simple answer is yes!” As one grateful volunteer said: “My life has changed completely thanks to this research.”
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Meditation can ease chronic low back pain. Back pain is a leading cause of disability worldwide and the second most common cause of disability for American adults. “The mind and the body are intimately intertwined, including in how they sense and respond to pain.” Mindfulness is “as helpful for people with chronic back pain as are other effective treatments for back pain." “They also had longer-lasting benefits and were safer than many other treatment options.” “This new study is exciting, because here’s a technique that doesn’t involve taking any pharmaceutical agents, and doesn’t involve the side effects of pharmaceutical agents.” “That suggests that training the mind has potential to change people on a more lasting basis than doing a manipulation of the spine or massage of the back,” techniques that may be “effective in the short term but lose effects over time.” "We were struck by how durable the effects were.” “You can practice it by waiting at the bus stop and just breathing.” “For people who want to do something where they’re using their own mind to help themselves, it can feel very empowering.”
source: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2504811
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Exercise helps keep skin younger. It can reverse skin aging even late in life. “It is astonishing to consider all of the intricate ways in which exercise changes our bodies.” The patients’ skin “looked like that of a much younger person, and all that they had done differently was exercise.” "I don’t want to over-hype the results, but, really, it was pretty remarkable to see," "Many people falsely believe that the benefits of exercise will be found in a pill." "We have clearly shown that there is no substitute for the "real thing" of exercise when it comes to protection from aging."
source: https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/younger-skin-through-exercise/
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Eating more vegetables and fruits might reduce deaths by 42%. "We all know that eating fruit and vegetables is healthy, but the size of the effect is staggering," "Vegetables have a larger effect than fruit, but fruit still makes a real difference." But fruit with added sugar was harmful. "The negative health impacts of the sugar may well outweigh any benefits." "The clear message here is that the more fruit and vegetables you eat, the less likely you are to die - at any age."
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Simple mental training exercises can delay aging for many years. Seeing measurable and undeniable results truly empowers the patient. “What we found was pretty astounding. Ten years after the training, there was evidence the effects were durable for the reasoning and the speed training.” "Showing that training gains are maintained for up to 10 years is a stunning result because it suggests that a fairly modest intervention in practicing mental skills can have relatively long-term effects beyond what we might reasonably expect." "The speed-of-processing results are very encouraging." “If these training interventions can have that kind of effect on preserving cognitive function, then there is potential for either delaying dementia or kind of attenuating it.” "Such interventions have potential to delay the onset of difficulties in daily functioning."
source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jgs.12607/abstract
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People with a high level of DDT pesticide residues have 4 times the risk of Alzheimers. “The magnitude of the effect is strikingly large – it is comparable in size to the most common genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s." Products from the breakdown of DDT can still be found in 60 percent of heavy cream samples and 42 percent of kale greens. "We are still being exposed to these chemicals in the United States, both because we get food products from other countries and because DDE persists in the environment for a long time," “The potentially huge public health impact of identifying an avoidable cause of Alzheimer’s disease warrants more study – urgently.”
source: http://archneur.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1816015
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Walking can help more than drug treatments. "Simply increasing the number of steps taken can substantially reduce the risk of disease," "These benefits are seen regardless of body weight or the starting level of activity." "Doing 4,000 extra steps a day (40 minutes of additional daily walking) reduces your cardiovascular risk by about 16-20 per cent, which is the equivalent of taking a statin." "However, a statin has side effects and only reduces cholesterol, whereas walking has a much bigger range of health benefits."
source: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2813%2962061-9/fulltext
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This Works!
The fountain of youth may simply be a healthy diet, exercise, reduced stress, and socializing. This new study, co-authored by a Nobel prize winning doctor, adds to the growing body of evidence that human aging can be reversed. Between social competitiveness, jealousy and anger, much of aging may be just a self-fulfilling curse. The study shows the reversal of human aging at the cellular level. Cell replacement is continuous, but is limited by the telomeres, which shorten each time the cell is replaced, thus limiting the number of times a cell can regenerate itself. "Our genes, and our telomeres, are a predisposition, but they are not necessarily our fate." "The more you change your lifestyle, the more you improve– at any age.” Positive Lifestyle changes prevent the chromosomes in our cells from unraveling. "The more people changed their lifestyle, the more their telomeres got longer." Lifestyle changes can "even reverse heart disease, early-stage prostate cancer, type 2 diabetes, etc." "Our bodies often have a remarkable capacity to begin healing themselves, and much more quickly than we did once realize." Three months of changes produced measurable results. "That is a very empowering finding."
source: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045%2813%2970366-8/fulltext
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This works! Helping others may benefit our own health, slow down aging and increase longevity. Helping others turns on positive gene expressions. "Apparently, the human genome is much more sensitive to different ways of achieving happiness than are conscious minds." "People who are happy but have little to no sense of meaning in their lives — proverbially, simply here for the party — have the same gene expression patterns as people who are responding to and enduring chronic adversity." This causes an increase in the activity of proinflammatory genes (associated with major illnesses like heart disease and cancer) and a decrease in the activity of genes involved in ant-body and anti-viral responses. "Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful.” Nurse William notes: many elders are very loving and many women outlive men.
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In the end, goodness, truth, love, affection and good natured humor are far more powerful than anger. But anger is universal. It is as intimate, natural and normal as breathing. Some causes are fear, frustration, fatigue, illness, pain, jealousy and withdrawal. Anger comes in waves. It "leaks out" from one justifiable cause, and then appears in other situations. It may lie to itself, creating excuses for its own existence. It is passed from one being to another. There is considerable evidence that it harms our health. It certainly damages our happiness. It often continues on longer than needed. Rather than fixing problems, it often hurts us more than what it is directed against. If we want to be "in" love, we need to get "out" of the endless cycles of anger, hurt feelings and regrets. No one seems to have a very perfect solution. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy may offer some help. It may be a good strategy to remember that although we (and this world) are not perfect, we are all evolving to be better. We can remember that many times people are not aware of what they are doing. We can remember that conditions are always changing. The natural tendency is always towards health. Many things resolve on their own. Even anger goes away.
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This works! More often, many more elders are 'defying mental decline'
Being 90 isn’t what it used to be – it’s much better.
"More people are living to older ages with better overall functioning."
Getting very old does not necessarily come with the absolute decline in mental and physical functioning that is commonly expected, new research shows.
The findings provide "impressive evidence that older today can be better than years past, especially in regards to brain health,"
The findings are the latest in a small but growing body of evidence that suggest improved nutrition, vaccinations, health care and intellectual stimulation are leading to a better quality of life for the elderly.
Nurse William notes that exercise can benefit all ages and multiplies the benefits of other treatments.
"Until recently, cognitive losses in aging were viewed as an inevitable consequence of living longer rather than a brain condition to be addressed," The data "provide hard evidence to inspire hope and motivation for the global graying and aging of the brain in developed countries."
“It’s not being old and decrepit at 90; it’s being old and active.”
“I’m looking forward to living longer than 90 myself after this study.”
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This works! Exercise can also benefit the mind. Exercise causes the growth of additional mitochrondia (the organelles that produce our energy) in all cells, including nerve cells. This reduces fatigue and increases endurance. Exercise also causes brand new, young nerves to grow. Exercise increases I.Q., improves concentration, and reduces mental fatigue. Exercise sharpens memory. Resistance training reduces short term memory loss. Exercise may heal depression and increase self-esteem. Exercise improves sleep quality. Exercise strengthens the immune system and speeds healing. Just walking may be a miracle cure.....
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This works! Gratitude and thankfulness may be a powerful medicine for our spirit. They can "re-wire" the subconscious, curing hatred, pain, fear and sadness: redirecting us to more positive energies. In these pages you may find medical studies documenting the the healthful effects of attitude and lifestyle decisions.
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This Works! The "miracle" cure may be very simple: Eat, Walk, Sleep and Talk. Exercise multiplies the benefits of other healing therapies. In these pages you may find the medical studies that prove this.
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This Works! Exercise helps the physical body, multiplying the benefits of other therapies. Exercise also increases I.Q. and speed of reasoning. Exercise, especially resistance training, helps improve memory. Exercise improves self-image. Exercise can reverse mental illness.
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This Works! A diet with lots of vegetables, both cooked and raw, is important. Grains supply calories. Vegetables supply antioxidants which remove poisons. Variety is important. Colorful is a good guide.
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Healing often occurs during sleep.
Sleep promotes and speeds healing, both mental and physical. The immune system is active while we sleep, but goes dormant during wakefulness. We can "control" the immune system by controlling sleep. I don't think we want the most powerful immune system (that could lead to the body attacking itself and result in the auto immune diseases), but an immune system just powerful enough to protect us. If we feel ill, then we may need more sleep. But, if we are healthy, we may want to reduce the amount of sleep. We can control sleep by managing light. Reducing light - making it dark - helps to trigger sleep. Even a night light, and especially a blue light, may interfere with deep sleep. Regular sleep habits and a clean dedicated room help, too. To learn more about sleep, please visit the "Rest" link above.
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The American Health Care System is recognized as the world's best by the many who travel here for treatment. We have access to dedicated Health Care Professionals and also every type of Complimentary and Alternative Medicine. By helping each other thru our vast Internet Family, we can teach each other about what works. Health is far too complicated for anyone to know everything. Because of our love, we share, and that is heart of healing.
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Sometimes we can ask "what" or "how", but "why" is a very difficult question to answer. We all want to know why, but in answering "why" we may slip into judgements. Rather than learning the truth, our predispositions may prejudice us. Or some "whys" may transport us into realms where we can't "prove" things. "Whys" may be matters of belief. Our answers may be projections. We need to be careful. We need to remember that when we ask "why?" we may be on a very slippery slope. Maybe we don't have to know the answers with certainty. If we know that it works, we can receive the benefits. This site is called "This Works" because of this focus.
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Our dogs may be the greatest healers walking the planet..
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Thanks goes to those who comment on, or share this site!
Please report any broken or expired links.
Thanks goes to my teachers who worked so hard to help so many.
Thanks goes to my friends for their efforts to support me.
Thanks go to those who pray for me.
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The first rule is to Do No Harm.
This works! Let's try not to think harm, either. Negative thoughts may predispose to illness. And illness may cause negative thoughts.
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“Let your food be your medicine, and let your medicine be your food.”
"Hungry today, Healthy tomorrow" A Doctor and his nurses told me that they accomplished many seemingly miraculous cures simply by getting the digestive system to work properly. If the body is provided with proper nutrition, many diseases heal on their own. Proper nutrition includes many vegetables, both raw and cooked. Adequate protein is another secret to physical healing. And French Fries do not count as a vegetable!
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Hand Washing helps to prevent disease and helps to avoid the transmission of disease.
Clean air, clean food, clean water and a clean environment speed healing.
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Many healings occur by spontaneous remission. Life is often self-healing. The body naturally trends towards health. But the natural trend of addiction and illness of the mind is to relapse. As Mark Twain said: "It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it a thousand times." Recovery demands constant work. Although Stress is the cause of many diseases, Stress can grow special Healers. Steel must be tempered in fire. Stay in the Present Moment, because the past and future exist only in our thoughts. The "Now" is the Reality. Use your Support Team, because they are your gift. Take nothing personally, because knowing that the world is not personal is Freedom.
You can improve your health and can also help others to do the same. Better health and helping others are often linked. Either one may cause the other.
May we have compassion for all beings.
May all be Healthy, Happy, Prosperous, help others and receive help.