Everyone wants to be healthy, but with how oversaturated the industry providing “health products” is, it’s extremely easy to feel as though these things are too complicated. It’s really not so, however. Proper health can be astoundingly easy if you practice a few foundational habits that make a big difference. This is what we’ve found:

Firstly, sleep. No fewer than 7 hours a night is non-negotiable for people who intend on functioning well throughout the day. In many ways, sleep protects your brain. Per the NIH, when a person sleeps, the brain will revitalize and reorganize itself. The part of your brain that does this is called the glymphatic system, and when you don’t get enough sleep the glymphatic system doesn’t have enough time to do its job. If the glymphatic system can’t finish the job, then toxins produced over the day will start to build up and that build up has incredibly detrimental effects on cognitive, behavioral, and judgement-based abilities, which describes pretty much everything we as humans do in a day.

Secondly, exercise. No list of health habits would be complete without mentioning how good cardiovascular exercise is for both your mental and physical well-being. We are well aware that there is such a thing as too little exercise, but the gentlemen behind a study from the JAMA Network on Cardiology make a rather convincing case for the idea that there is no such thing as too much. Their study found that as cardiorespiratory fitness (fitness in both heart and lungs) goes up, the risk of death of many kinds and causes goes down. The big thing about the study is that they didn’t find a point at which the benefits stop increasing, so you can just keep increasing your life expectancy by getting consistent, daily cardio.

Next we have diet. It would be a bit boring to put a complicated and detailed breakdown of what makes a diet healthy, so instead here are some simple tips from the CDC on the basics. Reducing added sugars is never a bad idea. It’s important to make the distinction between natural sugars, which are found in foods like fruit and drinks like milk, and added sugars, which are added to foods while they’re being processed. There’s also the topic of fiber, which is a nutrient that is downright necessary for digestive health and will also keep you feeling fuller for longer. You can find great sources of fiber in whole fruits like apples, pears, or mangos. While there are dietary decisions to be made, there is no law against adding calcium and vitamin D to your diet. These are easily found in dairy products, but there’s also orange juice, spinach, and collard greens.

In short, ample health and wellness do not need to be complicated. We have nearly 3000 years of medical research to look through, so if the answers were anywhere, the odds are good that we’ve found them, or we’ve found something that can help us find them.

Good luck.