Will this ONE Thing Make You Healthy?
- 6 hours ago
- 6 min read
I've said this in a million different ways over the past twenty two plus years, but I will say it again for the people at the back... there is not ONE thing that will make you healthy.
I will die on this hill, I swear!
I started this blog many, many years ago to help educate people about their skin and wellbeing, and maybe inspire a healthier lifestyle along the way. Over the years, I've given lots of tips and tricks about how we can improve our overall health and longevity.
I eventually came up with the Tsui Life Pyramid which, albeit isn't groundbreaking, I know, but it was a way for me to explain the importance of the different elements of our lifestyle and how they affect our skin and overall health.
I'm sure you've seen all the adverts saying, "Do this one thing to burn belly fat" (FYI, you can't specifically choose to burn fat from one area!) or "Celery juice will cure all your ailments" etc. Well, I hate to break it to you, but it just doesn't work like that.
I also want to make it clear that celery juice isn't bad. Cold plunging might help some people. Intermittent fasting is great if it works for your lifestyle and so on... but it's never just one thing. It's an amalgamation of things that work together, when done consistently, that will give you the best chance of supporting your health and longevity (and let's be honest, even then nothing is guaranteed).
To completely contradict myself here though, there is ONE thing that can make a huge difference to whether any of these things actually work, and that is consistency.
I get asked all the time about my thoughts on LED light masks and facial microcurrent devices. "Do they actually work though?" and "Are they worth the investment?" My answer is always the same... "Yes, potentially, but you have to be consistent with them."
If you smoke one cigarette, I highly doubt that one cigarette alone is going to give you lung cancer... smoke forty a day for the next fifty years though and obviously we're having a very different conversation.
Getting a good night's sleep once might help you feel better in the morning, but if for the rest of the week you're on your phone until 1am and getting only four or five hours of sleep a night... well, that's never going to be great for your health or longevity.
If I had to prioritise anything, it would always be sleep first, very closely followed by stress. The effects of extreme sleep deprivation are actually pretty scary. Research looking at prolonged periods without sleep has found that after around 48 to 90 hours people can begin experiencing hallucinations and disordered thinking, with symptoms becoming increasingly similar to acute psychosis as sleep deprivation continues.
Now, of course, the majority of us are not going days without any sleep whatsoever, but I think it demonstrates just how fundamental sleep is to the way our brains and bodies function.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that all the celery juice in the world isn't going to change your life if you're consistently sleeping badly and your stress levels are through the roof. You can eat brilliantly, exercise, take all your supplements and do all the other things, but you can't expect those things to simply cancel out months or years of poor sleep and chronic stress.
However, I thought I'd give you one thing you can do consistently from each level of the Tsui Life Pyramid to help support your health and longevity. If done consistently you might see some changes...
SLEEP: From 9pm at night, put your phone down and start winding down ready for sleep. No, you don't need to go to bed at 9pm, but try no phones or 'big lights' (I'm a Northerner sorry, it's all about the 'big light') after 9pm in the house. Use lower level lighting or salt lamps instead and let the house start winding down with you.
STRESS: Before you go to sleep each night, try some controlled breathing. Breathe in for a count of four and out for a count of six or seven, and continue until you feel yourself relaxing or drifting off. I like to add a few drops of my Calm Botanical Essence on a tissue and I pop it at the top of my pillow. It doesn't need to be complicated and you don't need an hour long meditation every day. Sometimes a few minutes is enough to bring your attention back into your body and out of whatever imaginary disaster your brain has decided to worry about at 11pm.
DIET: Take care of your gut. Eat a varied diet with plenty of different plant foods and fibre, if tolerated, and if you want some additional support, you could consider a gut health supplement such as Skin Youth Biome or Decoded GS1. I've spoken a lot recently about the gut skin axis and how our gut is involved in everything from nutrient absorption and immune function to inflammation, so it's another piece of the puzzle that I think is incredibly important.
HORMONES: Track your cycle in an app (I love Natural Cycles and my Oura for this - click the links for discount codes) or your calendar each month and make notes of the changes in your body so you begin to understand how your mood, skin, sleep, energy and body feel at different times of the month. The more you understand your own patterns, the easier it becomes to recognise when something is different for you rather than relying on what somebody online says you should be experiencing.
SKINCARE: Wear an SPF every single day, no matter the weather. If there is one skincare habit I want you to be consistent with, it's this one. Protecting your skin from UV damage every day is one of the best things you can do for skin health and skin longevity, and preventative skincare is so much more affordable than corrective skincare! My favourites are always the Nimue Sun-C SPF's and the Revision TruPhysical SPF 45.
LIFESTYLE & EXERCISE: Move your body for thirty minutes a day. This can be a walk, exercise class, workout or even dancing around your living room. Take the stairs instead of the lift or park a few rows back from the door at the supermarket. If you're stuck in your head, try some yoga with balancing postures that actually require your concentration, or even do twenty star jumps in your kitchen. It doesn't have to be the perfect workout, it just needs to work for your life.
SEX & RELATIONSHIPS: I'm going to name two things here. Have an orgasm at least once a week if you fancy it (just by yourself is absolutely fine), and do something that supports your relationship with yourself or somebody else. That could mean speaking to or visiting a friend, spending proper time with your partner or doing the complete opposite and having some time alone in solitude. Being alone and being lonely are two very different things, and you can actually feel incredibly lonely in a room full of people if you don't feel genuinely connected to anyone.
EXTERNAL INFLUENCES: This one is slightly different because external influences are often the things we can't control. Medication, illness, travel, pollution, a change in climate, work circumstances or something completely unexpected happening in your life can all affect how you feel and how your skin and body behaves. Instead of trying to control the uncontrollable, get into the habit of noticing what's changed. If your skin, sleep, digestion, mood or energy suddenly feels different, think about what has changed around you recently before immediately assuming something is wrong or reaching for another product. Sometimes your body might simply need a little time to catch up.
It's the combination of all the things in my Tsui Life Pyramid that helps to keep us well. You don't have to be perfect at every single one either, because trying to be healthy can quite easily become another thing to stress about. You might love yoga but can't get to a class that week, so do twenty minutes online instead.
You might have a terrible night's sleep but manage to get outside for a walk the next day. Your version of a healthy lifestyle has to fit into your actual life or you're never going to stick to it anyway.
So the next time you're served an advert telling you that THIS supplement, THIS ingredient, THIS diet or THIS wellness trend is the one thing you've been missing all your life, take it with a rather large pinch of salt. It might be helpful, it might even be brilliant, but it is still only one small piece of a much bigger puzzle.
Look at the whole pyramid, figure out which areas could do with a little more attention and start there. Build habits that work for you, do them consistently and stop looking for that one magic thing that's going to fix everything because, unfortunately, it doesn't exist.
Thank you so much for reading,
Emmaline
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