Women's Health All-in-One For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Mindfulness meditation, gut-friendly diets, and diabetes management are key areas for improving women's health. This guide offers practical steps and principles to enhance well-being through mental focus, nutrition, and proactive disease control.

Trying a Short Mindfulness Meditation

Your capacity to be mindful is most powerfully developed through mindfulness meditation. One of the most popular mindfulness meditations is mindfulness of breath. Follow these steps to try it out:

That’s it. Mindfulness of breath is as simple as that. Bring mindful attitudes such as curiosity, kindness and acceptance to your experience. You can do this exercise for as short as a minute or as long as an hour.

Following Gut-Friendly Diet Principles

The food you eat is one of the best ways to shape the community of microorganisms that lives in your gut, thereby supporting your optimal health. And even though it’s easy to find microbiome diet books that present you with precise diet plans to support your gut microbes, in truth those books aren’t backed up by solid science. Instead, the wealth of research on gut microbes and diet over the past two decades has converged on some general principles that can guide what you eat for better gut health. These principles are as follows:

• Every week, consume 30 or more varied plant sources of fiber.
• Consume fermented foods every day.
• Consume high quantities of live microorganisms — one billion or more — every day.
• Consume low amounts of omega-6 fats and higher amounts of extra-virgin olive oil and other monounsaturated fats.Avoid emulsifiers and noncaloric sweeteners in your diet.

Diversity of foods — especially plants — is the name of the game for gut health. But some foods are especially good for providing either fiber that modulates the gut microbes or higher quantities of live microorganisms. Ten gut-supportive foods to include in your diet follow:

• Onions
• Garlic
• Leeks
• Jerusalem artichokes
• Dandelion greens
• Yogurt
• Kefir
• Kimchi
• Sauerkraut
• Fermented pickles

7 Rules for Controlling Diabetes

Diabetes doesn’t have to rule your life. Be proactive! Follow these guidelines for controlling your diabetes, and your problems should be few and far between:

• A positive attitude: View diabetes as an opportunity to make healthier choices. A positive attitude can result in better control of your blood sugar.
• ‍Proper nutrition: Work with a dietitian to develop a great eating plan.
• ‍Enthusiastic exercising: Burn off calories and help your heart.
• ‍Preventive planning: Practice meal planning at home and review the menu before you go out to eat.
• ‍Major monitoring: Monitor your blood sugar before and after exercising and meals.
• ‍Tenacious testing: Check your blood glucose at correct intervals and have your doctor regularly screen you for complications.
• ‍Lifelong learning: Keep yourself informed about new discoveries about diabetes.

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