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Tired of all the conflicting health information you hear each day? This essential guide will help! Take positive steps today to address those areas of your life that call out for attention?

We are surrounded by piles of health books and mountains of deceptive health advice and crazy diets. It often seems that the information of health and wellness is full of confusion and conflict. How can we make sense out of all of this? What do we really need to do to reduce risk and live a longer, healthier, and more balanced life?

To simply things, I have organized some of the best clinical and research information on health and aging into a "top ten" list. But you need not address them in exact order. Each of these steps is equally important, and they can be organized and addressed in any order that makes sense for you.

All too often, we tend to focus our health efforts on a few select areas, while ignoring other important factors. That can be a very big mistake. The following 10 steps can help you fill in gaps in your personal health program. What areas do you need to enhance to improve your health and add life to your years?

Take your first step today, any step.

1. Reduce or eliminate meat, dairy, and refined sugar products.
The discussion of nutrition has become very shortsighted, focusing on deficiencies rather than on the more important excesses of meat, diary, and refined sugar that are killing and disabling our population.

Theses foods increase inflammation and toxicity and play a major role in the risk of chronic diseases, e.g., heart disease, cancer, arthritis, osteoporosis, and bowel diseases. An article published in the Journal of Preventive Medicine suggests that the healthcare costs of eating meat in America are between $40-$60 billion. This is on par with the $50 billion spent on all of the devastating disease consequences related to the use of nicotine and smoking (cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and stroke).

These excesses also maintain the three most common dietary deficiencies in our culture: fiber, phytonutrients, and antioxidants.

2. Increase a broad array of fresh fruits, vegetables, and complex starches (grains and legumes).
These foods provide the greatest concentration of fiber, phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that reduce the damaging effects of free radicals - thereby reducing the risks of disease and the debilitating consequences of aging.

3. Chew more, eat more slowly, and you will eat less.
Eating is a time of nurturing and reverence. Mindful slower eating reduces the potential for overeating. Calorie restriction, within the balanced nutritional needs of the body (which can be adequately provided by a diverse high-fiber, low-fat vegetarian diet), is the most scientifically-proven approach for increasing the life span of mammals.

Digestion begins in the mouth, not in the gut. Chewing more improves the quality of nutrition and can help resolve gas, bloating, and distention.

4. Become more aware of the context of your food intake.
Are you using food for stress management? For emotional or sexual nourishment? Can you foster and generate insights and activities to nurture and parent yourself more constructively without the negative consequences of short-term pleasure responses and addictive behaviors?

Keep a small journal or inventory of why and when you use food, and the types of food you use. Self-observation and awareness is essential to long-term health and weight regulation.

5. Maintain consistent physical exercise.
Walk 30-45 minutes at least four times per week. This level of physical activity dramatically decreases weight, body fat, blood pressure, blood sugar, anxiety and depression, insomnia, and cancer. Regular exercise also has been shown to reduce the loss of function that occurs with age, and the death rate of the elderly, by 50%.

Add strength training of the chest, shoulders, arms, back, and legs (30 minutes, two times a week using weights) and flexibility work (gentle stretching) to complete a triangle of fitness. This triangle of activity reduces the loss of bond, strength, muscle mass, balance, and energy that typically occurs with age, lowering the risk of injury or disease. Move, lengthen, and strengthen. We are designed to move until we die, preferably dying in the act of moving!

6. Rest and sleep more - health and healing depend on it.
Sleep deficiency increase muscular and joint pain, magnifies the negative consequences of stress, and promotes insulin resistance, abnormal blood sugar regulation, and weight gain.

Nothing replenishes our endocrine, nervous, and immune systems like rest and sleep. Energy reserves, recuperation, and healing rely on adequate rest and sleep (at least seven hours per night). Increase physical activity and eliminate caffeine, chocolate, alcohol, and refined sugar for better sleep.

7. Reduce stress. Perform stress management techniques daily.
The ways that we react to the events of our lives have a big impact on our well-being. Our thoughts and actions inspire feelings and emotions from the more primitive, reactive areas of our brains. Yet, we often allow debilitating emotional responses to act out without conscious direction and control from the voluntary higher parts of our brains. As a result, we have become slaves to our own distorted nervous systems.

The hectic pace of modern life, coupled with our lack of self-awareness and conscious control, drives us to become preoccupied with the sorrows of the past and constant worries and apprehensions about the future. As a result, we lose the precious present, which is the only moment we really have, and dwell on unhealthy feelings and physiological responses.

Activities like quiet sitting, meditation, yoga, tai chi, and chi gong increase an awareness of our own bodies and stress responses, allowing us to recapture the precious present and reduce stress by changing our reactions to the stressful events of our lives. Stress never takes a vacation. Do some stress management techniques each day.

8. Laugh more and improve your attitude.
Humor researchers (yes, there is a field of laughter research) state that children laugh an average of 400 times a day, while adults only laugh 15 times daily. Where did the 385 laughs go? Laughter lowers blood pressure and increases endorphins that improve our sense of well-being. However, the most profound effects of laughter occur on the immune system. T cells that destroy viruses and tumors increase during a state of mirth. Disease-fighting proteins like gamma interferon and B and T cells that produce protective antibodies and orchestrate healthy immune responses also are increased by laughter. So yuk it up!

Smiling and laughter improve our attitude, and positive attitude creates a "chemistry" of health and well-being that we act out and share in the world. Shakespeare was correct: all the world is a stage, and we are all players playing many parts. When you are in the "green room [the area where performers wait just before going on stage] of your home, primping, posturing, and putting on the makeup and costume for your performance that day, what role are you preparing for? What chemistry-feelings, actions, and attitudes-will you act out on the stage of your day, and will the chemistry of your part enhance your life and health?

As Dr. Dale Anderson has said, "It's no mystery that we become healthy by acting like healthy people."

9. Increase intimate social ties and community involvement.
We need each other. A richer sense of community-touching and helping each other-is a primary health requirement. Recent research has shown that people with more ties to community and friends are more resistant to infection, even though they have been exposed to many more infected people. Elderly people who did volunteer work helping others significantly increased their longevity and quality of life.

The depersonalization of frantic modern life makes it harder to maintain supportive social ties. Just look at the large number of lonely people looking for contact and relationships with faceless strangers in cyberspace to satisfy some basic need for connection and community. How can you get outside yourself and participate more in a life of sharing and service?

10. Be more patient and more self-loving.
Love yourself more. We spend a lot of time loving other people-our mates, friends, and children-and very little time really embracing and loving ourselves. Making healthful choices is an act of self-love, an act that says "I mean that much to me."

Yet, positive lifestyle changes require time, patience, and practice. Strive for consistency, not perfection. Create healthful replacements for risky choices.

New choices take time to become part of your new behavior. Don't berate yourself if you go off tract and make poor choices. Come from the higher place of love, support, and forgiveness, and get back on track. With patience and self-love, you can truly express the beauty, magic, and mystery that reside within each other.

Strive for consistency, not perfection, as you create new, healthy choices.

Frank Sabatino, D.C., Ph.D., is a certified member of the International Association of Hygienic Physicians.