Two Quick Steps To Better Health

If you could change only two things about your lifestyle to get healthier, what would they be?

According to researcher Bonnie Spring, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, your health would take a great leap forward if you merely:

• Stopped spending so much time in front of the TV (or computer).
• Ate more fruits and vegetables.

“Just making two lifestyle changes has a big overall effect and people don’t get overwhelmed,” says Spring, lead author of a study published in Archives of Internal Medicine that looked at the feasibility of these types of behavioral changes.

“Americans have all these unhealthy behaviors that put them at high risk for heart disease and cancer, but it is hard for them and their doctors to know where to begin to change those unhealthy habits,” Spring says. “(Our) approach simplifies it.”

Spring and her fellow scientists studied the behavior of more than 200 adults and found that “…people can make very large changes in a very short amount of time and maintain them pretty darn well. It’s a lot more feasible than we thought.”