Staying Healthy During A Recession: How To Pull Your Health Up 'By The Bootstraps' On A Tight Budget

Focusing on your health was always important, but the unpredictable times we’re facing has made staying healthy both an imperative and a challenge. The recession following the COVID-19 pandemic might call for some sacrifices to be made, but your health should never be one of them.

Here are some simple tips that will help you stay healthy even if your budget is stretched — or you're full-on broke.

1. For better health during a recession, stay physically active

Did you know that a single workout alters the levels of 9,815 different molecules in your body? The benefits of exercise range from an increased lifespan to a reduced risk of many diseases. Even the fact that the risk of some cancers goes down with exercise are well documented by now, but new research shows that working out regularly has an even more profound effect than we previously thought. 

If the benefits of exercise came in a pill, we’d all jump to buy it regardless of the price, yet many of us find reasons not to exercise regularly. However, with the new facts that are becoming apparent, we’re running out of excuses!

If you’re thinking about whether or not to exercise, you might want to consider the following:

• One large-scale study found that as little as a 15-minute workout a day can increase your lifespan by 3 years. That’s below the recommended 150 active minutes per week! The more you exercise, the better it gets. If you hit the 150-minute goal your chances of dying early drop by 28 percent and 35 percent if you go over the goal.
• Your past (non-existent) activity level doesn't need to stand in the way of future workouts. If you’ve been inactive your whole life, you might think along the lines "why bother now?", doubting the benefits of exercise after a lifetime of inactivity. But a study that followed people who were between 40 and 79 years old through a period of 12.5 years showed that even people who were previously inactive had significant benefits if they were consistently active. That included meeting the 150-minute goal gradually over a period of 5 years. The results? A 29% lower risk of cardiovascular death and an 11% lower risk of dying from any form of cancer.
• Cardio, weight-lifting, or body-weight exercises? Starting to exercise might be intimidating, especially when you hear so many people claiming that one specific form of exercise is the one you should do. The truth is, the best exercise is the one you stick to and enjoy. Make your exercise challenging, but still fun and enjoyable. You don’t need expensive programs or equipment. You can find a variety of free videos online, but a brisk walk with your dog or a bicycle ride with your partner is just as good. While you’re logging your daily workout, don’t forget to keep a safe distance from others.

2. Take care of your microbiome

Your body contains more bacterial cells in your body than cells that "belong to you". That might be a bit weird to wrap your head around, but it certainly reminds us that we shouldn’t ignore something of that magnitude. Many of those bacteria are not only not harmful but beneficial — and you couldn't function without them.

So how can you take care of this important part of yourself even if you can't afford fancy supplements? There are two things to take into account: you need to take in good bacteria, and then you need to feed them.

You can take good bacteria from so-called probiotic foods. Probiotic foods include things like yogurt (but be sure to check if it’s labeled as probiotic since some companies kill bacteria before releasing their product), sauerkraut, kefir, and tempeh. The alternative is to take supplements and they can be found for less than $10.

Bacteria thrive on fibers found in many plant foods sometimes called prebiotic food. Budget-friendly prebiotic foods include:

• Cabbage
• Bananas 
• Onions
• Garlic
• Beans and other legumes
• Whole-grain food (oats, rye, wheat)

3. Unplug your technology and get a good night's sleep

Most of us are guilty of sacrificing a few hours of sleep every now and then for the sake of productivity or social calls. However, those hours add up, and they affect our mental and cardiovascular health, but also our immunity.

You may be familiar with the popular wisdom that “sleep helps healing”, and now we have strong scientific evidence to back that up. During the night, your body makes cytokines, molecules our immune cells use to communicate with each other. Some sets of immune cells are most active during nocturnal sleep, and sleeping at night is also important for the formation of immunological memory.   

But that’s not all. Sleep is intrinsically connected with your inner clock, called the circadian rhythm. It tightly regulates hormone levels, and when you don’t sleep during the night you disturb those levels. You might notice that as being hungry or anxious, because your cortisol is up. Levels of some other hormones are not so easy to feel, but when they’re disturbed for a long period of time they have a big impact on your health and can lead to chronic inflammation, which leads to diseases and possibly tumors. 

4. Make your coffee black and your tea green 

There are all sorts of myths surrounding the world’s favorite drink, but when taken in the recommended dose, coffee has a great impact on your health. One study found that both coffee and tea drinkers have 20 to 30 percent lower risk of early death. Creamers, milk, and sugar however are not on the healthy side. It doesn’t mean that drinking creamy milky coffee will make you unhealthy, but it will lessen the positive effects since proteins from milk can bind to certain bioactive compounds.

Green tea, which won't stress your budget much further, is arguably the healthiest drink in the world because it’s filled with antioxidants in the form of polyphenols and catechins. Increased mental and cardiovascular health are just some of the benefits!  

5. Consider intermittent fasting

There’s been a lot of hype around intermittent fasting lately, but for a good reason. Having a 16-hour window of fasting, or 24-hour fasts once a week, has been linked to numerous health benefits including increased lifespan, slower aging, lower risk of cardiovascular diseases, obesity, diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.

6. Don’t forget healthy plant food

Vitamins, minerals, bioactive compounds, fibers, and antioxidants are just some of the benefits whole plant food has to offer. That doesn’t mean that you should spend a fortune on overpriced organic food. Instead, focus on seasonal fruits and veggies like broccoli, cabbage, tomato, carrots, potatoes, oranges or apples, that can all be bought for a reasonable price. Indeed, going vegetarian can be a lot cheaper than eating meat!

7. Some health benefits come from stuff you stop doing

If you drink too much alcohol, smoke, or eat a lot of pro-inflammatory food (processed sugars and meat), the good habits won’t have that much of an effect. On the plus side, all these things also cost money.

8. Your happiness should come first

That’s what all comes down to. Happier people live longer. A study conducted in the United States found that people who declared themselves as very happy had a 14 percent lower risk of dying early compared to people who said that they weren’t happy. It makes sense from a scientific point of view as well, since happy people are less likely to experience anxiety and stress that are a driving force for many diseases.