Expert advice for a healthy lifestyle

A Volvo won't run with replacement engine parts pulled from a beaten-up, low-quality car. And your body won't be able to repair itself with the wrong parts, either. Here some suggestions to live a healthier lifestyle and give your body the fuel it needs.

Every time you swallow junk food, refined sugars, refined grain products like white bread, trans fats and highly processed foods, you're providing the body with the wrong "parts". Nature's top-of-the-line parts list for the human body are all the nutrients you'll find in good fats, whole grains, fruits and veggies, lean protein and dairy products (go low-fat to help control calories and saturated-fat levels). Here's the proof

• Every daily serving of veggies you add to your diet cuts your heart disease risk by four percent (or more) and your stroke risk by three to five percent.
• Just five servings of fruits and veggies a day lower diabetes risk by 39 percent.
• Subjects age 70 and older who ate the most produce, in one Australian study, had the fewest wrinkles.
• People who ate whole-grain cereal every day, during one study, were 17 percent less likely to die over the next several years from any cause, and 20 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease than those who skipped this important repair food.

Smoking. Exposure to secondhand smoke. Drinking to excess. This bad stuff thwarts your body's regeneration efforts. The upside: Study after study proves that your body's repair system goes back to work the moment you give them up:

• Within minutes of stopping smoking, your lungs and cardiovascular system begin repairing themselves. Blood pressure falls closer to a healthier level within just eight hours. Within 24 hours, your heart attack risk begins to fall. Within a month, your lungs will work better.
• Your brain can repair itself even after damage inflicted by heaving drinking. In a study from the University of California, San Francisco, researchers found that alcoholics who stayed sober for nearly seven years performed as well as nonalcoholics on brain-function tests.
• Heart attack rates among nonsmokers plummeted when a smoking ban was instituted in restaurants and bars in one mid-size Montana town — something researchers attribute to a drop in exposure to secondhand smoke.

You body is a machine and, like any machine, it needs to be maintained and repaired.  The good news is damage done through bad habits can be rectified and these suggestions will give you the tools to repair your body.