Being healthy shouldn’t be challenging. But in our complex modern world, so much is going on that it can be hard. Thanks to the way we live, we can no longer rely on nature to give us eighty years of healthy life. We have to take matters into our own hands.
But knowing what to do is a challenge. Every day, some new diet doctor comes out, trying to convince us that they know exactly how we should live, based on science. However, when their advice changes from month to month, you can become skeptical. How can both low-fat and high-fat diets be healthy? It doesn’t seem to make sense.
Stay Up To Date With The Science
The trick here is to stay up to date with the science and spend some time educating yourself. When you first read a paper, it can be a little complex and you may struggle to wrap your brain around it. But when you get used to the kind of language that scientists use, it becomes a lot easier. Over time, you’re able to learn most of what you need to know from a study, just reading the abstract.
Filter Out Biased Or Unnecessary Studies
Here’s another great tactic you can use: filter out unnecessary or biased studies. According to Dr. Hanid Audish, more than 500 clinical studies passed through his lab since 1994. And that’s just one of countless clinical centers around the world, all churning out millions more papers.
The trick here is to filter. Only read the seminal studies, not the follow-ups. Get your information from literature reviews or meta-analyses if you can. And try to avoid anything published by industry groups – like the dairy or meat industries.
Go With Your Instinct
Sometimes, science takes detours on its way to the truth. So it’s critical not to take any individual study as gospel. When researchers conduct experiments, all sorts of things can go wrong. And that can skew the results.
Instead, be patient and spend some time getting to know the general findings in the field you’re interested in. Then when a new paper comes out, you’ll be able to see it in context, alongside everything else. Don’t assume that all scientific studies are equally well conducted. They are not.
Put What You Learn Into Practice
Ultimately, you’ll want to put what you learn from scientific studies into practice. So if you discover something new in your journey of exploration, put it into practice.
For instance, when you explore studies on nutrition science, you quickly find that there are vast holes in knowledge that researchers haven’t yet filled. So it means that every few weeks, some new exciting data comes out on the health benefits of a specific plant or herb. Discovering these benefits and putting them into practice in your life can have a profound effect on your overall well-being.
The bottom line is this: if you want to be healthy, you can’t rely on the media or public intellectuals to give you the unvarnished truth. Instead, you have to discover it for yourself.