Hippocrates's Tips for a Healthier Life

To start 201 9 in the best possible way, we compile some tips from Hippocrates on how te head a healthier life. Often considered the “Father of Medicine", Hippocrates was a Greek physician from the Age of Pericles (around Fifth-Century Athens) who figured out some of the most important ways we can stay healthy. Despite the distance in time (around 2,000) many of his recommendations still remain as good advice for the contemporary city dweller. Here are a list of them:

1) Walking is the Best Exercise

Hippocrates observed that people who walked more lived longer. Today we know as little as 30 minutes of walking per day can have a significant impact on the risk of diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, and certain cancers.

2) Know the Environment

It's of common knowledge that our environment directly impacts our health. The quality of our relationships, our work, our sleep and many other aspects of our lives great influence on the way we feel. The shrewd Greek physician knew this first and ran thorough examinations of his patients' lives, not only their bodies.

3) Work on your Diet

“We are what we eat" - everyone's head the famous proverb. The food we consume controls our energy levels, our moods and our general health. Hippocrates noted that “those who are constitutionally very fat are more apt to die quickly than those who are thin” and concluded that a diet based mostly on fruits and vegetables resulted in fewer diseases. He often prescribed a change in diet to treat different ailments.

4) Everything in Moderation

In the age of the Dionysius, God of grape-harvest, winemaking and wine, of fertility, ritual madness, religious ecstasy and theatre in ancient Greek religion and myth, it must not have been hard to take these good things to extreme sometimes. Nonetheless, Hippocrates knew and advise his patients that “everything in excess is opposed to nature.” Today we know that too much of anything - even what's generally considered as ‘healthy’ - can take its tool on our bodies.

5) Don't just do ‘something’

We have grown accustomed to having a quick solution to everything, to having an easy list of treatments to every single symptom we have. We expect doctors to be ready to prescribe us medication and often just self-medicate. But do just do something for the sake of it is not always the best treatment. Hippocrates believed that “unless you had real evidence that a medical treatment was helpful, you shouldn’t use it.”