Are you looking for ways to improve your health? Is it even possible to maintain a healthy lifestyle on a budget? There are plenty of small ways to get healthy and stay well, even without spending a lot or working with healthcare professionals. If you are looking for ways to improve your health on a budget, keep reading!
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Chronic disease is at an all-time high. Sadly, the number of people, even children, with chronic illnesses keeps rising.
While there are a number of reasons for the current health crisis, there are also many solutions. Though people turn to doctors and other healthcare professionals, all too often they don’t find much real help. They are offered prescriptions, surgery or other procedures, and maybe a couple of lifestyle ideas.
Naturally, many then turn to alternative medicine when conventional approaches fail. Sometimes, alternative doctors can be wonderfully helpful. Other times, they aren’t much more successful than conventional doctors are.
At the same time, economic times are bad, and people who aren’t well are often already struggling financially. On the bright side, lifestyle factors beyond diet and supplements can make a difference!
Whether you are working within a conventional medicine framework, working with alternative doctors or other professionals, trying to make changes on your own, or some combination of approaches, simple, inexpensive strategies can help you get well, stay well, and keep on budget!
So, if you want to improve your health, there are simple, inexpensive things you can do at home that don’t cost much and are easy to do routinely. Some things are even free! (Check out my article on 10 free ways to improve your health.)
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Medical disclaimer
This site does not contain medical and health advice. The health information contained on this site and the resources available for download through this site is provided for general informational and educational purposes only and it is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, or substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
10 Ways to Improve Your Health Naturally
My family has tried and continued each of my suggestions. One or more of us do all of the following and find enough benefit to continue.
Epsom salt baths
While I first started taking Epsom salt baths many years ago to briefly relieve the pain from “fibromyalgia”, I have since learned that Epsom salts offer health benefits beyond easing aches and pains.
Epsom salts provide detoxifying benefits and magnesium. Not only do Epsom salts draw toxins out of the body, but the magnesium in Epsom salts absorbs through the skin, boosting our magnesium level. Sadly, most people are deficient in magnesium, which plays an important role in many physical and mental functions, but Epsom salt baths can help. There are many other uses of inexpensive Epsom salts.
Happily, Epsom salt baths contribute to better sleep, feeling calmer, improved digestion, easing headaches, and quicker recovery from illness. If I am coming down with something, I take a hot Epsom salt bath with an essential oil blend for immune support. It often helps! If I am sick, especially with a fever, I take a couple baths a day to ease the symptoms and recover sooner.
Often, I add baking soda (another affordable detoxifier) to the bath, and maybe some drops of lavender oil. A cup of baking soda plus a cup or two of Epsom salt is an easy and affordable way to improve your health!
For anyone not inclined to take a full bath, soaking the feet in Epsom salts also works. Since we detoxify through the feet, you can use a foot bath for 20 minutes for a similar effect. Read more here about ways to do that.
Magnesium oil
Though I already mentioned a few benefits of magnesium, magnesium oil deserves its own special mention. While research and all sorts of studies confirm our need for magnesium and the lack of magnesium in modern diets and bodies, I personally notice benefits.
Supplementing magnesium is one way to correct our magnesium deficiencies; my family takes magnesium orally. Another way to do it is through the skin. Epsom salt baths work, and so does magnesium oil. Supplementing magnesium through the skin is especially helpful if oral magnesium bothers your tummy, if you don’t like to take pills, or if you don’t want to take Epsom salt baths.
Magnesium oil isn’t really oil. It is magnesium dissolved in water. However, magnesium oil feels a little greasy, so the name sort of makes sense. You can buy excellent magnesium oil sprays, like this one, but it isn’t a very budget friendly way to improve your health!
Instead, I buy magnesium flakes, dissolve them in water, and use that. You simply combine equal parts filtered water and magnesium flakes, warm the water to dissolve the flakes, and cool the solution down. Don’t use Epsom salts, but rather something like these magnesium flakes. You will gets lots of magnesium oil from one bag of magnesium flakes!
If your skin stings after using the spray, you can use a little oil or lotion to moisturize the skin first, or use your magnesium oil to make a magnesium lotion and avoid irritation. You can even use magnesium oil as a deodorant.
As far as uses, many people like magnesium spray (or lotion) before bed, as it encourages good sleep. It also is helpful for headaches, sore muscles, hormone balance, anxiety, and more.
Dry brushing
Our lymphatic system just beneath our skin helps us remove things that hinder our health– bacteria, toxins, abnormal cells, etc. While practices like exercise help, our lymphatic fluid can get sluggish.
Thankfully, one easy way to keep our lymph moving and improve our health is dry brushing. If you are new to dry brushing, it might sound odd, but it is basically what it sounds like! You use a brush on your skin while you are dry to brush in the direction of your heart, stimulating the flow of lymph.
Once you have the brush (something soft like this, with natural bristles), you are all set. Just before your shower or bath, gently brush over your legs, arms, neck and torso toward your heart. If you aren’t sure how to do it, try this video or these written directions. Once you get the hang of it, it will take just a few minutes.
If you poke around the Internet, you will quickly find that not everyone agrees that dry brushing helps to improve your health. There isn’t much proof of benefit to the lymphatic system. That is not to say that benefits don’t exist. Sadly, our scientific establishment lacks incentive to study techniques like dry brushing!
In the video linked above, you see something of the scientific rationale from the physical therapist’s explanation. Many practitioners use and recommend dry brushing, and many people see benefits from it.
In my experience, dry brushing helps. If I feel OK when I do it, I tend to get a burst of energy afterward. If I don’t feel good when I do it, I usually think it didn’t do anything. Half an hour later, I feel noticeably better. This has happened enough times that it doesn’t seem like coincidence!
Castor oil packs
Have you heard of a castor oil pack? If you have been meandering through the natural health world for awhile, you probably have.
If not, castor oil comes from castor beans and has anti-inflammatory properties. Rest assured, castor oil has nothing to do with beavers like I originally thought– no beavers are harmed in the making of castor oil! (Castor is beaver in Spanish!)
Basically, a castor oil pack involves applying castor oil to the area you want to treat, covering with an absorbent cloth, and applying warmth in some way.
A classic use of the castor oil pack is over the liver; the pack goes on the right side of the abdomen. Many of us can benefit from supporting our liver, which works hard to detoxify us. I nearly always sleep very well the nights I wear a castor oil pack to bed! Other benefits include improved digestion, clearer skin, and sharper thinking.
Also, castor oil packs can help in other areas of the body. I have used it for lower back pain for overnight relief. Odd as it sounds, castor oil with a bit of warmth can profoundly affect our whole system as well as a suffering body part.
Some of my other favorite uses are for acne serum for my teens and to put around my eyes at bedtime as moisturizer. I like to look for organic, cold pressed, hexane-free castor oil, like this one, preferably in a glass bottle. Read more about castor oil packs– an odd but surprisingly helpful tool for improving your health!
Himalayan salt lamp
Himalayan salt lamps are so cozy! They vary a great deal, and I have no idea whether the purported health benefits live up to the hype. I am skeptical, but they are very pretty.
Allegedly, the salt lamps attract particles like allergens and pollutants, removing them from our air and thus purifying it somewhat. They also produce negative ions, at least in small quantities. Negative ions are associated with positive health and mood.
Of my suggestions, this is the one I have the least experience with. I bought one for my son a couple of years ago, and he loves it, running it without any other light in his room each evening. Whether he just loves the orange glow, actually feels better, or sleeps better after hanging out in a beneficial form of light rather than being around regular light bulbs and electronics, both of which aren’t so good for us and can interfere with sleep, is uncertain.
Whatever the reason he ended up loving it so much, we more than got our money’s worth! I’m not sure what to believe, but you can read more about Himalayan salt lamps and decide if it is worth it for you. I paid about $17 at the time.
Organ meats
I’m sorry. I don’t like them much, either. In truth, I don’t get much organ meat into my family, because they don’t like them.
However, the fact is that organ meats are a powerhouse, nutritionally speaking. In addition to protein, they are packed with high amounts of:
Organ meat is sort of a multivitamin, but you aren’t likely to overdose because your body is better able to handle the food forms of the vitamins! Not only that, but organ meats are often not expensive, and fill the role of meat, so you won’t be buying another meat for the meal where you have the organ meats.
It is possible to buy organ meat supplements so you don’t have to taste them. Sad to say, it is expensive!
Here are a few ideas for how to work some organ meat into your life:
- Try hearts! I don’t mind chicken or beef hearts at all. The texture is different, but the taste is similar to chicken thighs or beef roast. Flavor it up, and serve with plenty of tasty things (like a beef heart taco bowl served with plenty of cheese, salsa, guacamole…) and people may almost like it. My pickiest family member eats heart without complaining or making faces.
- Cook liver lightly and serve it with bacon, onions, and plenty of seasoning. I can’t claim to like liver, but this isn’t terrible.
- Make the liver into a paté. This is the way I finally, after years of resolving and failing to eat liver once a week, succeeded. I cook onions in plenty of butter with a little garlic and rosemary, mushrooms if I have them, and add liver in the last few minutes. After it cools, I process it in a food processor and scoop it into jars. I freeze all but one jar and keep one in the refrigerator and eat a scoop every morning before I allow myself to eat my breakfast! I have more energy if I keep this going.
- Grind the liver up and mix a little bit into ground beef recipes– meatballs, burgers, etc. People often don’t realize it is there!
Fermented foods
I would apologize for this one also, except that there are so many tasty ways to ferment foods and drinks. Also, most ferments are very simple and inexpensive! Since they will be part of your meals, you may not be buying anything extra.
Why eat ferments? Though they have fallen away from our culture, they are making a comeback for health reasons. Most people in most times and places fermented things to preserve them, and in the process enhanced their health.
Fermenting makes foods easier to digest, helps digest the foods we eat alongside them, provides probiotics (microbes that promote health) and in some cases prebiotics (food for the probiotics), and supplies enzymes and nutrients. Many foods are more nourishing in their fermented form than raw or cooked!
I like to try to serve something fermented with each meal. In fact, I no longer buy probiotics at all! In that way, fermenting foods can save you money if you would otherwise buy probiotic supplements.
Fermented foods and drinks may work even better than a good quality probiotic, as the ferments appear to travel through the digestive tract without being destroyed by normal stomach acid as supplements tend to be.
But what could I ferment?
Whilw sauerkraut is the darling of the fermentation world, you can ferment other vegetables and fruits as well. Cultured dairy (yogurt, kefir, cream) is delicious and useful in many recipes. You can ferment all sorts of beverages traditional to different cultures. Beet kvass, kombucha, and water kefir would be examples. My teens love water kefir, which we ferment a second time with juices such as grape, pomegranate, and lemon. It is an appealing replacement for carbonated drinks! You can even make root beer!
I also make fermented ketchup and salsa. It sounds gross, but they taste just fine– not sharp or bubbly or otherwise weird.
Finally, sourdough would be a way to ferment grains and make them more digestible and nourishing. I don’t do that now as we are not eating grains, but I used to make gluten free sourdough for pizza crust. If we go back to eating grains, it will be sourdough.
Electrolytes
Everyone tells us to drink water! It is good to stay hydrated, but there is such a thing as too much water with too little mineral content. While I add minerals to our filtered water, we have found that we feel and think better when we take electrolytes. Usually, electrolytes consist of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, sometimes with another mineral or two.
Actually, electrolytes serve pretty important functions for us. We are electric! Our heart, brain, muscles, and so on rely on electrical processes to function. Electrolytes are particles that carry an electrical charge. We get them in our food, and we lose them through sweat, urination, etc. Our cells rely on a balance of electrolytes for their functioning as well.
While there are many ways to take electrolytes, I would not recommend the sweet, flavored, brightly colored bottles or powders from the store. Consider the ingredients!
We use Lytebalance on the advice of a professional we work with. The reason is that the electrolytes included are in the right balance for the human body and brain. There is nothing but electrolytes in this one, so it is clear and flavorless other than a slight salty taste. I don’t worry if someone has it in a water bottle that doesn’t get washed right away! This one comes to under 40 cents per serving.
Lemon water
This is a simple habit that can become addictive! That is OK, though, as it is so beneficial and affordable. Even better if you have a lemon tree!
First thing in the morning is a great time for some lemon water, perhaps with electrolytes added! Fill a glass with filtered water, squeeze in the juice from half a lemon, and drink it. That’s it!
It turns out, there are a lot of benefits to lemon water. It boosts your immunity, supports digestion, supports your liver’s detoxifying action, boosts energy, lifts your mood, and can even help your skin and prevent kidney stones.
House plants
This is the only suggestion that I don’t actually observe a benefit from in at least one of my family. We have houseplants, and they look pretty, and they are very cheap. They are also supposed to improve indoor air quality. I can’t tell a difference now versus when we didn’t have any, though.
However, there is evidence that houseplants improve the quality of indoor air. I was horrified to learn that indoor air is often much worse in quality than outdoor air, even in cities! While there are many ways to improve the air in your house, plants have to be one of the least expensive and most visually appealing ways!
Apparently, house plants filter air, making it better for us to breathe. People and plants are a happy combination. Remember how in elementary school, you learned that we breathe in oxygen and breathe carbon dioxide out? And that plants do the opposite? It seems we can benefit one another… Even NASA has studied the benefits from plants!
I used to avoid plants, as my older son had allergies and the allergist wasn’t keen on the plants. It is true that a person could be allergic to a plant itself or the mold in the soil of the plant, and that would be bad. Eventually, I decided the benefits may outweigh the risks. I stick to non-flowering plants mostly, and ones that don’t need to be watered often. The soil dries out, and I avoid disturbing the soil and stirring up the mold that is surely in it. We have been fine that way.
Often, you can purchase plants that are small at a reasonable price. They grow! In some cases, you can propagate new ones from your growing plants; I have acquired many pothos plants this way! Find out which plants are especially beneficial here.
You can improve your health!
Now, you have ten affordable possibilities to consider as you improve your health! As you have noticed by now, these are also pretty easy things to implement in terms of time and energy as well as budget. Blessings on your efforts to be well!