Seven ways to save your health

By Myatt Murphy

Don't look now, but your body is conspiring against you.

Every time you've ever stressed over work issues, skipped out on needed exercise or simply pushed your vegetables to the side of the plate, your body has been busy remembering and making you pay for it ever since. Hypertension, adult-onset diabetes, cancer, heart disease and most other major diseases are more the result of how you have treated yourself in the past than genetics, says Pamela M. Peeke, M.D., M.P.H., assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and author of Fight Fat After Forty (Viking, 2000).

Neglecting seemingly small things in your lifestyle can have a cumulative effect that usually doesn't show itself until serious damage has been done. "Taking the critical steps that can change your life for the better doesn't have to mean a lot of thinking and tremendous sacrifice," Peeke says. With the help of a few experts, we found seven surprisingly simple changes that you can make right now, and any single one can improve your health significantly without requiring as much effort as you would expect. If you're ready to change your life for the better, these easy-to-follow tips may be your best approach.

1. Get one more hour of sleep.
The average woman needs eight-and-a-half to nine hours of sleep, but typically gets only six to seven. That one- to two-hour loss can have more bad effects than just a set of saggy eyes. "Studies have suggested that sleep deprivation can affect every aspect of how the body functions, from the ability to memorize and logically reason to the repair of neurons and development of muscle," says Paul T. Gross, M.D., director of the sleep disorders center at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Mass. Finding time for an extra hour or two of sleep a day can decrease your risk of being affected, but to boost bedtime, aim to: