What would happen if tomorrow morning you simply stopped treating your body like shit?
You stopped smoking. You stopped drinking too much. You stopped filling yourself with lousy food. You started sleeping properly, moving every day and giving your body more of what it actually needs.
How long would it take before things started changing?
That question fascinates me.
At 74, I have spent most of my life paying attention to what happens when I change the way I treat my body. I believe the human body has an enormous ability to recover when we stop working against it and start giving it better conditions.
That does not mean every disease disappears or every bit of damage can be reversed. Life is not that simple.
But I think our bodies are capable of a hell of a lot more recovery than many of us give them credit for.
Your Body Starts Responding When the Inputs Change
I like to think of health partly in terms of inputs.
What are you putting into your body every day?
Food. Alcohol. Cigarette smoke. Sleep. Movement. Stress. Fresh air. Sunlight. Sitting. Exercise. All of these things become part of the environment your body has to live in.
If the inputs are lousy year after year, it should not surprise us when the body begins struggling.
But here is the part that interests me most: when you change the inputs, the body can start responding surprisingly quickly.
Look at What Happens When Someone Stops Smoking
Smoking gives us one of the clearest examples.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the body begins changing almost immediately after the last cigarette.
Heart rate begins to drop within minutes. Within about a day, nicotine in the blood falls to zero. Within several days, carbon monoxide levels fall to those seen in someone who does not smoke.
Then the longer repair begins.
Over the following months, coughing and shortness of breath can decrease. Over the following years, the risks of heart attack, stroke, heart disease and several cancers continue to fall.
Think about that.
The body does not say, “Well, you smoked for 20 years, so there is no point trying now.”
It starts responding to the new conditions.
What Happens When You Stop Drinking?
Alcohol is another interesting example.
In one study of people who normally drank moderate to fairly heavy amounts of alcohol, one month of abstinence was associated with improvements in insulin resistance, blood pressure, body weight and several liver-related measurements.
One month.
That does not mean everybody gets the same results, and it does not mean all alcohol-related damage disappears in 30 days.
It does show something important to me: remove a regular stress on the body and measurable changes can begin happening fairly quickly.
There is one important exception. Someone who is physically dependent on alcohol should not simply stop drinking abruptly without appropriate help, because alcohol withdrawal itself can be dangerous.
Movement Starts Changing Things Too
You do not have to spend six months in a gym before exercise starts doing something useful.
Researchers have found that even a single session of exercise can improve insulin sensitivity for a period afterward.
That fascinates me because it shows how responsive the body really is.
You move today, and your physiology can respond today.
Then you move again tomorrow.
And the next day.
That is one reason I believe so strongly in daily movement. It does not always have to be a formal workout. Walk. Stretch. Lift something. Take the stairs. Put on some music and dance around the room.
What matters to me is that the body gets the message: we are still using this thing.
Your Gut Responds to What You Feed It
People talk a lot about the gut microbiome and dysbiosis these days.
I am careful with those words because the gut is enormously complicated, and I don’t believe anybody has identified one perfect microbiome that everybody should have.
But we do know that the organisms living in our digestive system respond to what we eat.
In a well-known human study of diet and the gut microbiome, researchers found that changing the diet produced measurable changes in the gut microbial community within a remarkably short period of time.
Again, the message I take from that is simple.
Your body is paying attention to what you feed it.
If your diet is dominated by highly processed food and you replace more of it with vegetables, fruit, beans, whole foods, quality protein and other foods that agree with you, you are changing the environment inside your body.
You don’t have to eat perfectly. I certainly don’t believe health requires perfection.
But better inputs give the body something better to work with.
Sleep Is Part of the Reset Too
Sleep is another one we tend to underestimate.
You cannot continuously rob yourself of sleep and expect the rest of your physiology not to notice.
Research has found that sleep restriction can negatively affect insulin sensitivity, appetite and metabolic health. A review of controlled sleep studies found measurable metabolic effects when people were deprived of adequate sleep.
I don’t think one good night’s sleep magically repairs years of poor sleep.
But if you begin sleeping properly night after night, you have removed yet another obstacle your body was constantly being forced to deal with.
Can Prediabetes Improve? Absolutely, for Some People
This is where things get even more interesting.
Some health problems that look as though they are moving in one direction do not necessarily have to keep moving that way.
In the large Diabetes Prevention Program, some people with prediabetes returned to normal glucose regulation. Those who did had a substantially lower risk of later developing diabetes than people whose blood sugar remained in the prediabetes range.
You can read the long-term Diabetes Prevention Program findings here.
That does not mean everyone can reverse prediabetes simply by trying harder.
It means physiology is not necessarily frozen in place.
That is an enormously important distinction.
So How Long Does a Real Health Reset Take?
There is no single answer.
Some changes begin within minutes.
Some begin within hours or days.
Others take weeks, months or years.
It depends on what you have been doing, how long you have been doing it, your age, your genetics, how much damage has already occurred and what changes you actually make.
Some damage may never completely disappear.
But I don’t think that is a reason to throw up your hands.
If you have been driving in the wrong direction for ten years, the fact that it may take time to get back does not mean you keep driving the wrong way.
You turn the damn car around.
You Don’t Have to Change Everything in One Day
This is where people often make health harder than it needs to be.
They think they have to completely rebuild their life overnight.
I don’t believe that.
Maybe you start walking every morning.
Maybe you stop smoking.
Maybe you stop drinking for a while.
Maybe you replace one lousy meal every day with real food.
Maybe you stop staying up until two in the morning watching television.
Maybe you stand up more often instead of sitting for hours.
Maybe you start doing five minutes of exercise instead of waiting until you have the motivation to do an hour.
Pick something that is hurting you and stop doing it.
Pick something that helps you and start doing more of it.
Then repeat.
This Is What Prevention Means to Me
For me, this is the heart of prevention.
It is not sitting around waiting until something is seriously wrong and then asking somebody else to repair the damage.
It is recognizing that what you do every day matters.
The food matters.
The movement matters.
The sleep matters.
The smoking matters.
The drinking matters.
The little things you repeat thousands of times matter.
And that means the little things you change can matter too.
Your Body Is Not Keeping Score Against You
I think some people reach a certain age or a certain state of health and assume the damage is done.
They think, “I haven’t looked after myself for 30 years. What’s the point now?”
I think that is exactly backwards.
The point is now.
Your body is not sitting there angry with you because of what you did ten years ago. It is responding to the conditions you are giving it today.
Give it better food today.
Move it today.
Let it sleep tonight.
Stop putting something harmful into it today.
Then do it again tomorrow.
I cannot promise that everybody can return to perfect health. Nobody can honestly make that promise.
But I absolutely believe many people can become healthier, stronger and more capable than they think by changing what they repeatedly ask their bodies to deal with.
Change the inputs and give your body a chance to change the outcome.
That is what I mean by taking responsibility for your own health.
To Your Health—and Insure Your Health Yourself!
