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Essay on Healthy Lifestyle

The top secret of being physically fit is adopting a healthy lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle includes regular exercise, a healthy diet, taking good care of self, healthy sleep habits, and having a physically active daily routine. Lifestyle is the most prevailing factor that affects one’s fitness level. A person leading a sedentary lifestyle has a low fitness level whereas living a healthier life not only makes a person fit but also extends life. Good health has a direct impact on our personality. A person with a good and healthy lifestyle is generally more confident, self-assured, sociable, and energetic.

A good and healthy lifestyle allows one to relish and savor all the pleasures in life without any complications. Even all the wealth is less valuable when compared to sound health. Having all the luxuries in the world does not fulfill its purpose when one is continuously ill, depressed, or suffering from a significant health complication. A healthy person has a clear and calm perception of everything without prejudice. His actions and decisions are more practical and logical and are hence more successful in life.

A good habit is a key factor for a healthy lifestyle. To maintain a stable body and mind, one needs to inculcate good habits. Waking up early in the morning, regularly exercising or a good morning walk helps to keep our body energetic and refresh our mind. Maintaining a balanced and nutritious diet throughout the day is vital for maintaining a good lifestyle. Too much indulgence in alcohol or smoking excessively is not at all appropriate for a healthy lifestyle.

Self-Discipline

Self-discipline is important for maintaining a good lifestyle. When we are self-disciplined then we are more organized and regular in maintaining good health. A disciplined life is a regulated life. A man without discipline is a ship without a rudder. Discipline needs self-control. One who cannot control himself can seldom control others. The level of discipline and perseverance largely determines a person’s success. Self-discipline is the act of disciplining one’s own feelings, desires, etc. especially with the intention of improving oneself. It strengthens our willpower. The stronger our will power the positive will be our decision. It enables us to conquer our own self.

Punctuality

Punctuality is the habit of doing things on time. It is the characteristic of every successful person and everyone must observe punctuality in order to win success in life. Punctuality is necessary for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It should become a habit with us. A punctual person is able to fulfill all his responsibilities and hence is treated with respect in society. It is needed in every walk of life.

Diet is an important component for overall fitness and works best in combination with exercise. A balanced diet and exercise regularly help to maintain good health. It is necessary to reduce weight if one is overweight or obese, failing which one cannot be physically fit for long. For people with obesity, more exercise and a strict regime are necessary, preferably under guidance. There are many ways of making the diet healthier.

Use less sugar and salt while cooking food.

Use less oil while cooking. Avoid deep-frying as much as possible. 

Eat more fruits daily. They provide more vitamins and minerals to our bodies.

Add sprouts of gram and moong dal to at least one meal in a day. Add fiber to your diet. Use whole grains instead of polished cereals. Eat lots of salad and yogurt.

Eat fermented food regularly. Fermented food contains many useful bacteria that help in the process of digestion.

Prevention of Lifestyle Diseases

By adopting a healthy lifestyle one can avoid lifestyle diseases. The following are some ways in which we can prevent lifestyle diseases.

Eat a balanced diet that contains important nutrients. One must include more fresh fruits and green vegetables in the diet. Refrain from eating junk food. Stay away from foods that contain large amounts of salt or sugar.

Exercise regularly. Spend more time outdoors and do activities such as walking, running, swimming, and cycling.

One must avoid overindulgence in alcohol, junk food, smoking, and addiction to drugs and medicines.

Avoid spending too much on modern gadgets like mobile phones, laptops, televisions, etc. Spend time on these gadgets for short intervals of time only.

Set a healthy sleeping routine for every day. Waking early in the morning and going to bed early at night should be a daily habit. Lead an active life.

Unhealthy Lifestyle

Bad food habits and an unhealthy lifestyle such as less or no physical activity may lead to several diseases like obesity, high blood pressure or hypertension, diabetes, anemia, and various heart diseases. An unhealthy lifestyle reduces productivity and creativity in a person. It also adversely affects moods and relationships. It leads to depression and anxiety in human beings.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle not only makes a person confident and productive but also drives him to success. A person with a healthy lifestyle will enjoy both personal and social life.

FAQs on Healthy Lifestyle Essay

What Do You Understand about a Healthy Lifestyle?

A healthy lifestyle is a lifestyle that includes regular exercise, a healthy diet, taking good care of self, healthy sleep habits and having a physically active daily routine.

How is Punctuality Important for Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle?

Punctuality is the habit of doing things on time. It is the characteristic of every successful person and everyone must observe punctuality in order to win success in life. It should become a habit with us. A punctual person is able to fulfil all his responsibilities and hence is treated with respect in society. It is needed in every walk of life.

What Happens When One Does Not Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle?

When one does not maintain a healthy lifestyle then several diseases like obesity, high blood pressure or hypertension, diabetes, anaemia and various heart diseases can occur. An unhealthy lifestyle reduces productivity and creativity in a person. It also adversely affects moods and relationships. It leads to depression and anxiety in human beings.

What are the Main Factors that Determine a Good and Healthy Lifestyle?

In order to maintain a good and healthy lifestyle, one must be self-disciplined, self-motivated, maintain punctuality and have good habits like waking early in the morning and maintain a regular fitness regime and a balanced and nutritious diet.

Is writing an essay hard?

Essay writing is a difficult task that needs a great deal of study, time, and focus. It's also an assignment that you can divide down into manageable chunks such as introduction, main content, and conclusion. Breaking down and focusing on each individually makes essay writing more pleasant. It's natural for students to be concerned about writing an essay. It's one of the most difficult tasks to do, especially for people who aren't confident in their writing abilities. While writing a decent essay is difficult, the secret to being proficient at it is reading a lot of books, conducting extensive research on essential topics, and practicing essay writing diligently.

Why is it important for one to aspire to have a healthy lifestyle?

A healthy lifestyle is an important way for reducing the occurrence and impact of health problems, as well as for recovery, coping with life stressors, and improving the overall quality of life. An increasing collection of scientific data suggests that our habits have a significant impact on our health. Everything we eat and drink, as well as how much exercise we get and whether we smoke or use drugs, has an impact on our health, not just in terms of life expectancy but also in terms of how long we may expect to live without developing chronic illness. A large proportion of fatalities are caused by conditions such as heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, joint disease, and mental illness. A healthy lifestyle can help to avoid or at least delay the onset of many health issues.

How to download the Essay on Healthy Lifestyle from the Vedantu website?

The Essay on Healthy Lifestyle, which is accurate and well-structured, is available for download on the Vedantu website. The Essay is accessible in PDF format on Vedantu's official website and may be downloaded for free. Students should download the Essay on Healthy Lifestyle from the Vedantu website to obtain a sense of the word limit, sentence structure, and fundamental grasp of what makes a successful essay. Vedantu essay is brief and appropriate for youngsters in school. It is written in basic English, which is ideal for kids who have a restricted vocabulary. Following the Vedantu essay ensures that students are adequately prepared for any essay subject and that they will receive high grades. Click here to read the essay about a healthy lifestyle.

Who prepares the Essay for Vedantu?

The Essay on Healthy Lifestyle designed for the Vedantu is created by a group of experts and experienced teachers. The panel of experts has created the essay after analyzing important essay topics that have been repeatedly asked in various examinations. The Essays that are provided by Vedantu are not only well-structured but also accurate and concise. They are aptly suited for young students with limited vocabulary. For best results, the students are advised to go through multiple essays and practice the topics on their own to inculcate the habits of time management and speed.

What constitutes a healthy lifestyle?

Healthy life is built on the pillars of a good diet, frequent exercise, and appropriate sleep. A healthy lifestyle keeps people in excellent shape, it also gives you more energy throughout the day, and lowers your chance of developing many diet-related chronic diseases. Healthy living is considered a lifestyle choice that allows you to enjoy more elements of your life. Taking care of one's physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being is part of living a healthy lifestyle.

Good Nutrition, Eating Right and proper diet.

Getting Physically Fit, Beneficial Exercise and working out often.

Adequate rest and uninterrupted sleep.

Proper Stress Management.

Self-Supportive Attitudes.

Positive Thoughts are encouraged.

Positive Self-Image and body image.

Inner Calmness and peace.

Openness to Your Creativity and Self-care.

Trust in Your Inner Knowing and your gut feeling.

Essays About Health: Top 5 Examples and 7 Prompts

Almost everyone would agree that health is the most important thing in life. Check out our guide on writing essays about health.

The concept of health is simple. It is the condition where you are well and free from disease or illness. When we are healthy, we are happier, more productive, and able to live a full life. There are many types of health, each helping us to survive and excel in different areas of our life, including physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional health.

In the same ways, there are different ways to stay healthy, such as exercise, socialization, and self-care. These areas of health may not all be equally important, but each of them plays a vital role in making us the best versions of ourselves we can be. You might also find our medical words list helpful.

5 Top Essay Examples

1. essay on how to keep healthy by diwakar sharma, 2. what it’s like living with depression: a personal essay by nadine dirks, 3. the advantages of eating healthy food by lindsay boyers.

• 4.  A Helping Hand: An Essay On The Importance Of Mental Health Parity by Sydney Waltner

5. ​​Stop Trying to be Happy: Improving Your Emotional Health by Jacquelynn Lyon

7 prompts for essays about health, 1. what is the most important type of health, 2. do television and video games negatively impact mental , 3. freedom and public health, 4. how can you live a healthier life, 5. what causes depression, 6. mental health and eating disorders, 7. is “spiritual health” really necessary.

“I think there is no use in earning money in such a way that denies our health. Money is not important than health as it cannot return health and fitness back once we are ill. Thus health is always preferred over money as good health keeps us happy and free from various health issues. If we are healthy we can earn whole life but can’t earn if the health gets deteriorated.”

Sharma discusses the importance of health and ways to stay healthy, including eating nutritious food, drinking water, keeping a good sleep schedule, and exercising. In addition, he notes that it is essential to prioritize your health; do not work too hard or chase money to the extent that it affects your health negatively. You can also check out these articles about cancer .

“I was pleasantly surprised when—after around three weeks—I started feeling results. My intense feeling of overwhelming sadness and hopelessness slowly started to lift and the fears I had about not feeling like myself dissipated. I had worried I would feel less like myself on fluoxetine, but instead for the first time, in a long time—I felt more like myself and able to function throughout the day. Receiving treatment and building healthy coping mechanisms has allowed me to continue to function, even when a depressive episode hits.”

Depression is one of the first things people think of concerning mental health. In her essay, Dirks reflects on her experiences with depression, recalling her feelings of hopelessness and sadness, putting her in a dull, lethargic mood. However, she got help by going to a doctor and starting medication and therapy. Dirks also lists down a few symptoms of depression, warning readers to get help if they are experiencing a number of them.

“A healthful diet is just as good for your brain as the rest of your body. Unhealthy foods are linked to a range of neurological problems. Certain nutrient deficiencies increasing the risk of depression. Other nutrients, like potassium, actually involved in brain cell function. A varied, healthful diet keeps your brain functioning properly, and it can promote good mental health as well.”

Boyers discusses some benefits of healthy eating, such as weight control, reduced risk of diabetes and cancer, and better brain function- an unhealthy diet is linked to neurological problems. She gives readers tips on what they should and should not eat in huge quantities, saying to avoid sugary foods and drinks while eating lean meat, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. You might also be interested in these essays about nursing and essays about obesity .

4.   A Helping Hand: An Essay On The Importance Of Mental Health Parity by Sydney Waltner

“For three years I was one of those people hiding my illness. I was quietly suffering from depression and an eating disorder. My whole day revolved around my eating disorder and hiding it from everyone. This caused a lot of sadness, anger, and loneliness. I not only hid it from others, but I also tried to hide it from myself. I tried to convince myself that nothing was wrong because I did not fully understand what was happening.  I did not know what was making me hurt myself and why I could not stop.”

Waltner writes her essay about the importance of mental health and how it can also affect one’s physical health. She recalls her experiences with hiding her depression and eating disorder; they led to her immense suffering, but her parents discovered her illness before it was too late. She is grateful for how her life is now and encourages others to break the stigma around mental health issues and speak up if something is wrong with them. 

“Beautiful people, smart people, funny people, leaders, lawyers, engineers, professional clowns, everyone you’ve ever looked up to — they have suffered in their lives, and probably will continue to suffer at some point.”

The obsession with making yourself happy will forever have you either not valuing the present or will lead to despair when you do find it — and it’s still not enough. This cycle of self-abuse, dissatisfaction, and emotional isolation can paralyze us, hinder our actions, and mar our self-perception.

Lyon reflects on something she discovered in her first year of college: that it’s fine if you’re not always happy. She says that society’s pressure for everyone to be positive and happy 100% of the time is detrimental to many people’s emotional and mental health. As a result, she gives readers tips on being happy in a “healthier” way: happiness should not be forced, and you should not constantly compare yourself to others. 

There are many types of health, each playing an essential role in helping us live well. If you were to pick one, which do you believe is the most important? You can choose mental well-being, physical well-being, or spiritual well-being. Use your personal experiences in defending your choice; be sure to support your stance with sufficient details. 

For a strong argumentative essay, write about the correlation between “screen time” or video games and television with mental health. Are they that bad for people’s mental health? Perhaps they are good for the mental health of some people. Research this topic and support your response with credible sources- there is no wrong answer as long as it is well-defended. For an interesting piece, conduct interviews to gather information.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many argue that some freedoms must be given up for the greater good. These include mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and stay-at-home orders. Write about whether or not public health should be prioritized over “individual liberty” and why. If so, to what extent? Answer this question in your own words for a compelling argument.

Like many of our cited essay examples above, you can write your essay on how to stay healthy. Give your readers some mental, physical, or social guidelines for being healthier, and explain why they are important. You can even do a more well-rounded guide; give a few tips for each type of health if you wish. 

As stated previously, a prevalent health issue is depression, which can stem from various factors. Look into the different causes of depression and explain how they lead to depression. In this essay, you can share your research on social factors, economic factors, and health conditions that can make a person more susceptible to depression. As this is a medical-related topic, use credible sources for your research. 

Many believe there is a correlation between mental health and obesity, anorexia, and bulimia—research how mental health issues can cause these issues or vice versa, depending on what you find. In your essay, explain the link between mental health issues and eating disorders and how they can affect each other.

A type of health commonly listed is spiritual health, which many religious people value. Should it be classified as something different? Many believe the components of “spiritual health” already fall under mental, social, emotional, and social health, so there is no need to classify it as something different. Reflect on this issue and discuss your stance. 

For help with this topic, read our guide explaining “what is persuasive writing ?”

If you’re stuck picking an essay topic, check out our guide on how to write essays about depression .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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Healthy Living Guide 2020/2021

A digest on healthy eating and healthy living.

As we transition from 2020 into 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect nearly every aspect of our lives. For many, this health crisis has created a range of unique and individual impacts—including food access issues, income disruptions, and emotional distress.

Although we do not have concrete evidence regarding specific dietary factors that can reduce risk of COVID-19, we do know that maintaining a healthy lifestyle is critical to keeping our immune system strong. Beyond immunity, research has shown that individuals following five key habits—eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, keeping a healthy body weight, not drinking too much alcohol, and not smoking— live more than a decade longer than those who don’t. Plus, maintaining these practices may not only help us live longer, but also better. Adults following these five key habits at middle-age were found to live more years free of chronic diseases including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.

While sticking to healthy habits is often easier said than done, we created this guide with the goal of providing some tips and strategies that may help. During these particularly uncertain times, we invite you to do what you can to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and hopefully (if you’re able to try out a new recipe or exercise, or pick up a fulfilling hobby) find some enjoyment along the way.

Download a copy of the Healthy Living Guide (PDF) featuring printable tip sheets and summaries, or access the full online articles through the links below. 

In this issue:

• Understanding the body’s immune system
• Does an immune-boosting diet exist?
• The role of the microbiome
• A closer look at vitamin and herbal supplements
• 8 tips to support a healthy immune system
• A blueprint for building healthy meals
• Food feature: lentils 
• Strategies for eating well on a budget
• Practicing mindful eating
• What is precision nutrition?
• Ketogenic diet
• Intermittent fasting
• Gluten-free
• 10 tips to keep moving
• Exercise safety
• Spotlight on walking for exercise
• How does chronic stress affect eating patterns?
• Ways to help control stress
• How much sleep do we need?
• Why do we dream?
• Sleep deficiency and health
• Tips for getting a good night’s rest

How to be Healthy Essay

Introduction, keeping fit, eating well, maintain a healthy weight, getting enough sleep, lifestyle choices.

Almost every person hopes to have a long, healthy life. However, many persons do not recognize the fundamental life choices that when made, can enable them live healthy, and often take these choices to be sacrifices that are not worth making. Choosing to adopt a healthy lifestyle has several benefits to the body such as a significant improvement of life expectancy, having a life free of disease and ailments, having a fit body, and the overall well being of the body.

Today, most of us focus on making outside changes in order to look healthy, such as using cosmetics. What we do not realize is that what we put in our body and how we handle it ultimately determines how we look, feel, energy levels, and the general health of the body. In order to be healthy, a person does not necessarily have to make radical changes to the lifestyle, rather, it involves making simple small changes to everyday life.

Changes such as taking the stairs instead of the lift, adding a fruit to a meal, having a glass of water at every opportune instance, and eating snacks in moderation are just some of the few steps to having a healthy life. In order to live healthy, a person should focus on keeping fit, eating healthy, checking on their weight, getting enough sleep, and avoiding risky behaviors such as smoking and taking alcohol in moderation.

One of the greatest impediments to living healthy is the lack of physical activity. Although many people recognize the benefits of keeping fit, they avoid it either because they think it is a waste of time, or they are used to a sedentary lifestyle. The truth is, the more a person engages in physical activity, the healthier they become.

Physical activity does not have to be vigorous, in fact, even simple activities such as gardening, walking, and partaking in domestic chores can greatly improve one’s health. Even recreational activities such as cycling, dancing and swimming can help in keeping fit.

The benefits of physical activity include a reduction of the risks of heart diseases and diabetes, improvement of mental health, strengthening of bones and muscles, and helping with a number of health niggles such as digestion and poor posture, among other benefits.

Eating well entails striving to have a balanced diet at all instances. A good diet not only helps in weight management, but it can also improve a person’s health and the overall quality of life. Every meal should include plenty of fruits and vegetables, grain products and legumes, but less of foods that contain more calories and fats. Although proteins rich foods such as meats are important to the body, they should be taken in moderation, and the focus should be on leaner meats (mainly white meat) and foods with little or no fat.

Consuming dairy products with little or no fats, such as skimmed milk, is another simple plan for reducing the quantity of calories entering the body. Eating habits such as eating while one is not hungry, skipping breakfast, and eating fast should be avoided. A person should also strive to drink as much water as possible since the body requires at least 8 cups of water each day.

One major step to being healthy is to maintain a healthy weight, and this may entail shedding off excess weight, gaining weight for underage persons, or maintaining that ideal weight. Eating right and participating in physical activities can go a long way in having a healthy weight and avoiding the health problems arising from being overweight.

To avoid being overweight or to shed off the extra pounds, a person should avoid high-calorie foods, or consume them in moderation and partake in regular physical activity. Trying to gain weight can be more difficult than losing weight. In gaining weight, one must not focus on consuming junk foods or snacks as this can clog the arteries and lead to heart diseases. Calories and fats must be obtained from healthy foods.

Failure to have enough sleep can have a negative impact on a person’s life, for instance, people who sleep less than seven hours a day are more exposed to catarrhal diseases than those who sleep for at least eight hours. The need for sleep varies among different persons, therefore, one should determine his/her own sleep requirements, and strive to have adequate sleep every day. As a caution, alcohol, or any other drug, should not be used to induce sleep as this would only lead to a pass out, not sleep.

Lifestyle choices such as avoiding cigarettes, avoiding excess calories from alcohol, sugar and fats, reducing the intake of high-fat foods, and partaking in physical activities should be emphasized on a day-to-day basis. Although alcohol has been found to be important to the body, it should be taken in moderation as it exposes the body to harmful compounds (cigarettes have the same effect).

All of us aspire to be healthy and engage in different activities to achieve this objective, however, there is no single way of ensuring that we are healthy for the rest our life. A healthy life is a cumulative product of various activities as outlined above, and discarding certain choices. The activities outlined must be observed on a day-to-day basis, and this does not have to mean making drastic changes, it is the simple, small changes that lead to a healthy life. In fact, drastic changes can lead to failure, or other side effects.

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IvyPanda. (2018, October 12). How to be Healthy. https://ivypanda.com/essays/how-to-be-healthy/

"How to be Healthy." IvyPanda , 12 Oct. 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/how-to-be-healthy/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'How to be Healthy'. 12 October.

IvyPanda . 2018. "How to be Healthy." October 12, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/how-to-be-healthy/.

1. IvyPanda . "How to be Healthy." October 12, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/how-to-be-healthy/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "How to be Healthy." October 12, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/how-to-be-healthy/.

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Healthy Lifestyle Essay

A happy life is built on a healthy lifestyle. Even though it doesn't take much to lead this lifestyle, many individuals today find it difficult to do so for a variety of reasons, including work obligations, a lack of motivation, and personal problems. Nowadays, maintaining a healthy lifestyle requires a lot of resolve. Our health often takes a backseat since we have so many things to get done throughout the day. Realising the need of living a healthy lifestyle and comprehending how to do so are crucial. Here are a few sample essays on healthy lifestyles.

100 Words Essay On Healthy Lifestyle

A balanced diet, frequent exercise, getting enough sleep, being happy, and having a positive mindset are just a few examples of the many activities that make up a healthy lifestyle. When we make the necessary efforts to live a healthy lifestyle, our lives are headed in the right direction. If you want to be happy and feel well now and in the future, a healthy lifestyle is vital. You may decide to live a healthy lifestyle for the rest of your life. You not only live longer but also become healthier and less prone to diseases and disorders as a result of it. A healthy lifestyle is what we should all strive towards.

200 Words Essay On Healthy Lifestyle

Practically everyone, including publications, social media sites, and television, uses the term healthy lifestyle. Through these channels, the need of living a healthy lifestyle is emphasised, yet individuals continue to lead unhealthier lifestyles and ultimately pay the price for it. Living a healthy lifestyle is essential to our daily lives. Having good eating habits, getting enough sleep, and fitting in some physical activity each day are the essential components of a healthy lifestyle. However, the majority of individuals disregard their health in favour of their everyday obligations. The worst thing you can do to yourself is to ignore your health. Many individuals only become aware of this after experiencing health problems.

It's time for people to realise how crucial good health is and how only being healthy will allow us to work effectively on other elements of our life. Just a few little adjustments to the daily schedule are needed to develop these healthy behaviours. Once these modifications become habits, you will soon be living a healthy lifestyle.

To prevent such health problems later in life, it is preferable to set aside some time to practise the healthy behaviours discussed above while you are still young and active.

500 Words Essay On Healthy Lifestyle

It is simple to develop unhealthy habits, but it takes some work to undo them and adopt a healthy lifestyle. Despite how frequently the significance of leading a healthy lifestyle has been emphasised, few people take it seriously. Even those who want to follow it to better their way of life often fail since it requires a lot of willpower to do so. Instead of going overboard, it is advised to take things slowly. Over time, this will assist you in achieving your objective. Here are some tips for creating wholesome habits and leading a healthy lifestyle.

Avoid Bad Habits

Smoking | To live a healthy lifestyle, you must first give up smoking and any other tobacco products to which you may be hooked. It is evident that this cannot be done in a single day and would not be simple. It is advised to seek expert assistance to stop doing the same over time.

Alcohol Numerous health problems might result from excessive drinking. If you are addicted to it, it is advised that you seek professional assistance as well as support from your friends and family to break the habit.

Fast Food | These days, ordering takeaway and eating junk for most of the week has almost become religious. It's time to reduce your consumption of fast food and replace it with wholesome home-cooked meals. You will maintain your health and physical fitness by doing this.

Screen Dependence | Nowadays, the majority of individuals are addicted to their phone displays. You need to stop doing this harmful practice right away. You also need to refrain from watching too much TV or using the computer for too long.

Avoiding Meals- | Nowadays, a lot of individuals choose to skip meals because they are so preoccupied with their work. The majority of people are often busy in the morning, therefore there is a propensity to skip breakfast to fit in other responsibilities. The harshest punishment you can ever give your body is this.

Overusing medication | Many individuals search for quick fixes to ease their physical and emotional suffering, and taking a pill or two is one certain solution. For these individuals, painkillers work best, but it is important to understand that they only provide brief comfort and may have harmful side effects.

It's time to adopt healthy routines. Knowing the behaviours to avoid can help you take steps to stop doing them and replace them with healthy ones. You may take the following actions in this direction:

Restrict your interactions with those who smoke, drink, or engage in other harmful behaviours.

Remind yourself of the advantages of living healthfully.

Do your best to surround yourself with individuals who live the lifestyle you want.

Spend your spare time engaging in your interests and activities so you won't have time for bad habits.

Engage in physical activity to encourage endorphin production. This is a fantastic method to avoid stress and all of its harmful effects.

A balanced diet, regular exercise, sufficient sleep, happiness, and optimism all contribute to a healthy lifestyle. We are living well when we maintain a healthy lifestyle. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is crucial for your happiness now and in the future.

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Essay on How To Stay Healthy

Students are often asked to write an essay on How To Stay Healthy in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on How To Stay Healthy

Eating right.

Eating healthy is key to staying fit. Include fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy in your meals. Drink plenty of water instead of soda. Treats like candy are okay sometimes, but not too much.

Staying Active

Exercise is important. Aim for an hour of physical activity every day. This can be sports, dancing, or just playing outside. Moving your body keeps your heart strong and helps you feel good.

Getting Enough Sleep

Sleep is like charging your body. Kids need 9-12 hours every night. A good sleep helps you think better and stay alert during the day.

Staying Clean

Germs can make you sick. Wash your hands with soap, take a bath regularly, and keep your surroundings clean to avoid illness.

Managing Stress

Too much worry is bad for health. Relax by doing things you enjoy. Talk to friends or family when you’re upset; it helps to share your feelings.

Also check:

• Paragraph on How To Stay Healthy

250 Words Essay on How To Stay Healthy

To stay healthy, the food you eat is very important. Imagine your body is like a car; it needs the right fuel to run well. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables because they are like the best gas for your body. Try to eat a rainbow of colors from these foods every day. Also, eat foods with protein like chicken, fish, beans, or nuts. These are like the car’s building blocks to help fix and grow parts of the body.

Moving your body is another key to good health. It’s like taking your car out for a drive so it doesn’t get rusty. Kids should play, run, or do sports for at least one hour every day. This helps your muscles get stronger, your heart pump better, and it can even make you feel happier.

Sleep is when your body fixes itself and gets ready for a new day. It’s like turning off your car’s engine to let it cool down. Most kids need about 9 to 12 hours of sleep each night. Make sure to go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning.

Drinking Water

Water is super important for your body. It’s like the oil that keeps everything running smoothly. Try to drink several glasses of water every day, and even more if you’re playing sports or it’s really hot outside.

Keeping your body clean helps you avoid getting sick. It’s like keeping your car nice and shiny. Wash your hands with soap, take showers, and brush your teeth twice a day to stay clean and healthy.

500 Words Essay on How To Stay Healthy

To stay healthy, one of the most important things you can do is eat good foods. Imagine your body is like a car. Just like a car needs the right fuel to run well, your body needs healthy food to work properly. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables because they are full of vitamins that help your body fight off sickness. Try to eat a rainbow of colors from different fruits and veggies each day. Also, eat whole grains like brown rice and whole wheat bread instead of white rice and white bread. Whole grains have more nutrients and fiber. It’s also good to have proteins like chicken, fish, beans, and nuts. Remember to drink plenty of water to keep your body hydrated.

Being Active

Our bodies are made to move, not just sit around. Kids should play and run for at least one hour every day. This helps your muscles grow strong and keeps your heart healthy. You don’t have to do sports if you don’t like them. You can dance, ride a bike, or even help out with chores around the house. Anything that gets you moving is good. When you are active, your body can work better, and you even sleep better at night.

Sleep is like a charger for our bodies. When you sleep, your body fixes itself and gets ready for the next day. Kids need more sleep than adults because they are still growing. Most kids need about 9 to 12 hours of sleep each night. To sleep well, have a bedtime routine. This means doing the same relaxing things every night before bed, like reading a book or taking a warm bath. Try to go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning, even on weekends.

Keeping yourself clean is a simple way to stay healthy. Germs can make you sick, but washing your hands with soap and water gets rid of them. Always wash your hands before eating, after using the bathroom, and when you come inside from playing. It’s also good to take a bath or shower every day and brush your teeth twice a day to keep your body clean.

Being Happy

Being happy is a big part of being healthy. When you’re happy, your body feels good too. Spend time with friends and family, and do things you enjoy. Laughing and having fun can actually help your body fight off sickness. If you’re feeling sad or upset, it’s okay to talk to someone you trust, like a parent or teacher. Talking about your feelings can make you feel better.

Staying healthy is about taking care of your body by eating right, being active, getting enough sleep, staying clean, and being happy. When you take care of your body, you can do better in school and have more fun playing with your friends. Remember, little steps can make a big difference in how good you feel. So try to make healthy choices every day!

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on How To Prevent Dengue
• Essay on How The Earth Was Formed
• Essay on How The Brain Works

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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• Keep Active & Eat Healthy to Improve Well-being & Feel Great

Keep Active & Eat Healthy to Improve Well-being & Feel Great

On this page:

Why should I move more and eat better?

Should i talk to a health care professional before starting a physical activity program, how much physical activity do i need, how can i handle roadblocks to becoming more active, how can i eat healthier, how can reading the nutrition facts label help me, how can i handle roadblocks to healthy eating, how can i eat well when away from home, i can do it, clinical trials.

Eating foods that are good for you and staying physically active may help you reach and maintain a healthy weight and improve how you feel. You also may find that moving more and eating better could help you keep up with the demands of your busy life and be there for the people who depend on you.

In addition to helping you reach and maintain a healthy weight, staying active and eating better may lower your chances of developing

• type 2 diabetes , or high blood sugar
• high blood pressure
• kidney disease
• heart disease
• certain kinds of cancer

But improving your health isn’t the only reason to move more and eat better. You may also

• have more energy for work, play, and family
• feel better about yourself
• manage stress better
• set a good example for your children, friends, and other family members
• tone your body—without losing your curves

Your family, friends, and coworkers can be a great source of support as you work to adopt healthier habits. Ask them to join your efforts. Being healthy is important for them, too. By making healthy choices together, you may find it’s easier to move more and eat better.

Most people don’t need to see a health care professional before starting a less intense physical activity, like walking . However, if you have chronic conditions, such as diabetes—or symptoms of chronic conditions—talk with a health professional about the type and amount of physical activity that’s best for you.

To maintain or improve your health, aim for 150 minutes per week—or at least 30 minutes on all or most days of the week—of moderate physical activity. Moderate activities are ones that you can talk—but not sing—while doing, such as brisk walking or dancing. These activities speed up your heart rate and breathing.

If you haven’t been active, work slowly toward the goal of 150 minutes per week. For example, start out doing light or moderate activities for shorter amounts of time throughout the week. You can gain some health benefits even if you do as little as 60 minutes of moderate physical activity a week.

For best results, spread out your physical activity throughout the week. Even 10 or 15 minutes at a time counts. And any amount of physical activity is better than none at all.

To lose weight and keep it off, you may need to be even more active. Shoot for 300 minutes per week, or an hour a day 5 days a week. On at least 2 days per week, also try activities that strengthen your muscles . Examples of these activities include workouts using hand weights or rubber strength bands.

Becoming more active isn’t easy. Different people may have different reasons for finding it hard to get moving. If some of the roadblocks below sound familiar, try the suggested tips to help you overcome them.

“I don't have time.”

Try sneaking a few minutes of physical activity at a time into your day. Get started by making these small changes in your daily routine:

• Break your physical activity up into two or three 10-minute walks a day, if you can do so safely near work or home.
• Take regular breaks from sitting at the computer or watching TV. Get up, move, and stretch by lifting your hands over your head. Twist side to side.
• Schedule time to be active as you would a hair or work appointment, and stick to your plan.

“I'm going to ruin my hairstyle.”

If you avoid being active because you don’t want to ruin your hairstyle, try

• a natural hairstyle, short haircut, braids, twists, locs, or wigs
• wrapping a scarf around your hair; when you’re done with your workout, remove the scarf and let your hair air dry.

“It costs too much.”

You can be active without spending a lot of money—or any money at all:

• Look for free or low-cost classes and activities in your community.
• Walk in a mall, or walk or jog in a park or on a school track.
• Gather friends and neighbors from your apartment complex and hold regular group workout sessions.
• Find workout videos online and on YouTube if you have internet service—or DVDs at the library—and work out at home.

“Physical activity is a chore.”

Some people may be put off by physical activity, especially if they haven’t been active for a while or got hurt and are afraid of getting injured again. However, with some planning and effort, physical activity can be enjoyable:

• Try being active with your kids—walk, jump rope, play flag football or tag, or toss a softball. Children should get an hour of physical activity each day.
• Get a friend or family member to go biking or take a dance class with you. You can cheer each other on, have company, and feel safer when you’re outdoors.
• Enjoy friendly competition with family and friends by setting a weight-loss challenge or entering a walking, biking, or running event for a worthy cause.

An example of a healthy meal includes vegetables, fruits, and small portions of protein and whole grains. These foods provide fiber and important nutrients such as vitamins and minerals. When planning meals for you and your family, think about including

• a salad or other different-colored vegetables, such as spinach; sweet potatoes; and red, green, orange, or yellow peppers
• fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products, or nondairy products such as almond or rice milk
• different-colored fruits, including apples, bananas, and grapes
• lean beef, pork, or other protein foods, such as chicken, seafood, eggs, tofu, or beans
• whole grains such as brown rice, oatmeal, whole-wheat bread, and whole-grain cornmeal

Treats are okay if you have them once in a while. Just don’t eat foods such as candy, ice cream, or cookies every day. Limit sweet treats to special occasions, and keep portions small. Have one cookie or piece of candy, rather than trying every kind.

Remember that alcohol, juices, soda, and other sweet drinks have a lot of sugar and calories.

If you can’t have milk or milk products because you have trouble digesting lactose , the sugar found in milk, try lactose-free milk or yogurt. Besides milk and milk products, you can get calcium from calcium-added cereals, juices, and drinks made from soy or nuts. Eating dark green leafy vegetables such as collard greens and kale, and canned fish with soft bones like salmon, can also help you meet your body’s calcium needs.

Reading the information on the Nutrition Facts label can help you choose foods high in fiber, vitamins, and minerals; and low in sodium , added sugars , and unhealthy fats, which federal dietary guidelines (PDF, 3.94 MB) recommend Americans limit.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Nutrition Facts label appears on most packaged foods and tells you how many calories and servings are in a box, can, or package. The label also shows how many nutrients are in one food serving. The FDA made changes in 2016 to update the Nutrition Facts label .

Eating healthy foods may seem hard when you don’t have time to cook or are on a tight budget. Try these tips to get past roadblocks that may keep you from eating well:

“I don't have time to cook healthy meals; I don’t really know how to cook.”

Eating healthy doesn’t have to take a lot of time. Nor do you need to be a chef to prepare healthy meals. Here are ways you and your family can eat better without spending a lot of time preparing meals:

• Buy frozen or precut veggies and add them to a salad or veggie wrap with pita bread for a quick meal. Or microwave the veggies and add them to whole-grain pasta.
• When you cook, make enough for extra meals. Casseroles with veggies and whole grains, and a whole cooked chicken, may last a few days so you don’t have to cook another meal every day. Be sure to freeze or refrigerate leftovers right away to keep them safe to eat.
• If you don’t feel comfortable cooking, try something easy, like combining your favorite fresh, frozen, or canned veggies to make a stir-fry. Check out websites , videos, and online blogs for more recipe ideas as your confidence builds.

“Eating well costs too much.”

You don’t have to spend a lot of money to eat well :

• Avoid buying single portions of snacks, yogurt, and other foods, which costs more. Instead, buy in bulk or larger sizes and divide into smaller portions as needed.
• Check newspaper ads for food sales. Clip coupons or print them from websites.
• Buy fruits and vegetables in season, when they’re cheaper.
• Try canned beans such as black, butter, kidney, pinto, and others. They’re loaded with protein, cost less than meat and fish, and make quick and easy additions to your meals.

Here are some ways to make healthy food choices when you’re on the go:

• Avoid heavy gravies, salad dressings, or sauces. Leave them off or ask for them on the side so you can control how much you eat.
• Try to avoid fried foods and fast food. Instead of fried chicken, order baked, broiled, or grilled chicken, or a turkey sandwich with whole-grain bread.
• Share a meal with a friend or take half of it home.
• Take healthy snacks with you to work, such as apples or fat-free yogurt with fruit.

Set specific goals and move at your own pace to reach them. For example, instead of “I’ll be more active,” set a goal such as “I’ll take a walk after lunch at least 2 days a week.” Ask your family, friends, and coworkers to help you. They can join you, cheer you on, help you get back on track after a setback, and be there to celebrate your successes!

No matter what, keep trying. You can do it!

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and other components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) conduct and support research into many diseases and conditions.

What are clinical trials, and are they right for you?

Clinical trials are part of clinical research and at the heart of all medical advances. Clinical trials look at new ways to prevent, detect, or treat disease. Researchers also use clinical trials to look at other aspects of care, such as improving the quality of life for people with chronic illnesses. Find out if clinical trials are right for you .

What clinical trials are open?

Clinical trials that are currently open and are recruiting can be viewed at www.ClinicalTrials.gov .

This content is provided as a service of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), part of the National Institutes of Health. NIDDK translates and disseminates research findings to increase knowledge and understanding about health and disease among patients, health professionals, and the public. Content produced by NIDDK is carefully reviewed by NIDDK scientists and other experts.

The NIDDK would like to thank: Anne E. Sumner, M.D., NIDDK; National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities (joint appointment)

Our wellness advice is expert-vetted . Our top picks are based on our editors’ independent research, analysis, and hands-on testing. If you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Reviews ethics statement

Take Control of Your Health by Adding These 12 Things to Your Routine

If you've been working toward improving your health, you need to check out the top 12 daily habits you should be doing.

Today is the perfect day to start taking your wellness seriously. Whether you have set goals or are just working toward healthier habits, finding your starting point is challenging. The good news is that you don't have to start big. Small changes can make a surprisingly big difference in how you feel each day. 

We have a dozen healthy habits that can help you enjoy better physical and mental health, all backed by science.

It doesn't have to stop here. See which foods you should eat for a happiness boost , hacks to handle stress and six tips to reboot your sleep habits . 

12 daily habits to improve your health

Here, we're talking about small adjustments that benefit every human. With these minor modifications to your daily routine, you can start working toward better health without having to give up a ton of time, money or enjoyment.

1. Prioritize sleep 

Going without sleep is a lot like expecting your phone to run all day on a 12% battery. Your body needs time to not just rest and recharge, but also to do important work like learning new things and solidifying memories. 

Adults should get at least seven hours of shut-eye each night. If this is a challenge for you, turn to your circadian rhythm . This is your body's natural process that should help you fall asleep, stay asleep and wake up feeling refreshed.

How do you use your circadian rhythm for better sleep ? Go to bed and get up at the same time every day.

2. Walk more 

Heading out for a stroll boosts your physical and mental health, so it's well worth adding to your list of healthy daily habits. 

On the physical front, regular walking supports your immune system, reduces joint pain and makes it easier to maintain a healthy weight. 

Any exercise helps your mental health, and that includes walking . If you want to shift your daily habits to combat symptoms of depression or anxiety or to boost your mental wellness in general, make it a point to lace up your walking shoes each day. 

3. Read for 30 minutes 

Feeling stressed? Crack open a book. One study found that a half hour of reading can have the same stress-busting effect as known sources of calm, like yoga and humor. 

Reading also does a lot for your brain, strengthening connections there. That study showed that diving into a book has both short and long-term benefits for your brain health. So to maintain the boost, make reading one of your daily habits. When you do, you'll also be actively working to fight cognitive decline as you age.

4. Meditate 

Another stress reducer and mental health booster , meditation gives you a way to tune into the present moment. In our busy, hyperconnected world, this can go a long way toward not just keeping yourself healthy, but also protecting your happiness.

Starting meditation could be as simple as doing a little reading on it and setting a timer for, say, 5 minutes each day. There are also plenty of good apps to guide you. You can even incorporate a meditative mindset into your regular activities, such as mindful eating .

Meditation gives you a way to tune into the present moment, so you can reduce stress and improve your mental health. 

5. Spend time in nature

Getting into nature can help us soothe ourselves. It offers an effective counterbalance to all the screentime built into most of our days. An expanding body of research shows that time in nature can:

• Improve our cognition
• Increase attention span
• Lower risk of mental illness
• Increase empathy and social connectedness

You can combine this with other healthy habits, like your daily walk. Ideally, aim for green (like a forest) or blue (like bodies of water) spaces during your time outdoors. 

6. Eat more plant-based foods 

You probably already know that eating nutritious food makes you feel better. As an overarching concept, healthy eating habits can feel a little vague.

So let's be specific: Work to get more plants onto your plate. A plant-supported diet helps you maintain healthy cholesterol and blood pressure levels and reduces your risk for some chronic conditions. Plants are full of the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients we need to keep our bodies working optimally.

Try to incorporate more fruit, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes into your daily meals. It might be helpful to keep a produce bowl on your kitchen counter so you can grab things as a quick snack, too.

A plant-based diet helps maintain healthy cholesterol and blood pressure levels and reduces your risk for some chronic conditions. 

7. Drink more water 

This is one of those areas where it's easy to see how healthy habits help. Since we're mostly water , it makes sense that we would need to continually replenish our body's supply. Getting enough water helps your body flush waste and keeps your joints lubricated while acting as a shock absorber for your spine and helping your digestive processes. 

To build healthy habits around water, start carrying a reusable water bottle with you. Whenever you're bored, take a sip. Your body will thank you. 

8. Reduce alcohol intake

Reducing the alcohol you consume does a lot for you , especially if you used to binge drink.:

• Lowers risk of high blood pressure, depression and other conditions
• Decreases symptoms of those conditions
• Helps your body better absorb nutrients
• Improves sleep and minimizes fatigue
• Supports liver health

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that men have two drinks or fewer each day, while women stick to a max of one drink per day. To help yourself out here, figure out a nonalcoholic beverage you like a lot. Soda water, bitters and a lime can scratch the cocktail itch without adding another alcoholic drink to your daily total. 

9. Quit smoking 

Does this come as any surprise? Smoking is bad for your heart and lungs, and it's also bad for your longevity . Long story short, if you want to live a longer, healthier life, kick the habit. 

As you're figuring out how to be healthier, don't turn to vaping. It might be less harmful, but it's just as addictive and still comes with health risks . 

Smoking is one of the hardest daily habits to ditch. The CDC and the American Lung Association have resources to help.

10. Spend time with those you love 

If you're pursuing healthy habits to feel happier in 2024, hang with your people. Social connection goes a long way toward boosting our moods.

If you already have a group of friends or family, let this be a reminder to hit them up. Call someone you haven't talked to in a while or invite a few people over for a game or movie night. Check how you feel afterward. Better? We thought so.

If you don't have a social circle, make 2024 the year you intentionally work on making connections. That could mean striking up a conversation with a coworker or getting to know your neighbors . 

Social connection goes a long way toward boosting our overall mood.

11. Take a break from electronics 

Screen time takes its toll. Studies directly link it with lower psychological well-being . 

Fortunately, the reverse is true. A digital detox can:

• Improve your sleep
• Boost your focus and productivity
• Reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety
• Support real-life social connections (see the point above)

You could try going off social media apps for a while and see how you feel. If you want to incorporate this into your healthy daily habits, carve out time each day when you're screen-free. For better sleep, maybe make that the last hour before bed.

12. Take on a new hobby 

Your healthy habits can also be fun and rewarding. What have you always wanted to do? Your answer to that question might point you toward a new hobby to explore in 2024. Getting into it can help you reduce stress and boost mental well-being.

Plus, some hobbies can get you moving, supporting both your physical and mental health. Maybe you get into playing pick-up soccer at the park, or you could explore yoga . 

Ultimately, you have a lot of options for healthy daily habits you could incorporate into your lifestyle. You can pick one or two, or go big and go for the full dozen. Either way, you'll be moving toward a healthier, happier you. 

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• About Healthy Growth and Weight
• Water and Healthier Drinks
• Healthy Eating for a Healthy Weight
• Steps for Losing Weight
• Tips for Physical Activity and Your Weight
• Tips for Parents and Caregivers
• External Resources
• Be Sugar Smart
• Rethink Your Drink

Tips for Maintaining Healthy Weight

• Healthy lifestyles include being mindful of calories, ensuring adequate nutrition, and being physically active.
• Other factors such as sleep, age, genes, and medications can influence weight.

Why it's important

Managing your weight contributes to good health now and as you age. In contrast, obesity can lead to serious health problems including type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke.

Food and nutrition

Counting calories all the time is not necessary, but it may help to know how many calories you need.

MyPlate Plan calculates how many daily calories are needed to maintain your current weight. The calculation is based on your age, sex, height, weight, and physical activity level. Results show the recommended daily amounts of fruits, vegetables, protein, dairy, and grains for adequate nutrition at your calorie level.

Consuming a variety of healthy food is better than eliminating one type of food such as carbohydrates. If you reduce the variety of foods you eat, you could exclude vital nutrients or not be able to stay on the eating plan over time.

This diary may help‎

Physical activity.

How much physical activity you need for overall health depends mostly on your age.

• Children ages 3 to 5 should be physically active throughout the day for growth and development.
• Children and adolescents ages 6 to 17 need 60 minutes or more of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity each day. Children and adolescents need aerobic, muscle-strengthening, and bone-strengthening activities.
• Healthy pregnant or postpartum women need at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity per week, such as brisk walking. This can be spread throughout the week, such as 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week.
• Adults need 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity each week. This can be 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. As an alternative, adults could get 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity or an equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity each week. Adults also need at least 2 days a week of muscle-strengthening activities.
• At least 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity activity such as brisk walking.
• At least 2 days a week of activities that strengthen muscles.
• Activities to improve balance, such as standing on one foot.

People who are physically active can still gain weight if they take in more calories than they use. Healthy lifestyles include being physically active, being mindful of calories, and ensuring adequate nutrition.

Other factors

Getting enough sleep can help you manage your body weight. Other factors that contribute to overweight and obesity include age, medications, medical conditions, genes, and environmental factors.

As people age, their body composition gradually shifts—the proportion of muscle decreases and the proportion of fat increases. This shift slows their metabolism, making it easier to gain weight. In addition, some people become less physically active as they get older, increasing the risk of weight gain.

Diseases such as Cushing's disease and polycystic ovary syndrome may lead to weight gain or obesity. Drugs such as steroids and some antidepressants may also cause weight gain.

Genes can directly cause obesity in specific, single-gene disorders, such as Bardet-Biedl syndrome and Prader-Willi syndrome. However, multiple genes often interact with environmental factors to affect health.

Environmental factors can make it harder to eat healthy or be physically active. Examples include limited access to healthier foods or places to be physically active, such as sidewalks. The presence of certain chemicals in the environment may also affect weight.

Your health care provider is the best person to ask whether illnesses or medications are contributing to weight gain or making weight loss hard.

Losing Weight Even a modest weight loss, such as 5% to 10% of your total body weight, can produce health benefits.

Physical Activity and Your Health Physical activity can increase the number of calories your body uses for energy. Burning calories through physical activity, combined with reducing the number of calories you eat, can help with weight loss.

Physical Activity Benefits Physical activity can make you feel better, function better, and sleep better. Learn about the benefits and how to measure progress.

Early Weight Watching As part of CDC's Minute of Health series, this podcast discusses the most effective ways for children and adults to maintain a healthy weight.

Move Your Way Tools, videos, and fact sheets with tips can make it easier to get a little more physically active.

Food Assistance and Food Systems Resources ‎

Healthy weight and growth.

Eating well and being physically active contribute to healthy growth in childhood and good health throughout life. See how to get started.

MINI REVIEW article

This article is part of the research topic.

Keeping It Real - Exploring Personal Sustainability in the Context of Food Systems

Wet Markets in Southeast Asia and Access to Healthy Diets Provisionally Accepted

• 1 Leiden University College The Hague (LUC), Netherlands
• 2 Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Switzerland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Hunger and malnutrition in all forms continues to rise in Africa and Asia. Urban and rural communities' diets in Southeast Asia (SEA) are increasingly unhealthy, with consumption influenced by affordability and convenience. The cost of a healthy diet is a major barrier to accessing healthy foods in SEA. Wet markets are key places in food environments where people buy and sell a variety of foods. They are especially important for food and nutrition insecure communities. This mini narrative review explores the role that wet markets, in SEA food environments, play in providing local communities with access to healthy foods. Fourteen peer-review papers, published in English between 2017-2022, were identified during screening and analysed according to six food environment domains. Findings highlight that convenient access to wet markets facilitates access to fruits and vegetables in peri urban and urban areas. Fresh foods, most notably fruits, were viewed as being more expensive than processed foods which in turn influenced purchasing behaviour.Divergent findings were presented in the identified papers regarding affordability of food in wet markets. Concerns about food quality and the use of chemicals and pesticides were raised. This review was constrained by several factors including the lack of consistent and meaningful definitions and typologies of the varied forms of wet markets. Looking ahead, better defined interpretations of wet markets can enhance the development and refinement of appropriate policies and actions and comparison of wet markets, in respect of access to diverse, healthy foods, vendor practices and consumer food choices.

Keywords: southeast asia, markets, nutrition, Food security, Malnutrition, Food Environment

Received: 13 Oct 2023; Accepted: 09 May 2024.

Copyright: © 2024 Hofman and Trevenen-Jones. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Mx. Ann Trevenen-Jones, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Geneva, CH-1202, Geneva, Switzerland

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The Best Way to Keep Us Healthy

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The Last Thing My Mother Wanted

Healthy at age 74, she decided there was nothing on earth still keeping her here, not even us..

This article was featured in One Great Story , New York ’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

Do you know how many grams of Nembutal it takes to put an elephant to sleep?” asks the anesthesiologist from Pegasos, a voluntary-assisted-death organization in Switzerland, after an evaluative look at my mother.

We — my 74-year-old mother, my younger sister, and I — are sitting on a couch in the suite of a charming hotel near the center of Basel. Thin, contained, elegant, with a neat bob of white hair, Mom is at attention. The doctor seems at ease. As he tucks his hat under a red-and-gold Louis XV–style chair, he tells us that many people who avail themselves of Pegasos’s service, which costs more than $10,000, will sell their car or antique books to spend their last few nights at this hotel.

It is September 28, 2022, the day before my mother is scheduled to inject herself with 15 grams of Nembutal — enough to sedate three and a half elephants, the doctor says. She would not need to worry about waking up or being cremated alive. This was a relief to her, Mom says with a smile.

In June, my sister and I had learned, almost by accident, that she was seeking an assisted suicide. I was on the phone with Mom, listening to her complain about an annoying bureaucrat at the New York County Clerk’s Office, when she mentioned it. “I am putting in an application to Pegasos,” she said impassively, “so I was getting some documents for them.” I texted my sister while we were on the phone: “What the fuck? Why didn’t you tell me about Mom applying to die?” Three little dots. “Wait,” My sister wrote back. “What. What is she doing?”

Mom didn’t have cancer or Lou Gehrig’s disease or any of the illnesses that typically qualify you for assisted death. A cataract in her left eye had deteriorated, and though she had some foot pain and had gotten a pacemaker, all of which weighed on her, she was quite healthy for her age. She had completed a marathon just a few years before at 68.

But her long-term partner had been diagnosed with an incurable glioblastoma in February 2020 and had taken advantage of California’s “death with dignity” laws to die that May. Soon after, Mom left San Francisco, a city she hated for the 20 years she lived there, and moved back to her beloved New York. She bought an apartment near her childhood home on Fifth Avenue; reconnected with old friends; saw plays, art exhibits, and movies; ate good food; and traveled — and did not care about any of it. “Oh, I have nothing interesting to say,” she would say when I called, her voice animated only when she was describing a plan to smite anyone responsible for a grievance by writing a furious email or leaving an angry Yelp review. My mother had always been a flashlight of a person — shining a small but intense beam on things she wanted to explore — but now the radius had shrunk, the light weakened. She used to be curious about my husband’s hobbies, our children, my sister’s career, but those topics, like everything else, were now of only vague interest. She would come down to Virginia to see my family and go up to Connecticut to see my sister’s, but she wouldn’t play with the kids and didn’t seem to enjoy the trips, just expressed relief when they were over. In the last months of her life, the only thing that appeared to give her real joy was the hope that she would be ending it.

In the U.S., ten states allow physician-assisted death, which is available only to residents who are terminally ill with no more than six months to live. In Canada, the laws are more expansive, but citizens still need a diagnosis — if not a terminal condition, then an incurable one with intolerable suffering and an advanced state of decline. In Switzerland, where a foreigner can go to receive aid in dying, there are fewer restrictions on who is eligible. Pegasos is one of the only organizations that will help elderly people who have not been diagnosed with a terminal illness but who are tired of life. Its website notes that “old age is rarely kind” and that “for a person to be in the headspace of considering ending their lives, their quality of life must be qualitatively poor.”

My mother had pinned her hopes on this “tired of life” catchall. She had a three-pronged rationale, she told us over the phone: The world was going to hell, and she did not want to see more; she did not get joy out of the everyday pleasures of life or her relationships; and she did not want to face the degradations of aging.

My sister and I immediately believed she would go through with it. A lifelong libertarian, my mother believed firmly in maintaining her independence. Since she was 21, she had a living will with significant restrictions on when she wanted to be resuscitated. Mom had been brought up with a strict sense of what was appropriate, which was essentially a list of rules on how to avoid imposing on others (thank-you notes had to be sent within a week; navy is the safest color). As she aged, she was desperately afraid of deteriorating and becoming a burden — on taxpayers funding Medicaid, on the medical system, on us.

Our husbands, and our friends who had spent time with her, weren’t so sure about her resolve. Mom had a history of starting projects and then abandoning them. Over the years, her Farsi and Japanese had stayed at a beginner level, her massage-therapy degree went essentially unused, the beginning of her dissertation for an anthropology Ph.D. on upper-class lesbians sat in a stack of neatly filed index cards. And she often made threats she didn’t keep. Once, furious in the middle of an argument, she went to her filing cabinet, got out her will, and crossed out my name in the relevant sections, then initialed and dated every change. The next time she sent us a copy of her will, I was, without comment, back in it.

This uncertainty cast a strange shadow on the long, humid days of that Virginia summer. I wrote down memories, questions in case it was my last chance to ask them. Mostly, I hoped a deadline might compel her to give me the thing I’d been seeking for years: some accounting of who she was as a parent, some sign that she had thought about all the nicks and bangs she had given my sister and me.

In mid-June, my mother begins to gather the required documents: the birth and marriage certificates, the name changes, the medical records. None of her medical records have any documentation of any mental illness, which would prompt a closer review from Pegasos; Mom had refused therapy her entire life, believing it to be for the weak. But it had long been clear to the few people she had kept in her life and the many who had been excised or distanced themselves that something was not right.

When I was in preschool and my parents were still married and living together on the Upper East Side, my mother started an affair with the mother of one of my friends. I found out in kindergarten when my friend and I walked in on them in the bath. Once that secret was out, no secrets would be kept. My mother told me that my friend’s parents liked to have another mutual friend watch them have sex. This was unfathomable to me. I had only ever seen this voyeur — a kind, chubby woman — in slightly scuffed Ferragamos with a silk scarf draped dowdily around her neck. Now I imagined her in a bedroom I knew well, watching my friend’s parents do whatever noisy, naked thing made my parents lock the door at night sometimes.

When I was about 8, my mother started up with a professor of anthropology at Columbia, where she had begun the Ph.D. she wouldn’t finish. He smoked cigars and was fat. Mom was entranced. By his intellect, she said. One Sunday in late fall, my mother, my sister, and I were on our way back to the city from East Hampton when Mom decided to stop to get a poinsettia for the professor. When my father asked why we were late, my sister told him, innocently, that we stopped to buy a plant for “Mommy’s lover.” My father was not an arguer, but his face rearranged itself into fury and humiliation while my mother screeched at my sister, “How could you tell your father that?!” I grabbed my sister, and we hid under the mahogany dining table. My sister was shivering. I sat beside her, silent, a little resentful we were witnessing something that maybe should have stayed between grown-ups.

Some years later, after my parents had started and stopped divorce proceedings, my mother and I took a trip to India to hike for six weeks in Ladakh. It was, she said, a way for us to get to know each other in an environment where, unlike New York or Paris, she wasn’t the expert. To mark my turning 16 and the evolution of our relationship. When we crossed the threshold of the guesthouse in Delhi where the dozen or so travelers would be meeting, she saw a woman with bright-blue eyes and a subtle mullet, grabbed my hand, and said, “Fuck. I didn’t need to fall in love right now.” The trip became about that love — every night my mother would tell me every detail about her conversations with the woman and the growing lust she felt for her.

One night, there was an almost biblical storm and we heard someone outside our tent asking to come in. It was the blue-eyed woman, who would become my mother’s partner of 25 years. Her tent had blown away. We welcomed her into our two-person tent and within an hour, I was huddled on one side, trying desperately not to touch the wet polyester sidewall, singing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” silently with my fingers in my ears so I could muffle the wet sounds of their lovemaking. I knew I wouldn’t get an apology the next morning, but I didn’t expect pure triumph. My mother had now won this woman from her partner, the trip operator, and she was entirely focused on her.

Later, in high school, I was on the phone with a friend while heating something up in the kitchen. I was an absent-minded kid, and my mother had warned me before about the danger of not monitoring the stove. When I saw the flames, I ran to get my father, who was reading in his room. Twenty-three years before, he had lost his first wife and son in a freak house fire. He was 70 years old when our kitchen went ablaze, but I have never seen a human move that quickly. I was paralyzed. Not because of the fire but because I knew how angry my mother would be. When she came home, she didn’t ask my father how he was feeling. She told me to go to my room. I didn’t sleep. I was terrified and wrote a poem about how much I loved her. In the morning, I gave her the poem and she gave me my punishment. I would not be going on spring break with her and my sister, I needed to get a job to help pay for the damage, and I wasn’t allowed to say “I love you” to her for three months. I pushed back, telling her I did love her and had just made a mistake, but hit a wall of silence.

It was decades later, when I was in a healthy marriage with three children of my own, that I started to see how wrong it all was. Back then, I couldn’t let myself feel angry at my mother; it was too dangerous. Any hint of disapproval could be the moment she cut you off, and once out, there was no way back in. When she was 71, without warning, she stopped talking to her only sibling, apparently because an email her sister had sent related to the family business was the final straw in a lifetime of annoyance. The abandonment was total. Despite my aunt’s efforts, my mother never spoke to her again.

I struggle briefly with whether to email Pegasos and tell them the part of the story I knew, but I decide not to. Maybe, I think, it would be best for my mother to end her life. I love her, and in addition to the reasons she articulated, she seems terribly lonely. I don’t want to take from her the choice of a civilized, painless death. And I fear what would happen if she found out I had thrown roadblocks in her way. Even now, she has an enormous amount of power over me. When I was a teenager, my mother, after a fight with my father, forbade me from speaking to my youngest half-sister again. It took me until I was 40 to work up the courage to contact her, and even then, I did so in secret.

In July, Mom sends Pegasos the documents and gets conditional approval. She wires the money for the fee, and it takes far too much time, and many visits to her bank, to clear. “I can’t believe I have to go through this crap to not go through this crap anymore,” she texts.

The days in August are long. Pegasos has said it will get back to her with potential dates, and time drips by as my sister, my mother, and I wait. Her anxiety seems to increase with every day. Always goal-oriented, she is now determined to die. That month, I am visiting my mother-in-law when my mother calls. “I just want to hear back from them,” she says, her stress palpable. “They said it would be two weeks. If they don’t accept me, I am going to kill myself. I’ve been thinking about it.” She has been. She has stockpiled Valium and Ambien, bought over the internet, and has a few Zofrans left over from trips. She is going to rent a hotel room, take the anti-nausea medication and the Ambien, get into a bath, take a few Valium, and slit her arteries with a knife. She wants to do it in a hotel room because she doesn’t want her apartment to be difficult to sell, though, she says, she would prefer to die at home. The image of her tiny body, the curve of her lower stomach and the age spots on her chest, lying in a pool of pinkish water flashes into my brain. I try to shake it. She wouldn’t do that. I can’t imagine she would.

If I’m being honest, I am glad she has a backup plan, even if I hate the specifics. Though the idea of cutting ties with her has crossed my mind, I’ve refrained, more out of a sense of duty to her and my sister than from any joy I get from our relationship. The decades have refused to soften her, and on visits, I’d watch as she snapped at the children and then wondered why they retreated to their rooms to read. In the weeks leading up to those trips, I’d repeat the same thing I used to tell myself on flights with a toddler: You can get through anything in six-minute increments. It would be a struggle, I know, to care for her as she aged. But the anticipation of relief is accompanied by the guilt of knowing that my mother, on a microchimeric level, can sense my ambivalence and is feeling out how strongly my sister and I will fight to persuade her to stay on this earth. After she told us about her application to Pegasos, I called her. “What would make you happy this summer, Mom?” I asked. I suggested a girls’ weekend with her, my sister, and me; she declined. Later, she tells my sister that part of the reason she has decided to kill herself is that my sister does not love her enough. In August, she sends me a final birthday card. On the front, it reads MAY ALL YOUR VENGEFUL WISHES COME TRUE. She has written on the inside, “Dear Pussycat, I think this is the best birthday wish ever. xxoo. Mommy.”

I can see it clearly — the special brand of narcissistic sadism she has perfected. Still, in my bountiful moments, I think perhaps she is consciously attempting a last act of parenting: doing me the favor of severing the connection that has defined much of my life and that I am too scared to break.

On September 2, Pegasos offers my mother a slot on September 29. Time declares war on my sanity. Paucity and abundance. There are too many hours and definitely not enough. I get through every day: cooking, volunteering at school, taking one child to the orthodontist, then the next to a guitar lesson. The rhythms of life become unnatural. In my head is a clock: “Mom may be dead in two weeks and three days. Two weeks and two days.”

I stop sleeping almost entirely. I am pretty certain I am not going to miss her, but she is my mother. Two weeks. I can’t decide if I am more frightened of watching her die or of the week we will spend with her beforehand. What if my last memories are of her being cruel, even inadvertently?

Thirteen days. I’ve been calling her more frequently, panning for any evidence that we could speak truthfully. She tells me every time that she has nothing interesting to say. Once, my call goes to voice-mail and she texts an explanation; she’s getting her legs waxed. Twelve days. She’s having good-bye dinners and lunches. Some participants know, but some don’t.

I call her the Monday before we leave for Switzerland. I note that in two weeks I won’t be able to hear her voice and I am just calling to say “hi.” This seems to be an emotional curiosity for her; I can almost hear her rolling it around in her head. Finally, she advises me, chipper, that I should record her voice. I tell her I love her as we say good-bye and realize that she stopped saying “I love you” sometime in July.

In the meantime, I’ve continued to write down moments I think she would enjoy reliving — mostly from when my sister and I were young, when she was still tender and affectionate with us. Games of tickle monster on the stairs of our apartment, the half-hour every day she would read to us while we lay sprawled on the floor coloring or building houses of cards. Our summers spent as a trio on Long Island — jumping waves, catching crabs in the bay, eating dinner in the backyard before falling asleep in her bed, nut brown and worn out from the sun. On one of my first plane rides, she told me about the 1973 Rome-airport terrorist attacks ten years earlier. “Pussycat,” she said somberly, “if I fall on top of you and you hear gunshots, don’t move, even if I am not answering you.”

The school year begins. As I sit by the pool in the evenings watching my children swim, I debate forcing a conversation about who she was as a mother. Then old reflexes kick in: What if she gets angry and bans me from coming to Switzerland? I couldn’t make my little sister be the sole witness to her death. I start to fantasize that, at the least, we’ll talk in Basel. That she’ll tell us that she remembers how my breath always smelled like apple juice as a child and what joy that gave her, that she loved the weight of our bodies when we sat on her lap, that she is proud of raising women like us and enjoys the squeals of our children and the solicitousness of our husbands mixing her cocktails when she visits. After my sister and I approve of the hotel she wants to stay in in Basel, she writes us an email, telling us “I really appreciate the two of you :-). I am lucky that you are my daughters.” Though I should probably know better, I imagine finding a long note from her in the hotel telling us how much she cares, how even though the decision was the right one for her, it was hard to make.

Monday ends. Then Tuesday. Vicious eczema erupts on my chin. I lie in bed awake every night from midnight until 5 a.m. My husband still isn’t convinced she’ll go through with it. My sister and I contemplate how things will shift if she changes her mind at the last minute. We decide that, for this year, we’d just skip the holidays as a family.

There’s a strike at the Paris airport, and my mother is worried that her flight to Switzerland, which stops at Charles de Gaulle, will be affected. As backup, I buy refundable tickets directly to Zurich from New York. She’s effusively grateful. She tells a friend this purchase is the thing she has most loved about me. On Tuesday, when I call a week before she is scheduled to die, she tells me she is going to clean her apartment and wash her sheets in case my sister and I want to stay there (we don’t) and then pack. In the middle of our conversation, she says, “I just wish it was next week.” Then she remembers that she needs to buy razors in case there is a last-minute hitch with Pegasos. She tells me she plans to send my sister and me away and then kill herself in the hotel bathroom. Even in context, this seems histrionic: She shouldn’t put my sister and me in the position of flying to Switzerland to watch her kill herself and then ask us to leave and walk around Basel knowing she is taking her life in a painful way — and then I feel ungenerous for noting that.

I feel ungenerous often. In her recounting, my mother had a gilded but emotionally difficult early life. An apartment across from the Met in a building her family owned, skiing in Megève, summers in East Hampton. And then parents who left her and her sister in the care of a Swedish nanny to go on a round-the-world cruise when she was only 2 and a half, returning to find their offspring now spoke only Swedish, which neither of them did. A father who cheated on her mother, who returned the favor. A mother who literally thought she was Marie Antoinette reincarnated and then was hospitalized when my mother was 10.

My mother will tell us in Switzerland that, in the hospital, my grandmother was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Later, one of my half-sisters will mention that when I was a toddler, my mother told her, outraged, that her doctor had suggested my mother, too, had BPD. I had been trying to understand her for years, and the diagnosis finally makes the puzzle pieces fit: The illness is characterized by dichotomous thinking, impulsive actions without regard for the feelings of others, and trouble maintaining stable relationships. Still, there is no way to corroborate it.

Less than one week left. For the first time in my life, real rage. It bubbles up as dreams in which I shake her violently and only sawdust comes out. How can she value my sister and me — and our beautiful, kind, sparkly children — so little as to choose to leave us? And is she really going to go without any kind of reckoning with the person and parent she was, with the damage she has done? It feels horribly cyclical. When my grandmother died, my mother went through her apartment, searching for clues as to her personality, or perhaps some proof that her mother had loved and cherished her, and found a series of locked diaries dating back years. Hours later, she found the keys and was full of anticipation. All the diaries were blank.

My mother-in-law arrives on Friday, two days before I am scheduled to leave for Switzerland, to help my husband take care of our three children. She has been caring and unobtrusive throughout the summer, and seeing how easily she and my husband co-parent, and their affection for each other, is too painful. I avoid them and my kids all weekend. Saturday, my sister goes to New York to accompany my mother to the airport. She has to pee when she arrives, but my mother will not let her into her apartment as she has already cleaned it. She’s anxious about getting to the airport in time, though they end up arriving three and a half hours early.

We haven’t told the kids what is happening, and neither have my sister and her husband. We have a tentative plan to tell them when they are older. My mother would like us to. She feels her choice is ethical and brave — and, I think, wants us to honor that in our recounting.

I am not sure that I live the three days in Switzerland so much as watch them pass through leaded windows. Nothing seems solid. My mother certainly doesn’t. We walk around Basel, a charming city with a river flowing through it, on Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday are gray and rainy. We have lunch. We take the train to France. We talk about the music she listened to with her cousin when she was young and pull up a video of “Running Bear” on YouTube. I try to take advantage of the fact that she has her faculties to talk about our life, but I quickly realize there is no point. When I ask why she thinks our relationship has always been tenser than hers with my sister, she tells me, “You just became so nasty and difficult at 8.” She hands us no letters.

The night before she is scheduled to kill herself, we have a sumptuous dinner at the Brasserie au Violon, the site of a former prison; my mother chose the venue as a joke.

The procedure, or the appointment — none of us seem to want to say the word death — has been moved from Thursday morning to the early afternoon. Another lifetime of waiting. By 9 a.m., the clouds have broken, and my mother is already dressed, her hair in curlers. She is sitting on the bed, looking at her computer. My sister and I suggest a walk. My mother declines: “I’m doing emails. Just unsubscribing from Politico.” “Mom!” We splutter. “We can do that! It’s your last day on earth!” Which it is, and so we desist. Around noon, we go down to the hotel bar. My mother orders a whiskey-soda, ice cream, and a glass of Barolo. She enjoys the wine so much that I suggest she could just not go through with it and stay in this exact hotel and drink herself into oblivion for the rest of her life. Like Bartleby, she’d prefer not to.

At one, her internal alarm goes off. We get the check, the hotel gets a cab, and the three of us, together for the last time, get in. The 20-minute ride to an industrial suburb of the city passes in silence; we are all holding hands.

The head of the organization, dressed in an off-white linen top and flowing pants, greets us kindly as the car arrives and leads us into the Pegasos bay in the industrial park. Next to it is a place that appears to repair tire rims and then one that mixes paint. In the waiting room, to the left, large-scale photos of a beach frame a desk; on the right there is a seating area. All the colors are neutral, and there is an abundance of bottled waters and chocolates.

The train is in motion. We hand over our passports; the Swiss police, I think we are told, will need them so they can confirm our identities once we identify the body. My mother is nervous, the way she has been my whole life while traveling. The anesthesiologist is there, typing briskly. The head of the organization tells us there is no rush, but we can start if we are ready. My sister and I look at each other. We’ll never be ready, but when my mother says she is set, we follow her back to the second room. It’s the last time we will be her goslings. The air seems to have turned into corn syrup, and I waddle behind her, weighed down by hundreds of tiny memories, grievances, and love notes. This is it. This is it. My mother climbs into a queen-size hospital bed. The director comes in and my mother reminds him that she has a pacemaker and they should take it out before they cremate her so the crematorium will not explode. He laughs gently and says they will be sure to. “Don’t worry. We know. We already had that happen once.” I can’t tell if he is kidding.

Mom has opted to have an IV and not take the oral medication, as apparently the latter tastes terrible and has a tendency to make people vomit. The anesthesiologist begins a saline drip and asks Mom to experiment with the proprietary switch that will initiate the IV, and she has no problem; the doctor reminds us that we cannot get our fingerprints on the switch or there could be trouble with the Swiss authorities. My mother seems tiny in the big bed. We get the CD she wants us to play as she is dying — a recording of “Ave Maria.” We hand her the photo of her partner that has been on her bedside table for years, and she tucks it under her shirt, next to her heart. She puts some stuffed animals that they cherished as totems around her stomach.

The anesthesiologist puts the Nembutal into the drip and leaves the room. My sister and I climb into the bed, one on either side of her. Mom has the switch in her hand, and as “Ave Maria” starts to swell, my sister and I whisper softly, “I love you. I love you. Go in peace. I love you.” Mom pushes the switch and her breathing starts to slow. Her eyes lose focus, and in less than a minute and a half she is gone. My sister and I sit there for a few moments, petting her head, until it feels somehow untoward to continue. And then one of her eyes jumps. I get the anesthesiologist since Mom was terrified of being cremated alive, and he confirms it is normal for some muscles to twitch after the moment of death. The director tells us we have a little while before the police arrive, and my sister and I take a walk past the industrial noises and into a quiet park with a stream running through it. My sister cries; I want a cigarette. We walk back to Pegasos just as the Swiss police show up. They are quiet and efficient and don’t make eye contact.

When they have finished, my sister and I call an Uber and go back into Basel. In the hotel, we sit together in one of the tasteful, heavy studies to call my aunt to tell her. My aunt, shocked, has trouble breathing but manages to ask, “How could she leave you?” Facing my second motherless Mother’s Day, I still don’t know.

Evelyn Jouvenet is a pseudonym.

If you are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 for free, anonymous support and resources.

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Land & Water Stories

9 Ways You Depend on a Healthy Ocean

Even if you don't live near a coast, the ocean provides food, medicine, oxygen, inspiration and so much more.

May 14, 2024

When we take care of the ocean, the ocean takes care of us. Think of the ocean like the heart of the planet. It pumps oxygen, nutrients, water and weather around the globe. And just like with your heart, a healthy ocean is a healthy you.

When overfishing , plastic pollution, climate change and other factors threaten ocean health, the ripples of risk run far and wide. And not just along the coasts, but all over the world. We must prioritize the ocean's health so it can help to sustain us.

Dive into some of the many benefits the ocean brings to you and everyone you know:

1. The ocean provides healthy food for people all over the world.

No matter what you’re eating next, you can thank the ocean. Seafood provides people across the globe with healthy protein—but the ocean’s role in food is even bigger than that.

Virtually all of the planet's plants and animals are sustained by the global water cycle that’s driven largely by the ocean. This transfer of water, wind and weather creates reliable conditions for growing food, whether it's coffee beans in Kenya or rice in Southeast Asia.

But we need to source our seafood sustainability to keep the ocean healthy. We can relieve pressure on tuna and other fish and restore ocean health . We can also use sound aquaculture practices to produce shellfish , shrimp and seaweed in ways that support a healthy ocean and feed a hungry planet.  

2. The ocean provides half of Earth's oxygen.

And if you like food, we bet you love breathing. Well, take a nice deep breath and thank the ocean ... oh, and plankton, too. The ocean's top layer is loaded with plankton: the tiny algae, bacteria, plants and other living things that practice photosynthesis, creating oxygen in the process.

And here's a fun fact for your next trivia contest: One minuscule species of bacteria, Prochlorococcus , is so abundant that scientists estimate that it produces 20% of the planet's oxygen. That's every fifth breath you take.

The World's Goal: Protect 30% of the Ocean by 2030

TNC supports the global goal of protecting 30% of the planet’s ocean, lands and freshwater over the next decade. To contribute to that goal, by 2030 TNC intends to conserve 4 billion hectares (more than 10% of the world’s ocean area) while benefitting 100 million people at severe risk of climate-related emergencies.

Learn more about all of TNC's 2030 goals.

3. The ocean absorbs heat and carbon dioxide, keeping it out of our atmosphere.

The ocean helps us beat the heat in more ways than one. The sea is an essential ally against climate change and its effects. Since the Industrial Revolution, when humans rapidly began releasing greenhouse gases, the ocean has absorbed about 90% of the excess heat in our atmosphere. If the ocean didn't do that, the Earth's air temperature would be rising even faster.

The ocean also absorbs carbon dioxide (CO2), helping prevent further warming . The carbon from decomposing organisms falls to the ocean floor and can remain there for thousands of years. Even coastal habitats—like seagrass meadows, salt marshes and mangroves—are fabulous at storing carbon. In fact, these “ blue carbon ” habitats can hold five times more carbon per acre than tropical forests.

But the ocean's abilities to absorb heat has limits. As climate change accelerates, the ocean is paying a steep price—becoming more acidic, losing oxygen and threatening marine species and people everywhere. To continue to protect us, the ocean needs our help! That means reducing emissions and phasing out fossil fuels .

The ocean's future is our future.

Sign up to learn how we’re conserving the ocean and all that it provides.

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4. The ocean regulates our weather.

You can't expect perfect weather all the time, but without the ocean, our weather would be much less stable.

With its currents, the ocean is like a giant pump, moving warm water and precipitation from the tropics toward the poles while in its depth it moves cold water from the poles back toward the equator.

And in warmer regions, as the sun's energy evaporates ocean water, prevailing winds carry clouds and storms across the planet, where it falls as rain. Most of the rain that falls on land—whether on your head or on your garden—has its origin in the ocean.

The ocean is a major driver of the planet's weather.

5. Ocean habitats protect coastal communities from storms.

Those mangroves, seagrass meadows and salt marshes don’t just store carbon. They, along with reefs and dunes, play a vital role in protecting coastal communities from climate-charged storms, sea-level rise and erosion.

Coral reefs are masters of coastal defense —a healthy reef can absorb up to 97% of a wave’s energy. Mangroves are also coastal defenders—in the Caribbean alone, mangroves protect over half a million people from flooding each year.

In fact, mangroves and reefs are so effective at reducing flood risk that some communities in Mexico and Hawaii have even put insurance policies on them . Even if you don't live near the coast, these nature-based solutions save money for taxpayers and insurers by reducing costly damage to critical infrastructure like roads and buildings. 

6. The ocean provides medicines that keep us healthy.

The mind-boggling diversity of life in the oceans could one day save your life. Complex webs of interaction between species can generate enormous chemical diversity (think of how clownfish are immune to the venom from anemones) which in turn can lead to breakthroughs in medicine for humans.

Maybe you've heard about the blue blood of horseshoe crab ? It has a protein called Limulus Amebocyte Lysate that's used to test vaccines and other medical products for the presence of harmful bacteria, and its saved millions of people from potential infections or worse.

Scientists are continuously discovering and testing other compounds, from tiny surface-loving algae to strange organisms in deep-sea depths. Some tunicates, those weird marine invertebrates that you might know as sea squirts, may help treat breast and ovarian cancers. Certain types of coral contain compounds used to treat leukemia . Other compounds are being tested to treat Alzheimer’s, cancer and HIV. 

7. The ocean's winds can provide renewable energy.

As the world transitions away from the fossil fuels that drive climate change, the sources of energy in your own life will increasingly come from renewable sources like solar and wind. The ocean’s steady, reliable winds can play a big part in that mix of renewable energy.

When properly sited ( that part is crucial ), offshore wind energy has huge potential. Right now, there are only a handful of offshore wind turbines in U.S. waters. But by 2035, by some estimates there could be as many as 2,000 off the Atlantic coast. Together, they could generate enough renewable energy to power 10 million homes.

Scientists from TNC and other ocean experts are even looking into ways that new offshore wind turbines could create valuable habitat for fish and other marine life .  

8. The ocean provides jobs and powers our economies.

No matter where you work, what you eat or what you buy, the ocean has played some role in your financial life. Today, so many of us rely on things that are made in one place and shipped overseas. And of course, communities all over the world depend on livelihoods from fishing, aquaculture, tourism and recreation. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) values the ocean economy’s output in 2010 at USD $1.5 trillion .

In the Caribbean alone, one study found that keeping coral reefs healthy generated billions of dollars-worth of revenue for the tourism industry, island governments and local communities. The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 600 million people rely on fisheries or aquaculture for at least part of their livelihoods.

Most of the ocean's fish workers are small-scale fishers and fish farmers in developing countries. Creating sustainable fisheries in places like Indonesia , Peru and the Gulf of Maine will ensure jobs for these and other places around the world.

9. The ocean inspires.

With its sheer size and power, the ocean is awe inspiring. It brings us joy, wonder, fear and humility (ever been knocked over by a wave?). It activates all our senses. It holds life so strange and amazing it strains credibility. Since the times that humans first encountered the ocean, people have conveyed the ocean's mystique in constant tides of creativity that enrich us all. The ocean finds its way into poetry, novels, music, dance, films, visual arts and our own life stories. The ocean has a way of letting us reflect. Even as the horizon blurs, life comes into focus. Go to the ocean, take in its vastness and let the sea inspire you.

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How we're protecting ocean habitats and coastlines, addressing the impact of climate change and supporting sustainable fisheries and aquaculture.

Incredible ocean photos. See what your support could protect.

One of a kind ocean images from around the world. Check out which images from our annual photo contest made the collection.

Major new initiative to put eyes on the water for industrial tuna fisheries, launched by The Nature Conservancy

Walmart, Albertsons Companies, Thai Union, Belize, and the Federated States of Micronesia join the Tuna Transparency Pledge, aiming to achieve 100% monitoring of vessels in tuna supply chains by 2027.

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When Prison and Mental Illness Amount to a Death Sentence

The downward spiral of one inmate, Markus Johnson, shows the larger failures of the nation’s prisons to care for the mentally ill.

Supported by

By Glenn Thrush

Photographs by Carlos Javier Ortiz

Glenn Thrush spent more than a year reporting this article, interviewing close to 50 people and reviewing court-obtained body-camera footage and more than 1,500 pages of documents.

• Published May 5, 2024 Updated May 7, 2024

Markus Johnson slumped naked against the wall of his cell, skin flecked with pepper spray, his face a mask of puzzlement, exhaustion and resignation. Four men in black tactical gear pinned him, his face to the concrete, to cuff his hands behind his back.

He did not resist. He couldn’t. He was so gravely dehydrated he would be dead by their next shift change.

Listen to this article with reporter commentary

“I didn’t do anything,” Mr. Johnson moaned as they pressed a shield between his shoulders.

It was 1:19 p.m. on Sept. 6, 2019, in the Danville Correctional Center, a medium-security prison a few hours south of Chicago. Mr. Johnson, 21 and serving a short sentence for gun possession, was in the throes of a mental collapse that had gone largely untreated, but hardly unwatched.

He had entered in good health, with hopes of using the time to gain work skills. But for the previous three weeks, Mr. Johnson, who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, had refused to eat or take his medication. Most dangerous of all, he had stealthily stopped drinking water, hastening the physical collapse that often accompanies full-scale mental crises.

Mr. Johnson’s horrific downward spiral, which has not been previously reported, represents the larger failures of the nation’s prisons to care for the mentally ill. Many seriously ill people receive no treatment . For those who do, the outcome is often determined by the vigilance and commitment of individual supervisors and frontline staff, which vary greatly from system to system, prison to prison, and even shift to shift.

The country’s jails and prisons have become its largest provider of inpatient mental health treatment, with 10 times as many seriously mentally ill people now held behind bars as in hospitals. Estimating the population of incarcerated people with major psychological problems is difficult, but the number is likely 200,000 to 300,000, experts say.

Many of these institutions remain ill-equipped to handle such a task, and the burden often falls on prison staff and health care personnel who struggle with the dual roles of jailer and caregiver in a high-stress, dangerous, often dehumanizing environment.

In 2021, Joshua McLemore , a 29-year-old with schizophrenia held for weeks in an isolation cell in Jackson County, Ind., died of organ failure resulting from a “refusal to eat or drink,” according to an autopsy. In April, New York City agreed to pay $28 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of Nicholas Feliciano, a young man with a history of mental illness who suffered severe brain damage after attempting to hang himself on Rikers Island — as correctional officers stood by.

Mr. Johnson’s mother has filed a wrongful-death suit against the state and Wexford Health Sources, a for-profit health care contractor in Illinois prisons. The New York Times reviewed more than 1,500 pages of reports, along with depositions taken from those involved. Together, they reveal a cascade of missteps, missed opportunities, potential breaches of protocol and, at times, lapses in common sense.

Prison officials and Wexford staff took few steps to intervene even after it became clear that Mr. Johnson, who had been hospitalized repeatedly for similar episodes and recovered, had refused to take medication. Most notably, they did not transfer him to a state prison facility that provides more intensive mental health treatment than is available at regular prisons, records show.

The quality of medical care was also questionable, said Mr. Johnson’s lawyers, Sarah Grady and Howard Kaplan, a married legal team in Chicago. Mr. Johnson lost 50 to 60 pounds during three weeks in solitary confinement, but officials did not initiate interventions like intravenous feedings or transfer him to a non-prison hospital.

And they did not take the most basic step — dialing 911 — until it was too late.

There have been many attempts to improve the quality of mental health treatment in jails and prisons by putting care on par with punishment — including a major effort in Chicago . But improvements have proved difficult to enact and harder to sustain, hampered by funding and staffing shortages.

Lawyers representing the state corrections department, Wexford and staff members who worked at Danville declined to comment on Mr. Johnson’s death, citing the unresolved litigation. In their interviews with state police investigators, and in depositions, employees defended their professionalism and adherence to procedure, while citing problems with high staff turnover, difficult work conditions, limited resources and shortcomings of co-workers.

But some expressed a sense of resignation about the fate of Mr. Johnson and others like him.

Prisoners have “much better chances in a hospital, but that’s not their situation,” said a senior member of Wexford’s health care team in a deposition.

“I didn’t put them in prison,” he added. “They are in there for a reason.”

Markus Mison Johnson was born on March 1, 1998, to a mother who believed she was not capable of caring for him.

Days after his birth, he was taken in by Lisa Barker Johnson, a foster mother in her 30s who lived in Zion, Ill., a working-class city halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee. Markus eventually became one of four children she adopted from different families.

The Johnson house is a lively split level, with nieces, nephews, grandchildren and neighbors’ children, family keepsakes, video screens and juice boxes. Ms. Johnson sits at its center on a kitchen chair, chin resting on her hand as children wander over to share their thoughts, or to tug on her T-shirt to ask her to be their bathroom buddy.

From the start, her bond with Markus was particularly powerful, in part because the two looked so much alike, with distinctive dimpled smiles. Many neighbors assumed he was her biological son. The middle name she chose for him was intended to convey that message.

“Mison is short for ‘my son,’” she said standing over his modest footstone grave last summer.

He was happy at home. School was different. His grades were good, but he was intensely shy and was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in elementary school.

That was around the time the bullying began. His sisters were fierce defenders, but they could only do so much. He did the best he could, developing a quick, taunting tongue.

These experiences filled him with a powerful yearning to fit in.

It was not to be.

When he was around 15, he called 911 in a panic, telling the dispatcher he saw two men standing near the small park next to his house threatening to abduct children playing there. The officers who responded found nothing out of the ordinary, and rang the Johnsons’ doorbell.

He later told his mother he had heard a voice telling him to “protect the kids.”

He was hospitalized for the first time at 16, and given medications that stabilized him for stretches of time. But the crises would strike every six months or so, often triggered by his decision to stop taking his medication.

His family became adept at reading signs he was “getting sick.” He would put on his tan Timberlands and a heavy winter coat, no matter the season, and perch on the edge of his bed as if bracing for battle. Sometimes, he would cook his own food, paranoid that someone might poison him.

He graduated six months early, on the dean’s list, but was rudderless, and hanging out with younger boys, often paying their way.

His mother pointed out the perils of buying friendship.

“I don’t care,” he said. “At least I’ll be popular for a minute.”

Zion’s inviting green grid of Bible-named streets belies the reality that it is a rough, unforgiving place to grow up. Family members say Markus wanted desperately to prove he was tough, and emulated his younger, reckless group of friends.

Like many of them, he obtained a pistol. He used it to hold up a convenience store clerk for $425 in January 2017, according to police records. He cut a plea deal for two years of probation, and never explained to his family what had made him do it.

But he kept getting into violent confrontations. In late July 2018, he was arrested in a neighbor’s garage with a handgun he later admitted was his. He was still on probation for the robbery, and his public defender negotiated a plea deal that would send him to state prison until January 2020.

An inpatient mental health system

Around 40 percent of the about 1.8 million people in local, state and federal jails and prison suffer from at least one mental illness, and many of these people have concurrent issues with substance abuse, according to recent Justice Department estimates.

Psychological problems, often exacerbated by drug use, often lead to significant medical problems resulting from a lack of hygiene or access to good health care.

“When you suffer depression in the outside world, it’s hard to concentrate, you have reduced energy, your sleep is disrupted, you have a very gloomy outlook, so you stop taking care of yourself,” said Robert L. Trestman , a Virginia Tech medical school professor who has worked on state prison mental health reforms.

The paradox is that prison is often the only place where sick people have access to even minimal care.

But the harsh work environment, remote location of many prisons, and low pay have led to severe shortages of corrections staff and the unwillingness of doctors, nurses and counselors to work with the incarcerated mentally ill.

In the early 2000s, prisoners’ rights lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit against Illinois claiming “deliberate indifference” to the plight of about 5,000 mentally ill prisoners locked in segregated units and denied treatment and medication.

In 2014, the parties reached a settlement that included minimum staffing mandates, revamped screening protocols, restrictions on the use of solitary confinement and the allocation of about $100 million to double capacity in the system’s specialized mental health units.

Yet within six months of the deal, Pablo Stewart, an independent monitor chosen to oversee its enforcement, declared the system to be in a state of emergency.

Over the years, some significant improvements have been made. But Dr. Stewart’s final report , drafted in 2022, gave the system failing marks for its medication and staffing policies and reliance on solitary confinement “crisis watch” cells.

Ms. Grady, one of Mr. Johnson’s lawyers, cited an additional problem: a lack of coordination between corrections staff and Wexford’s professionals, beyond dutifully filling out dozens of mandated status reports.

“Markus Johnson was basically documented to death,” she said.

‘I’m just trying to keep my head up’

Mr. Johnson was not exactly looking forward to prison. But he saw it as an opportunity to learn a trade so he could start a family when he got out.

On Dec. 18, 2018, he arrived at a processing center in Joliet, where he sat for an intake interview. He was coherent and cooperative, well-groomed and maintained eye contact. He was taking his medication, not suicidal and had a hearty appetite. He was listed as 5 feet 6 inches tall and 256 pounds.

Mr. Johnson described his mood as “go with the flow.”

A few days later, after arriving in Danville, he offered a less settled assessment during a telehealth visit with a Wexford psychiatrist, Dr. Nitin Thapar. Mr. Johnson admitted to being plagued by feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness and “constant uncontrollable worrying” that affected his sleep.

He told Dr. Thapar he had heard voices in the past — but not now — telling him he was a failure, and warning that people were out to get him.

At the time he was incarcerated, the basic options for mentally ill people in Illinois prisons included placement in the general population or transfer to a special residential treatment program at the Dixon Correctional Center, west of Chicago. Mr. Johnson seemed out of immediate danger, so he was assigned to a standard two-man cell in the prison’s general population, with regular mental health counseling and medication.

Things started off well enough. “I’m just trying to keep my head up,” he wrote to his mother. “Every day I learn to be stronger & stronger.”

But his daily phone calls back home hinted at friction with other inmates. And there was not much for him to do after being turned down for a janitorial training program.

Then, in the spring of 2019, his grandmother died, sending him into a deep hole.

Dr. Thapar prescribed a new drug used to treat major depressive disorders. Its most common side effect is weight gain. Mr. Johnson stopped taking it.

On July 4, he told Dr. Thapar matter-of-factly during a telehealth check-in that he was no longer taking any of his medications. “I’ve been feeling normal, I guess,” he said. “I feel like I don’t need the medication anymore.”

Dr. Thapar said he thought that was a mistake, but accepted the decision and removed Mr. Johnson from his regular mental health caseload — instructing him to “reach out” if he needed help, records show.

The pace of calls back home slackened. Mr. Johnson spent more time in bed, and became more surly. At a group-therapy session, he sat stone silent, after showing up late.

By early August, he was telling guards he had stopped eating.

At some point, no one knows when, he had intermittently stopped drinking fluids.

‘I’m having a breakdown’

Then came the crash.

On Aug. 12, Mr. Johnson got into a fight with his older cellmate.

He was taken to a one-man disciplinary cell. A few hours later, Wexford’s on-site mental health counselor, Melanie Easton, was shocked by his disoriented condition. Mr. Johnson stared blankly, then burst into tears when asked if he had “suffered a loss in the previous six months.”

He was so unresponsive to her questions she could not finish the evaluation.

Ms. Easton ordered that he be moved to a 9-foot by 8-foot crisis cell — solitary confinement with enhanced monitoring. At this moment, a supervisor could have ticked the box for “residential treatment” on a form to transfer him to Dixon. That did not happen, according to records and depositions.

Around this time, he asked to be placed back on his medication but nothing seems to have come of it, records show.

By mid-August, he said he was visualizing “people that were not there,” according to case notes. At first, he was acting more aggressively, once flicking water at a guard through a hole in his cell door. But his energy ebbed, and he gradually migrated downward — from standing to bunk to floor.

“I’m having a breakdown,” he confided to a Wexford employee.

At the time, inmates in Illinois were required to declare an official hunger strike before prison officials would initiate protocols, including blood testing or forced feedings. But when a guard asked Mr. Johnson why he would not eat, he said he was “fasting,” as opposed to starving himself, and no action seems to have been taken.

‘Tell me this is OK!’

Lt. Matthew Morrison, one of the few people at Danville to take a personal interest in Mr. Johnson, reported seeing a white rind around his mouth in early September. He told other staff members the cell gave off “a death smell,” according to a deposition.

On Sept. 5, they moved Mr. Johnson to one of six cells adjacent to the prison’s small, bare-bones infirmary. Prison officials finally placed him on the official hunger strike protocol without his consent.

Mr. Morrison, in his deposition, said he was troubled by the inaction of the Wexford staff, and the lack of urgency exhibited by the medical director, Dr. Justin Young.

On Sept. 5, Mr. Morrison approached Dr. Young to express his concerns, and the doctor agreed to order blood and urine tests. But Dr. Young lived in Chicago, and was on site at the prison about four times a week, according to Mr. Kaplan. Friday, Sept. 6, 2019, was not one of those days.

Mr. Morrison arrived at work that morning, expecting to find Mr. Johnson’s testing underway. A Wexford nurse told him Dr. Young believed the tests could wait.

Mr. Morrison, stunned, asked her to call Dr. Young.

“He’s good till Monday,” Dr. Young responded, according to Mr. Morrison.

“Come on, come on, look at this guy! You tell me this is OK!” the officer responded.

Eventually, Justin Duprey, a licensed nurse practitioner and the most senior Wexford employee on duty that day, authorized the test himself.

Mr. Morrison, thinking he had averted a disaster, entered the cell and implored Mr. Johnson into taking the tests. He refused.

So prison officials obtained approval to remove him forcibly from his cell.

‘Oh, my God’

What happened next is documented in video taken from cameras held by officers on the extraction team and obtained by The Times through a court order.

Mr. Johnson is scarcely recognizable as the neatly groomed 21-year-old captured in a cellphone picture a few months earlier. His skin is ashen, eyes fixed on the middle distance. He might be 40. Or 60.

At first, he places his hands forward through the hole in his cell door to be cuffed. This is against procedure, the officers shout. His hands must be in back.

He will not, or cannot, comply. He wanders to the rear of his cell and falls hard. Two blasts of pepper spray barely elicit a reaction. The leader of the tactical team later said he found it unusual and unnerving.

The next video is in the medical unit. A shield is pressed to his chest. He is in agony, begging for them to stop, as two nurses attempt to insert a catheter.

Then they move him, half-conscious and limp, onto a wheelchair for the blood draw.

For the next 20 minutes, the Wexford nurse performing the procedure, Angelica Wachtor, jabs hands and arms to find a vessel that will hold shape. She winces with each puncture, tries to comfort him, and grows increasingly rattled.

“Oh, my God,” she mutters, and asks why help is not on the way.

She did not request assistance or discuss calling 911, records indicate.

“Can you please stop — it’s burning real bad,” Mr. Johnson said.

Soon after, a member of the tactical team reminds Ms. Wachtor to take Mr. Johnson’s vitals before taking him back to his cell. She would later tell Dr. Young she had been unable to able to obtain his blood pressure.

“You good?” one of the team members asks as they are preparing to leave.

“Yeah, I’ll have to be,” she replies in the recording.

Officers lifted him back onto his bunk, leaving him unconscious and naked except for a covering draped over his groin. His expressionless face is visible through the window on the cell door as it closes.

‘Cardiac arrest.’

Mr. Duprey, the nurse practitioner, had been sitting inside his office after corrections staff ordered him to shelter for his own protection, he said. When he emerged, he found Ms. Wachtor sobbing, and after a delay, he was let into the cell. Finding no pulse, Mr. Duprey asked a prison employee to call 911 so Mr. Johnson could be taken to a local emergency room.

The Wexford staff initiated CPR. It did not work.

At 3:38 p.m., the paramedics declared Markus Mison Johnson dead.

Afterward, a senior official at Danville called the Johnson family to say he had died of “cardiac arrest.”

Lisa Johnson pressed for more information, but none was initially forthcoming. She would soon receive a box hastily crammed with his possessions: uneaten snacks, notebooks, an inspirational memoir by a man who had served 20 years at Leavenworth.

Later, Shiping Bao, the coroner who examined his body, determined Mr. Johnson had died of severe dehydration. He told the state police it “was one of the driest bodies he had ever seen.”

For a long time, Ms. Johnson blamed herself. She says that her biggest mistake was assuming that the state, with all its resources, would provide a level of care comparable to what she had been able to provide her son.

She had stopped accepting foster care children while she was raising Markus and his siblings. But as the months dragged on, she decided her once-boisterous house had become oppressively still, and let local agencies know she was available again.

“It is good to have children around,” she said. “It was too quiet around here.”

Read by Glenn Thrush

Audio produced by Jack D’Isidoro .

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice. He joined The Times in 2017 after working for Politico, Newsday, Bloomberg News, The New York Daily News, The Birmingham Post-Herald and City Limits. More about Glenn Thrush

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Healthy Food Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on healthy food.

Healthy food refers to food that contains the right amount of nutrients to keep our body fit. We need healthy food to keep ourselves fit.

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Junk food vs Healthy Food

If we look at the scenario today, we see how the fast-food market is increasing at a rapid rate. With the onset of food delivery apps and more, people now like having junk food more. In addition, junk food is also tastier and easier to prepare.

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