15 Daily Wellness Habits for Middle-Aged and Elderly People

1. Comb hair regularly
Comb your hair at least twice a day, about 60 strokes each time. This improves vision, clears the mind, dispels wind, activates blood circulation, enhances kidney function, prevents hair loss, and promotes blood flow to the scalp. Persistent practice brings certain benefits.

2. Rub the face
After each face washing, rub your face with both hands more than 10 times, massaging and stimulating the acupoints on the face. This promotes facial blood circulation and refreshes the spirit.

3. Roll the eyes
After prolonged use of the eyes, first roll your eyeballs, then close your eyes to rest. This keeps vision particularly bright. Method: Roll your eyes from left to up, then from right to down, repeating the cycle more than 10 times, allowing the eye muscles to be fully exercised and adjusted.

4. Massage the ears
Massaging both ears can tonify the kidneys, improve brain function, and prevent deafness. Method: Rub the ear helices with both hands, any number of times, until they feel warm. The ears contain acupoints corresponding to the five viscera and six bowels (ear acupoints). Regular ear massage stimulates these points beneficially.

5. Tap the teeth
Every morning, tap your teeth together more than 30 times. This promotes saliva production, strengthens teeth, and makes food taste better. Method: Clench the upper and lower teeth together audibly. This stimulates the secretion of salivary glands; swallowing the saliva is beneficial to health.

6. Exercise regularly
Life depends on movement. Without regular exercise, muscles and joints atrophy. Methods: Stretch your waist often, contract your abdomen often, swing your limbs often. Do gymnastics regularly and actively engage in physical and mental labor within your ability.

7. Take various baths
There are many types of baths: hot spring baths, sunbaths, water baths, air baths, sand baths, mud baths, etc. Choose according to your conditions and physical state.

8. Wash the feet
Washing your feet with warm water every night before bed is one of the secrets of health care. After washing, massage the Yongquan (KI1) acupoint more than 30 times. This aids sleep and health, especially in winter.

9. Cultivate qi
Actively nurture your essence and qi. Maintain a happy spirit and a cheerful mood. Do not get angry when faced with things. Keep an open mind, eat moderately, live regularly, balance work and rest, prioritize exercise, and strengthen your resistance. TCM believes that “when qi moves, blood moves” – this is the foundation of health.

10. Nourish essence
People with kidney deficiency are prone to lower back pain, weak knees, dizziness, tinnitus, insomnia, palpitations, loose teeth, low spirits, and premature decline of reproductive function. Only by adopting measures to “nourish essence, protect the kidneys, and moderate desires” can these conditions be treated and longevity achieved.

11. Pay attention to nutrition
Nutrition is the material basis of life. Protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals – none are dispensable. Nourish with both food and medicine, with food as the mainstay. Include both meat and vegetables, with vegetables as the mainstay.

12. Maintain hygiene
Be careful with food and drink. Wash vegetables and fruits thoroughly. Wash hands before meals; rinse mouth and brush teeth after meals. Keep dishes, bowls, chopsticks, and spoons clean and disinfected. Keep clothing and living environment clean and hygienic.

13. Laugh often
When you laugh, your chest and lungs expand, breathing increases. Laughter in the belly produces gastric juice, aids digestion, increases appetite, and promotes metabolism. Laughter throughout the body excites the whole system, leads to sound sleep, refreshes the spirit, broadens the mind, and makes work more energetic. Laughter is a discipline. Regular laughter, smiling, and even hearty laughter can effectively treat neurasthenia, depression, and other mental illnesses. But laughter must be within limits – especially for people with hypertension, heart disease, myocardial infarction, etc., who should not laugh heartily but only smile.

14. Nurture the spirit
“Spirit” refers to mental strength and willpower. The spirit is the master of the body, the root of life and death, and the source of good and evil. Focus wholeheartedly during eight hours of work. In your remaining time and on weekends, according to your hobbies and strengths, put your interest into a skill you excel at, and use joy to promote health.

15. Stay cheerful
Tension, anxiety, and fear are great enemies of health. TCM requires one to “guard the spirit internally and not let the seven emotions become excessive.” Respond calmly to various adverse stimuli, handle them coolly, and turn danger into safety. The ancients said well: “With a sincere heart and upright mind, worries are eliminated; follow reason, cultivate yourself, and banish vexations.” Confucius also said: “Joyfully forgetting worries, one is unaware that old age is approaching.”