What does healthy living mean to you?

Each of us has our own definition of healthy living.  For some, it may mean smoking fewer cigarettes, for others, breaking a personal best in a sport, and for others, managing a chronic condition as painlessly as possible.  The one common element is that we all want to live longer, and we all want to live out our years with the best quality of life possible.

More than 200 million people have come to MotherNature.com since 1995, most of whom were looking for answers to building a happier, healthier life.  The vast majority of our visitors' concerns fall into one of three basic areas that dominate our health: diet, exercise and other lifestyle habits.  By learning more about these areas and managing them well, many of their lives have been radically transformed.

1) Diet
We've heard again and again (and it doesn't hurt to repeat it once more) that it all starts with diet.   A recent study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology concluded that regular consumption of a variety of healthy foods was associated with longevity and lower mortality rates. It also concluded a diet with a variety of less healthy foods (such as red meat, refined carbohydrates, sugars, and foods rich in saturated fats) was associated with increased mortality rates.  While this finding may seem like common sense, it emphasizes the importance of a balanced, healthy diet. Foods in the healthy group are rich in vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, probiotics, fiber, and essential fatty acids. 

If you're in the 11% (yes, only 11%) of Americans that find time to eat your daily recommended 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables, then skip to #2.  For the rest of us, that's where supplementation fills an important role in filling out a complete and balanced diet.

2) Exercise
American Cancer Society researchers, by tracking the activity levels and death rates in more than 123,000 healthy men and women for 13 years, found that women and men who sat more and had little physical activity have a higher mortality risk: 94 and 48 percent respectively compared to those that sat less and were more active.  They found women who spend over six hours a day sitting during leisure time were 40 percent more likely to die sooner than women who spend less than three hours sitting.  Men who spend more time sitting have a 20 percent increased risk of death. Is anyone surprised that the average couch potato isn't going to live as long as an average athlete?

3) Other Lifestyle Habits
Did you know that unhealthy lifestyle choices (including tobacco and alcohol use, physical inactivity, obesity, and other preventable disease) are responsible for 75 percent of our national healthcare costs. That's over 12% of our country's GDP or almost $2 trillion per year!  Furthermore, 70 percent of American deaths are attributed to strokes, heart attacks, diabetes and cancer, all of which can be heavily influenced by lifestyle choices. Whether you choose to live a healthy lifestyle or not, unhealthy lifestyle choices impose an enormous cost which we all pay through increased insurance premiums and taxes.

4) Next Steps
With your diet, exercise and other lifestyle issues under control, what's next?  We at MotherNature.com ask ourselves every day how we can make better health easier and less expensive.  We have tried to focus on three areas in particular: 1) making a vast amount of knowledge available to you, 2) making the shopping experience easy and convenient, and 3) saving you money.

Knowledge from authoritative (and free) health information resources
We'd encourage anyone visiting MotherNature.com to browse our vast Health Library as it is one of the largest collections of authoritative natural health information in the world.  Oh yeah, and it's free, so you have no excuse to let some health concern that's been nagging you go un-researched.  A little knowledge can go a long way in helping you plot out the next steps to resolving it.

Shopping from a huge selection of health products
MotherNature.com is the single largest healthy living specialty store on the web, with over
  • 80,000 healthy living products,
  • 2,500 leading natural brands,and
  • 1,500 distinct product categories.
And every single product has been vetted by a professional healthcare product buyer and is guided by our uncompromising quality standards.  We look to carry products and variations not available at most other brick-and-mortar or online stores.  For instance, if you're looking for BPA-free baby bottles and feeding supplies, we've got 35 to choose from.  If you're allergic to fragrances and need some fragrance-free shampoo or conditioner, we've got a few hundred of them.  If you've been following the Environmental Protection Agency's warnings about the health risks posed by parabens, a common preservative widely used in the consumer products industry, you might want to choose from the over 500 paraben-free personal care items.  We have tried to make finding these items as easy and quick as possible using our 'faceted search' in our left navigation bar.

Savings with unbeatable value
We know you have to make your hard-earned cash go a long way these days.  With that in mind, we have instituted several programs to ensure that you get the lowest total cost on orders you place with MotherNature.com.
  • Check out our new Low Price Guarantee which gives you the comfort of knowing that you're paying the lowest price on- and off-line.
  • You get Free Shipping on every order over $49.
  • Enjoy our new Greenbacks program, in which you get 2-4% of your order total put back into your account as a credit towards your next order.  You really should also make sure you sign up for the fantastic email-only sales and discounts that we have each week or month.

We want to be your source for healthy-living products and the 2 million customers that have shopped on MotherNature.com would agree that there is no better value.  We always want to hear back from you, so if you have any feedback on how we might do things better, please share it with us.  Thanks again to all of our customers and we look forward to helping you achieve all your health and wellness goals.