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" 1. Insurance ... wait for it ... is important. I know your mom sends you emails to that effect, but she&amp;#039;s also sent you chain letter bullshit with subject lines like, &amp;quot;FW: FW: FW: FW: Send This To A Woman You Love Today!!&amp;quot; So you don&amp;#039;t listen to her. But listen to me. Because I&amp;#039;m like the cool aunt who can buy you beer. It&amp;#039;s expensive if you can&amp;#039;t get it through your job and have to buy it yourself, but an appointment with a $25 co-pay (with insurance) could be $800 without insurance. And when you don&amp;#039;t have insurance for years, and don&amp;#039;t see a doctor for years, that bites you in the ass eventually.   2. You can call your doctor on the phone. Save yourself the money for a visit by calling first, telling the nurse what&amp;#039;s going on, and asking if he/she thinks you should come in.   3. Oh my god, go to the dentist. Or the alternative: Put it off, put it off, put it off, put it off, WITCH TEETH.   4. Wear sunscreen. And please do not start reciting that Baz Luhrmann monologue that high school seniors always love; I have always despised it.   5. Going out and drinking too much really wears you down in every way. You&amp;#039;re messing up your liver. Your internal organs are starting to look like the floor of the bar and feel basically like sacks of alcohol. Your face looks gray and you get poor sleep and can&amp;#039;t do as well at work because you&amp;#039;re hungover. Cut down.   6. Sleep is the best thing you can do for yourself. When I was 9 years old, my mom told me that her favorite part of the day is sleeping, and I remember feeling sad for her. Not anymore. Thus proving once again that moms are right about everything.   7. Oh, and water. It just improves all things and is almost always free. What else can you say that about? &amp;quot;Love,&amp;quot; I guess? But whatever.   8. Having brief phases of exercising, then stopping for like three months and starting again is actually harder than sticking with it. Starting from the bottom, much like Drake, is the most difficult part. Because when you stick to a certain exercise for a while, it still sucks but becomes kind of gratifying because you no longer feel like a whaleure. (Whale failure.)   9. Losing water weight isn&amp;#039;t losing weight. It&amp;#039;ll come right back.   10. Food is not the enemy. You know that thing where you have two lettuce leaves during the day and avoid cheese, and then after you&amp;#039;re out partying at night, you are starving and grab 17 slices of pizza? And then you wake up and feel awful? That&amp;#039;s not a good you/food relationship. Eat what your body needs, and be aware of how foods make your body feel \u2014 not just how they taste in your mouth, but how you feel after you eat them.   11. But if you do feel consistently sick when you eat something, get tested for any potential dietary disorders.   12. Use condoms every time you&amp;#039;re not monogamous with someone. Every time. Even if you&amp;#039;re drunk. That way you won&amp;#039;t have to annoy your bosses to call out of work to go to the gynecologist because you hooked up with some guy you&amp;#039;ve met a couple times and now there&amp;#039;s an ingrown hair/zit/other fun skin ailment where it should not be. Repeatedly.   13. Caring for yourself health-wise only comes with caring for yourself in all other ways \u2014 and vice versa. It&amp;#039;s sort of a cyclical thing: When you start being more health-conscious, you get more self-worth and happiness \u2014 which is why unhealthy people are often so unhappy (clinical depression excluded). If you don&amp;#039;t think you&amp;#039;re worth it, you won&amp;#039;t treat your body right.   14. It is so stupid to think that a health problem will go away with time. If something is hurting or a little bit off, go get it checked out now rather than later.   15. Be nice to your joints. They do not live forever.  One day you will wake up and everything will hurt, and you&amp;#039;ll groan like an Old when you get out of bed.   16. STRETCH.  Especially before working out.   17. The quickest way to fuck up your metabolism is to starve yourself, not eat enough, or go on one of those insane week-long juice fasts. DO NOT DO.   18. You do not look nearly as cool or sexy as you think you do with a cigarette in your mouth/hand. Stop smoking, it&amp;#039;s gross and bad for you.   19. Stress will eventually destroy your body if you don&amp;#039;t have an outlet. Figure out ways to manage your stress levels, whether it&amp;#039;s by taking on less, meditating or doing yoga, removing toxic people from your life, or carving out regular bouts of alone time.   20. Do breast self-exams. And look at your vulva with a mirror regularly so you know if something actually looks weird or if you&amp;#039;re just freaking out that something might look weird.   21. Don&amp;#039;t mess with your vagina. Douching and using scented and bleached vagina products throws off the pH and kills the good bacteria necessary to fight infections, confirms our resident gynecologist Dr. Iris.   22. Do not use WebMD. It will always lead you to conclude that you have cancer, a brain tumor, or AIDS. I actually took a $45 take-home HIV test in the work bathroom because I looked at WebMD one time! (Last month.) (All clear!)   23. If you never go to the doctor, then, when your entire body breaks out in a spontaneous rash or you mysteriously get strep throat, you won&amp;#039;t have a doctor. So go to the doctor.   24. Keep a note in your phone of questions you want to ask your doctor. Because there&amp;#039;s something about being at the doctor&amp;#039;s that makes you immediately forget about the weird period thing you&amp;#039;ve been wondering about for weeks.   RELATED: 11 Things I Wish I&amp;#039;d Known About Partying When I Was Younger 19 Things I Wish I&amp;#039;d Known About Money When I Was Younger  Follow Anna on Twitter.   Photo Credit: Gallery Stock "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/advice/a6988/health-wisdom-twentysomethings/>