Movement is essential because the body and its joints are created to move. If you think about it, when there is no movement at the cellular level,that is death. If you become sedentary and the body becomes fixed and out of place, you take away the body’s ability to move – to truly live.
So function, or movement, is life. Increased motion in the body equals increased function, which means equals increased wellness. Put another way, the more you move, the more your cells are able to function. What does that mean? It means you are healthier. Restoring motion increases function, which gives more life.
Your level of function is directly proportional to your level of health. That is why regular chiropractic care, which removes the interference to mobility in joints, combined with a dedicated and balanced exercise program, can give you greater health.
Breaking this down further, nerves go throughout every part of the body. They send messages from those parts up to the brain and carry messages back down from the brain to every cell. Movement creates nerve activity in the body. So in response to movement, messages travel throughout the nerve system and communicate what is needed in order for all systems to function optimally. So with each movement, the brain tells the body exactly what muscles to fire, what needs to take place in order for any movement to occur, and then it continues its feedback loop.
Without movement, there is no communication. So if we stop all function, we stop the flow of information between the body and the brain. Lack of movement decreases the capability of the body to respond when most needed.
In neural development, we know that babies that crawl the most tend to have higher IQs. That’s because they’re using more muscles in their bodies in a crawling state, back and forth, stimulating both sides of the brain, which generates more brain capacity.
As an adult, the more you move, the more you stimulate your brain. Especially if you are taking medications that slow you down, it is essential that you get moving in order to stimulate nerve pathways to keep you functioning optimally. Movement is essential for toxic removal and nutrient replenishment. It’s essential for nerve flow, so to move is very important.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Positive Mental Attitude
A positive mental attitude has long been known as one of the foundations of good health, along with sleep, exercise, healthy diet, chiropractic care and/or massage and/or acupuncture, and meditation or mental relaxation. There is now scientific proof of just how important surrounding ourselves in a positive environment is to our wellbeing. The best information comes from research by Dr. Masaru Emoto. His book, The Hidden Messages in Water, explores the power of positive or negative thoughts on the formation of healthy water crystals.
He studied the formation of water crystals from droplets around the world, from tap water in large cities to glaciers in Alaska and streams in the high mountains. They found that water from stagnant sources or sources like tap water that contained chlorine and fluoride to protect people from “disease” would not form crystals at all or formed very disorganized structures. Yet crystals from running streams were whole and formed beautiful designs.
Taking this to the next level, researchers retested the samples with words like “friendship” and “gratitude” and “love” taped to the water sample. They found that by surrounding the water with positive words, beautiful, whole crystals formed. When surrounded by words of hatred, the crystals would not form properly and created an “evil eye appearance.”
What does this study of water crystals tell us about our health? Well, if 60 to 90 percent of our body’s makeup is water (depending on our stage of life), then surrounding ourselves with a positive environment will allow us to function differently than if surrounded by negative stuff. This happens because of the frequency at which positive and negative things vibrate. Positive environments function with harmony and balance, whereas negative influences create disruption. That disruption in our lives can create dis-ease in the body and a state in which sickness can develop.
This gives us something to think about, because we have the choice to pick our attitude each and every day regardless of what is happening in our life.
He studied the formation of water crystals from droplets around the world, from tap water in large cities to glaciers in Alaska and streams in the high mountains. They found that water from stagnant sources or sources like tap water that contained chlorine and fluoride to protect people from “disease” would not form crystals at all or formed very disorganized structures. Yet crystals from running streams were whole and formed beautiful designs.
Taking this to the next level, researchers retested the samples with words like “friendship” and “gratitude” and “love” taped to the water sample. They found that by surrounding the water with positive words, beautiful, whole crystals formed. When surrounded by words of hatred, the crystals would not form properly and created an “evil eye appearance.”
What does this study of water crystals tell us about our health? Well, if 60 to 90 percent of our body’s makeup is water (depending on our stage of life), then surrounding ourselves with a positive environment will allow us to function differently than if surrounded by negative stuff. This happens because of the frequency at which positive and negative things vibrate. Positive environments function with harmony and balance, whereas negative influences create disruption. That disruption in our lives can create dis-ease in the body and a state in which sickness can develop.
This gives us something to think about, because we have the choice to pick our attitude each and every day regardless of what is happening in our life.
Wellness for Life: Handling Environmental Stress
Wellness for Life
PART III: Chemical/environmental stress
Today we deal with part three, chemical/environmental stress. This comes in the form of anything unnatural to the body: manmade additives and preservatives found in foods, medications, recreational drugs, steroids and antibiotics given to animals, plastic and metallic cookware, fire retardants in clothing, etc. This kind of chemical overload also can be found in fragrances, nail polish, lotions, cosmetics, pesticides, “sick” buildings, even chlorine in tap water and swimming pools.
Environmental toxins include electromagnetic energy that bombards our bodies daily, including satellites, radar, cell phones, high tension power lines, microwaves, televisions, computers, and iPods (yes, sorry).
As Kevin Trudeau writes in “Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About,” we are putting more toxins into and onto our bodies every day. What does this mean for our health? Chemical stressors are one of the reasons that allergies are at an all-time high; why asthma and diabetes are becoming epidemics; and why we’re seeing alarming rates of obesity even in children. A lot of these conditions are caused by the fact that chemicals don’t break down properly in the body. Food that has been processed or engineered for color, looks, size, and/or taste not only doesn’t have the whole nutrients that organic products have, the body can’t break it down without added stress on the system.
Also, if we are not taking care of the body by eating balanced, whole foods, drinking enough pure water, and getting enough exercise that makes us sweat, then we are not properly flushing these toxins from our systems. They are stored in fat tissue, and create stress in the body that leads to dis-ease, and then symptoms.
Research on environmental pollutants shows that diet as well as exposure to chemical pollutants can have health consequences years and even decades later — and can even be passed to succeeding generations. Studies reveal that chemicals like monosodium glutamate (aka hydrolyzed vegetable protein) and aspartame are intensely poisonous to our bodies. In fact, aspartame was actually developed as an ant poison (see www.dorway.com).
Symptoms are our friends (see Part I of this series). If we address the symptom only, the underlying cause is still unaddressed and will create future problems. However, if we make lifestyle choices to eliminate the stressors that are causing the problem, then we are going to have the best chance of destressing our bodies.
Here are some tips for reducing the chemical and environmental toxins in your life.
• Medications can save your life or keep you on two feet. But you need to understand why and what you are putting into your body. Ask your health professionals, what is this drug really doing? Are there lifestyle changes that would work as well or better?
• Become a label reader for whatever you ingest. A rule of thumb is, if you can’t pronounce or understand the big words on it, don’t put it in your body.
• Eat organic foods where you can to maximize your body’s ability to process and utilize the nutrients.
• Understand that processed and canned foods that have preservatives are difficult for the body to process.
• Homogenization, pasteurization, and radiation of products before they go out on shelf denatures the foods’ natural proteins and flora and alters their biochemical structures. If you must consume dairy, be sure you are adding probiotics into your diet.
• Look for viable alternatives to any medication or manmade substitute when dealing with illness or disease in the body.
• Drink water that has been filtered and is free of ammonia, chlorine, and fluoride — chemicals toxic to the body. Think about it: A container of any of these would have skull and crossbones on it, so why are we putting them into our systems?
• Plastics leach dioxins into the foods stored in them. This includes water, frozen and microwaved foods, as well as plastic wrap and covers. Glass is your best option for cooking and storage. Throw away old plastic containers, especially ones used for microwaving.
We know that the cause of all disease in the body is physical, emotional, or chemical stress. So it becomes prudent to address the sources or causes of stress, and not just the symptoms, in order to create that balance in our body that expresses as wellness.
PART III: Chemical/environmental stress
Today we deal with part three, chemical/environmental stress. This comes in the form of anything unnatural to the body: manmade additives and preservatives found in foods, medications, recreational drugs, steroids and antibiotics given to animals, plastic and metallic cookware, fire retardants in clothing, etc. This kind of chemical overload also can be found in fragrances, nail polish, lotions, cosmetics, pesticides, “sick” buildings, even chlorine in tap water and swimming pools.
Environmental toxins include electromagnetic energy that bombards our bodies daily, including satellites, radar, cell phones, high tension power lines, microwaves, televisions, computers, and iPods (yes, sorry).
As Kevin Trudeau writes in “Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About,” we are putting more toxins into and onto our bodies every day. What does this mean for our health? Chemical stressors are one of the reasons that allergies are at an all-time high; why asthma and diabetes are becoming epidemics; and why we’re seeing alarming rates of obesity even in children. A lot of these conditions are caused by the fact that chemicals don’t break down properly in the body. Food that has been processed or engineered for color, looks, size, and/or taste not only doesn’t have the whole nutrients that organic products have, the body can’t break it down without added stress on the system.
Also, if we are not taking care of the body by eating balanced, whole foods, drinking enough pure water, and getting enough exercise that makes us sweat, then we are not properly flushing these toxins from our systems. They are stored in fat tissue, and create stress in the body that leads to dis-ease, and then symptoms.
Research on environmental pollutants shows that diet as well as exposure to chemical pollutants can have health consequences years and even decades later — and can even be passed to succeeding generations. Studies reveal that chemicals like monosodium glutamate (aka hydrolyzed vegetable protein) and aspartame are intensely poisonous to our bodies. In fact, aspartame was actually developed as an ant poison (see www.dorway.com).
Symptoms are our friends (see Part I of this series). If we address the symptom only, the underlying cause is still unaddressed and will create future problems. However, if we make lifestyle choices to eliminate the stressors that are causing the problem, then we are going to have the best chance of destressing our bodies.
Here are some tips for reducing the chemical and environmental toxins in your life.
• Medications can save your life or keep you on two feet. But you need to understand why and what you are putting into your body. Ask your health professionals, what is this drug really doing? Are there lifestyle changes that would work as well or better?
• Become a label reader for whatever you ingest. A rule of thumb is, if you can’t pronounce or understand the big words on it, don’t put it in your body.
• Eat organic foods where you can to maximize your body’s ability to process and utilize the nutrients.
• Understand that processed and canned foods that have preservatives are difficult for the body to process.
• Homogenization, pasteurization, and radiation of products before they go out on shelf denatures the foods’ natural proteins and flora and alters their biochemical structures. If you must consume dairy, be sure you are adding probiotics into your diet.
• Look for viable alternatives to any medication or manmade substitute when dealing with illness or disease in the body.
• Drink water that has been filtered and is free of ammonia, chlorine, and fluoride — chemicals toxic to the body. Think about it: A container of any of these would have skull and crossbones on it, so why are we putting them into our systems?
• Plastics leach dioxins into the foods stored in them. This includes water, frozen and microwaved foods, as well as plastic wrap and covers. Glass is your best option for cooking and storage. Throw away old plastic containers, especially ones used for microwaving.
We know that the cause of all disease in the body is physical, emotional, or chemical stress. So it becomes prudent to address the sources or causes of stress, and not just the symptoms, in order to create that balance in our body that expresses as wellness.
Wellness for Life: Handling Emotional Stress
Stress is the body’s way of dealing with perceived threats to survival. In the past, humans had saber-tooth tigers to fend off. Today, emotional stress is usually self-imposed. Taking on more than we can manage is harmful to our health because the body is wired the same as in prehistoric times.
According to one survey, nearly 75 percent of adults feel great emotional stress on a weekly basis. The idea that positive or negative states of mind can influence health and disease is now accepted by the medical community. Recent scientific advances prove the rich network of connections by which the brain and immune system communicate, such that interruptions of these connections — the over-activity that occurs during stress — lead to disease. By contrast, activities that reduce the stress response, like meditation, maintain these connections and our health.
Mental/emotional stress derives from conscious as well as subconscious events, beliefs, actions, and feelings. These include negative attitudes, family and work issues, noise, infections, crowds, deadline pressures, caring for an aging parent, a death in the family —even in creative projects our mental state creates chemical changes in the body.
When we put our bodies under chronic stress, many chemical reactions occur at the cellular level. The body moves into a state of tension that includes increased heart rate and changes in muscle tone. When tension in the system increases, it affects the reaction between the pain receptors and the mechanoreceptors, which are essential for sending information from the body to the brain. If those areas become overloaded, then our body is not going to be able to function optimally.
When we don’t have healthy outlets for stress, those chemical changes can build up and chronically impact how the body feels overall. Too much emotional stress can lead to dis-ease of the body, thus leaving it susceptible to disease.
So how do we manage negativity and the mental/emotional issues that can create stress in our lives? As was discovered by Masaru Emoto in The Hidden Messages in Water, love and gratitude are the strongest, most positive emotions humans have; they actually change cellular structures. Negative thoughts can bring on disease faster than any other cause. Therefore, we can improve our health by surrounding ourselves in a positive environment.
Here are suggestions for managing mental/emotional stress:
1) Connect with people around you. Having friends you can confide in, create with, or solve problems with, is key. Hugging also goes a long way.
2) Develop a good meditation and/or prayer practice where you empty your thoughts daily. These are ways to unload the brain so that we can rest; thus decreasing blood pressure and pulse rate, and improving blood circulation.
3) The ability to sleep is essential; this is when your body recharges and heals itself. Try not to drink caffeinated beverages or work out heavily within a few hours of bedtime. Leave the computers and televisions off, especially the news. Make sure the last thing you do before drifting off is peaceful, relaxing, funny, or whatever will create a happy state for you.
4) Chiropractic, massage, and acupuncture are fantastic tools to reconnect your system and help manage stress.
5) The greatest outlet for mental/emotional stress is a positive mental attitude. If you can put a positive spin on everything you do, you will find a way to move through life more easily. Negative emotional stress can exacerbate existing medical conditions.
6) In an emergency, please consult with a mental health professional to help you with issues. Interview many before settling on one whom you can trust and feel comfortable with.
7) Make walking (see Part I) a regular exercise regimen; it can be helpful in allowing you to take your mind off your troubles.
8) Breathe deeply and often, fully expanding the lungs and increasing the tone of the body’s tissues.
Emotional stress is a normal part of our lives. It can move us forward with inspiration or hold us back in fear and stagnation. These are lifestyle choices available to everyone. Our level of physical activity, good nutrition, a balance of rest and play, and social networking all contribute to a greater ability to manage and grow from mental/emotional stress. By consciously attending to the causes of our stress, we can overcome sorrows and enrich other people’s lives. This is the greatest benefit of this wellness practice.
According to one survey, nearly 75 percent of adults feel great emotional stress on a weekly basis. The idea that positive or negative states of mind can influence health and disease is now accepted by the medical community. Recent scientific advances prove the rich network of connections by which the brain and immune system communicate, such that interruptions of these connections — the over-activity that occurs during stress — lead to disease. By contrast, activities that reduce the stress response, like meditation, maintain these connections and our health.
Mental/emotional stress derives from conscious as well as subconscious events, beliefs, actions, and feelings. These include negative attitudes, family and work issues, noise, infections, crowds, deadline pressures, caring for an aging parent, a death in the family —even in creative projects our mental state creates chemical changes in the body.
When we put our bodies under chronic stress, many chemical reactions occur at the cellular level. The body moves into a state of tension that includes increased heart rate and changes in muscle tone. When tension in the system increases, it affects the reaction between the pain receptors and the mechanoreceptors, which are essential for sending information from the body to the brain. If those areas become overloaded, then our body is not going to be able to function optimally.
When we don’t have healthy outlets for stress, those chemical changes can build up and chronically impact how the body feels overall. Too much emotional stress can lead to dis-ease of the body, thus leaving it susceptible to disease.
So how do we manage negativity and the mental/emotional issues that can create stress in our lives? As was discovered by Masaru Emoto in The Hidden Messages in Water, love and gratitude are the strongest, most positive emotions humans have; they actually change cellular structures. Negative thoughts can bring on disease faster than any other cause. Therefore, we can improve our health by surrounding ourselves in a positive environment.
Here are suggestions for managing mental/emotional stress:
1) Connect with people around you. Having friends you can confide in, create with, or solve problems with, is key. Hugging also goes a long way.
2) Develop a good meditation and/or prayer practice where you empty your thoughts daily. These are ways to unload the brain so that we can rest; thus decreasing blood pressure and pulse rate, and improving blood circulation.
3) The ability to sleep is essential; this is when your body recharges and heals itself. Try not to drink caffeinated beverages or work out heavily within a few hours of bedtime. Leave the computers and televisions off, especially the news. Make sure the last thing you do before drifting off is peaceful, relaxing, funny, or whatever will create a happy state for you.
4) Chiropractic, massage, and acupuncture are fantastic tools to reconnect your system and help manage stress.
5) The greatest outlet for mental/emotional stress is a positive mental attitude. If you can put a positive spin on everything you do, you will find a way to move through life more easily. Negative emotional stress can exacerbate existing medical conditions.
6) In an emergency, please consult with a mental health professional to help you with issues. Interview many before settling on one whom you can trust and feel comfortable with.
7) Make walking (see Part I) a regular exercise regimen; it can be helpful in allowing you to take your mind off your troubles.
8) Breathe deeply and often, fully expanding the lungs and increasing the tone of the body’s tissues.
Emotional stress is a normal part of our lives. It can move us forward with inspiration or hold us back in fear and stagnation. These are lifestyle choices available to everyone. Our level of physical activity, good nutrition, a balance of rest and play, and social networking all contribute to a greater ability to manage and grow from mental/emotional stress. By consciously attending to the causes of our stress, we can overcome sorrows and enrich other people’s lives. This is the greatest benefit of this wellness practice.
Wellness for Life: Stress I
When is the last time that you made the effort to take really good care of yourself? This is a question you might want to seriously consider. Thomas J. Stanley, author of Millionaire Next Door and The Millionaire Mind, surveyed 100 millionaires between the ages of 60 and 65. An alarming 60 percent of them had some type of health problem and needed wheelchairs and/or oxygen tubes. The majority said the one thing that they regretted, that they would do over, would be to spend more time on their health so they could enjoy their wealth now.
Your wealth is in your health. But what is health? And what is wellness?
Health is more than the absence of disease; it is a lack of stress on the body that would otherwise create dysfunction in its systems. Where does this stress come from? From our lifestyle choices. So wellness is a lifestyle we choose in order to maximize health at any age. In other words, wellness is the process of making choices about how to handle stress, so the state of our health is the end result of those choices. Wellness means realizing that we need to process the stresses in our lives, and making choices to be able to process those stressors.
Choices for wellness are important because stress is the major cause of illness in this country. Research may categorize conditions or behaviors like heart attacks, diabetes, smoking, cancer, etc. However, all of these illnesses are ultimately caused by stress. In today’s society, especially in East County with its hectic commuter lifestyle, stress is very difficult to avoid. For some, just waking up in the morning might be stressful. The point is that we need to look at stress, understand stress and how our bodies respond to it, and take action for ourselves and our families to help cope.
What Is Stress?
Stressors can be found in three forms. One is physical stress, which occurs from the activities and type of work we do, or even sometimes the lack of activities. For example, a football player’s body will experience physical stress from being tackled. Someone in a car accident or other traumatic event will experience physical stress. Even the white-collared lawyer or executive who sits all day in front of a computer will suffer physical stress from chronic static positioning and poor posture.
Another form of stress is chemical, caused by what is ingested or put onto the body. Any substances that are not natural to the body create stress and can have drastic effects on the health of both body and mind. For example, many chemicals are found in the foods we eat. Even with healthful foods we must sometimes be careful of the pesticides, antibiotics, or steroids used in growing them. Anything with artificial preservatives or sweeteners challenges the body’s digestive abilities. Chemical stress is also found in any drug (recreational or medical) that is consumed. Cigarettes, sodas, coffee, and alcohol have negative effects on the body, forcing it to work overtime in order to clear the foreign substance.
The third key form of stress is mental/emotional. Yes, even our emotions create stress in the body. Mental/emotional stress is very powerful — and often underestimated. Something that weighs on our minds consciously, and even more importantly subconsciously, can create enormous health problems, especially when one deals with long-term stressors. Events like a death in the family, relationship troubles, and monetary issues are some of the major mental/emotional stressors.
These three types of stress can create “dis-ease” [cq] or injuries in the body when they go into overload. When the body gets into a state of dis-ease, then diseases like cancer, heart disease, and arthritis can flourish. The scary thing is that many times there are no warning signs. For example, most first-time heart attack victims had no warning; however, does this mean they were not sick prior to the heart attack? The answer is no. Typically it has taken years and years of a stressful lifestyle (mental/emotional stress), possibly a poor diet (chemical stress), and potentially little or no exercise (physical stress). These together created a situation in which the body’s tolerance threshold was reached and something had to give. So, as it turns out, there were signs — they just were not recognized, and so this person failed to take care of himself adequately to cope with the stresses of daily life.
These stressors are especially insidious because they also can affect each other. For example, a chemical stressor in the body will create physical stress on the body because it must work overtime to clear out the foreign substance. By forcing the body into working longer, the stressor takes away from normal rest periods and the rebuilding of cellular tissues. Optimal function is compromised.
How to Get Well and Stay Well
This is why we need to look at how we deal with stress and what we do for ourselves to best allow our systems to cope. By taking time for our own personal care and addressing our body’s needs, we can go a long way toward improving wellness, which will improve our quality of life and allow us to live optimally each and every day.
It is important to look at what we need to do to get well and to stay well. The majority of people who are not sick or in pain would probably say they are well. But are they healthy? Stedman’s Medical Dictionary [26th edition] defines health as, “A state of dynamic balance in which an individual’s capacity to cope with all the circumstances of living is at an optimal level.”
If we use the example of the heart attack victim above, we can clearly see that this person’s body reached a point at which it could no longer cope, so balance was lost. This is why it is so important to take the time to get well while you can, and then maintain health by taking time for yourself every day to ensure that you can enjoy life to its fullest.
The best way to help take care of yourself is to follow these five simple steps:
• The first is to get plenty of rest. With ample sleep daily, and vacation time occasionally, we allow our bodies to heal, to regenerate from injuries, to reduce stress, and to revitalize ourselves for a new day. Lack of rest creates a condition of fatigue in all internal systems and so opens the door for disease.
• The second step is nutrition, supplementation, and hydration. Proper nutrition gives us the vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and energy to function optimally. Foods, especially those grown naturally, are better because the body is built to utilize nutrients the earth provides; it has trouble recognizing man-made substances. The more artificial and processed the foods we consume, the greater the stress on the body, which has to work overtime to handle this problem. Substances that do not belong in the body also block out what is important; so the nutrients the body needs, it cannot necessarily get.
Proper supplementation can also help our bodies heal as well as receive the proper amount of nutrients for optimal performance. This is becoming even more vital not only because of all the highly processed foods consumed, but especially because of increasing damage to health by free radicals. So, supplements high in anti-oxidants are very important. Drinking enough pure water is also essential for good health. It helps hydrate and oxygenate the body, as well as help remove waste materials. Water is the most natural substance and is the most easily processed.
• Exercise is the third critical aspect of wellness. Our bodies are meant to move. Exercise gives us the strength to do our daily tasks. It increases blood flow and thus gets nutrients to the right spots. It also increases the strength of the lungs and heart, which helps combat fatigue and stress.
• Meditation/visualization can also help us live more optimally. Not only does it relieve stress and lower blood pressure, it helps bring clarity into our lives by improving focus and preparing us for a day or an event. Meditation works by creating a relaxed state, especially through focused breathing. Also, by learning to clear our minds of both past and future thoughts, we may eliminate the majority of tension in the body and thus cope with stressors as they arise.
• The fifth step is chiropractic care. Chiropractic truly works towards making and keeping the body well. Through adjusting the spine, we are able to keep proper motion in the body. Proper motion allows for stimulation of mechanoreceptors, which send information from the body to the brain and thus allow the brain to send proper signals to the body. This is important because if a mechanoreceptor is not functioning properly, certain information can be cut off from the brain. If the brain is not receiving all of the potential information in the body from which to respond, then the body will not function optimally.
Working Toward Optimal Health
All of these steps help move us toward optimal health. The more of them we can do on a consistent basis, the better our systems can deal with stress on a daily basis.
The easiest way to illustrate this is to imagine a glass of water. The glass represents us; the water represents stress. When you wake up in the morning after a good night’s rest, your glass has little water in it. However, as the morning goes on, you wake up to a sick child who cannot go to school on a day in which you have a big presentation due. All of a sudden your glass is half full. You then get stuck in traffic on the way to work and are now late after having to also drop off your kid with the in-laws. As your day goes on, more and more events add to your stress, filling your glass to the brim. As more stressors pile on, there is only one thing that the water (stress) can do — and that is overflow. That overflow is typically the breakdown point in the body.
The way to eliminate this problem and help the body cope with the stress, or having your glass overflow, is to continually sip the water from the glass so that there is always room to process that stress. This “sipping” is accomplished by taking care of your self through the five steps mentioned above.
Many people use self-care tools only when they get symptoms. The problem is that they also go in to take care of the symptoms and not remove the cause of the problem. Most often this cause has long been in the works because of poor lifestyle choices. If you are not taking care of the cause of the symptom, stress will continue to build up. If you are masking the problem by treating symptoms then, like the boy putting his finger in the dike to plug the hole, eventually another hole will appear, and then another, until the whole thing gives way and you have a health disaster.
Obviously, the choice about how you live your life is yours. The key to good health is to be aware of your choices and their consequences. With access to the Internet, you can get more information on sleep, nutrition, exercise, stress, meditation, and chiropractic care. So get out and learn what you need to know and take care of yourself.
Remember that the body wants to be well; it is always moving toward balance and wholeness. When we don’t interfere — when we make healthful lifestyle choices — we allow its innate intelligence to function optimally. That is health, that is wellness, and that is always our greatest wealth.
Your wealth is in your health. But what is health? And what is wellness?
Health is more than the absence of disease; it is a lack of stress on the body that would otherwise create dysfunction in its systems. Where does this stress come from? From our lifestyle choices. So wellness is a lifestyle we choose in order to maximize health at any age. In other words, wellness is the process of making choices about how to handle stress, so the state of our health is the end result of those choices. Wellness means realizing that we need to process the stresses in our lives, and making choices to be able to process those stressors.
Choices for wellness are important because stress is the major cause of illness in this country. Research may categorize conditions or behaviors like heart attacks, diabetes, smoking, cancer, etc. However, all of these illnesses are ultimately caused by stress. In today’s society, especially in East County with its hectic commuter lifestyle, stress is very difficult to avoid. For some, just waking up in the morning might be stressful. The point is that we need to look at stress, understand stress and how our bodies respond to it, and take action for ourselves and our families to help cope.
What Is Stress?
Stressors can be found in three forms. One is physical stress, which occurs from the activities and type of work we do, or even sometimes the lack of activities. For example, a football player’s body will experience physical stress from being tackled. Someone in a car accident or other traumatic event will experience physical stress. Even the white-collared lawyer or executive who sits all day in front of a computer will suffer physical stress from chronic static positioning and poor posture.
Another form of stress is chemical, caused by what is ingested or put onto the body. Any substances that are not natural to the body create stress and can have drastic effects on the health of both body and mind. For example, many chemicals are found in the foods we eat. Even with healthful foods we must sometimes be careful of the pesticides, antibiotics, or steroids used in growing them. Anything with artificial preservatives or sweeteners challenges the body’s digestive abilities. Chemical stress is also found in any drug (recreational or medical) that is consumed. Cigarettes, sodas, coffee, and alcohol have negative effects on the body, forcing it to work overtime in order to clear the foreign substance.
The third key form of stress is mental/emotional. Yes, even our emotions create stress in the body. Mental/emotional stress is very powerful — and often underestimated. Something that weighs on our minds consciously, and even more importantly subconsciously, can create enormous health problems, especially when one deals with long-term stressors. Events like a death in the family, relationship troubles, and monetary issues are some of the major mental/emotional stressors.
These three types of stress can create “dis-ease” [cq] or injuries in the body when they go into overload. When the body gets into a state of dis-ease, then diseases like cancer, heart disease, and arthritis can flourish. The scary thing is that many times there are no warning signs. For example, most first-time heart attack victims had no warning; however, does this mean they were not sick prior to the heart attack? The answer is no. Typically it has taken years and years of a stressful lifestyle (mental/emotional stress), possibly a poor diet (chemical stress), and potentially little or no exercise (physical stress). These together created a situation in which the body’s tolerance threshold was reached and something had to give. So, as it turns out, there were signs — they just were not recognized, and so this person failed to take care of himself adequately to cope with the stresses of daily life.
These stressors are especially insidious because they also can affect each other. For example, a chemical stressor in the body will create physical stress on the body because it must work overtime to clear out the foreign substance. By forcing the body into working longer, the stressor takes away from normal rest periods and the rebuilding of cellular tissues. Optimal function is compromised.
How to Get Well and Stay Well
This is why we need to look at how we deal with stress and what we do for ourselves to best allow our systems to cope. By taking time for our own personal care and addressing our body’s needs, we can go a long way toward improving wellness, which will improve our quality of life and allow us to live optimally each and every day.
It is important to look at what we need to do to get well and to stay well. The majority of people who are not sick or in pain would probably say they are well. But are they healthy? Stedman’s Medical Dictionary [26th edition] defines health as, “A state of dynamic balance in which an individual’s capacity to cope with all the circumstances of living is at an optimal level.”
If we use the example of the heart attack victim above, we can clearly see that this person’s body reached a point at which it could no longer cope, so balance was lost. This is why it is so important to take the time to get well while you can, and then maintain health by taking time for yourself every day to ensure that you can enjoy life to its fullest.
The best way to help take care of yourself is to follow these five simple steps:
• The first is to get plenty of rest. With ample sleep daily, and vacation time occasionally, we allow our bodies to heal, to regenerate from injuries, to reduce stress, and to revitalize ourselves for a new day. Lack of rest creates a condition of fatigue in all internal systems and so opens the door for disease.
• The second step is nutrition, supplementation, and hydration. Proper nutrition gives us the vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and energy to function optimally. Foods, especially those grown naturally, are better because the body is built to utilize nutrients the earth provides; it has trouble recognizing man-made substances. The more artificial and processed the foods we consume, the greater the stress on the body, which has to work overtime to handle this problem. Substances that do not belong in the body also block out what is important; so the nutrients the body needs, it cannot necessarily get.
Proper supplementation can also help our bodies heal as well as receive the proper amount of nutrients for optimal performance. This is becoming even more vital not only because of all the highly processed foods consumed, but especially because of increasing damage to health by free radicals. So, supplements high in anti-oxidants are very important. Drinking enough pure water is also essential for good health. It helps hydrate and oxygenate the body, as well as help remove waste materials. Water is the most natural substance and is the most easily processed.
• Exercise is the third critical aspect of wellness. Our bodies are meant to move. Exercise gives us the strength to do our daily tasks. It increases blood flow and thus gets nutrients to the right spots. It also increases the strength of the lungs and heart, which helps combat fatigue and stress.
• Meditation/visualization can also help us live more optimally. Not only does it relieve stress and lower blood pressure, it helps bring clarity into our lives by improving focus and preparing us for a day or an event. Meditation works by creating a relaxed state, especially through focused breathing. Also, by learning to clear our minds of both past and future thoughts, we may eliminate the majority of tension in the body and thus cope with stressors as they arise.
• The fifth step is chiropractic care. Chiropractic truly works towards making and keeping the body well. Through adjusting the spine, we are able to keep proper motion in the body. Proper motion allows for stimulation of mechanoreceptors, which send information from the body to the brain and thus allow the brain to send proper signals to the body. This is important because if a mechanoreceptor is not functioning properly, certain information can be cut off from the brain. If the brain is not receiving all of the potential information in the body from which to respond, then the body will not function optimally.
Working Toward Optimal Health
All of these steps help move us toward optimal health. The more of them we can do on a consistent basis, the better our systems can deal with stress on a daily basis.
The easiest way to illustrate this is to imagine a glass of water. The glass represents us; the water represents stress. When you wake up in the morning after a good night’s rest, your glass has little water in it. However, as the morning goes on, you wake up to a sick child who cannot go to school on a day in which you have a big presentation due. All of a sudden your glass is half full. You then get stuck in traffic on the way to work and are now late after having to also drop off your kid with the in-laws. As your day goes on, more and more events add to your stress, filling your glass to the brim. As more stressors pile on, there is only one thing that the water (stress) can do — and that is overflow. That overflow is typically the breakdown point in the body.
The way to eliminate this problem and help the body cope with the stress, or having your glass overflow, is to continually sip the water from the glass so that there is always room to process that stress. This “sipping” is accomplished by taking care of your self through the five steps mentioned above.
Many people use self-care tools only when they get symptoms. The problem is that they also go in to take care of the symptoms and not remove the cause of the problem. Most often this cause has long been in the works because of poor lifestyle choices. If you are not taking care of the cause of the symptom, stress will continue to build up. If you are masking the problem by treating symptoms then, like the boy putting his finger in the dike to plug the hole, eventually another hole will appear, and then another, until the whole thing gives way and you have a health disaster.
Obviously, the choice about how you live your life is yours. The key to good health is to be aware of your choices and their consequences. With access to the Internet, you can get more information on sleep, nutrition, exercise, stress, meditation, and chiropractic care. So get out and learn what you need to know and take care of yourself.
Remember that the body wants to be well; it is always moving toward balance and wholeness. When we don’t interfere — when we make healthful lifestyle choices — we allow its innate intelligence to function optimally. That is health, that is wellness, and that is always our greatest wealth.
The Four Principles of Wellness
A while ago I was talking with a patient about what it takes to truly be well and stay well. She wrote down what I was saying, and called them her “wellness principles.” Let’s take a look at what we talked about.
First, I told her that healing starts from within. By that I mean that the body wants to be well, and it will always tend toward healing and wellness. A lot of people think that it’s the band-aid or the antibiotic ointment that heals a cut, without realizing that it’s the body’s innate wisdom that knows exactly what to do to heal. By inner healing I also mean that the mind also wants to be well and no one from the outside can “make” you well or heal you. Health care professionals can guide you and make suggestions, but it is only your body that can heal you, at every level.
The second principle I offered is that movement is life. The body and its joints were created to move, and it functions best and heals best when it is moved. Movement stimulates the nerve system and gets blood flowing and removes toxic wastes. If we look at this at the cellular level, the cells also have to move; when there is no movement at the cellular level, that is death. If you become sedentary and the body becomes fixed and out of alignment, you take away the body’s ability to move — and to live.
The third principle I told her is that your state of mind reflects the state of your body, and vice versa. If you are negative and complex mentally, then that drags you down. You will feel tired, unwell, depressed, and your body will take on symptoms of many diseases. If this mindset goes on long enough, your body will actually create disease conditions to cope with your mental state.
The fourth and most important principle is to keep it simple. I truly believe this is the most important principle for optimal health. When we don’t interfere with the body’s ability to heal itself, when we allow life energy to flow through us, then we are truly well.
First, I told her that healing starts from within. By that I mean that the body wants to be well, and it will always tend toward healing and wellness. A lot of people think that it’s the band-aid or the antibiotic ointment that heals a cut, without realizing that it’s the body’s innate wisdom that knows exactly what to do to heal. By inner healing I also mean that the mind also wants to be well and no one from the outside can “make” you well or heal you. Health care professionals can guide you and make suggestions, but it is only your body that can heal you, at every level.
The second principle I offered is that movement is life. The body and its joints were created to move, and it functions best and heals best when it is moved. Movement stimulates the nerve system and gets blood flowing and removes toxic wastes. If we look at this at the cellular level, the cells also have to move; when there is no movement at the cellular level, that is death. If you become sedentary and the body becomes fixed and out of alignment, you take away the body’s ability to move — and to live.
The third principle I told her is that your state of mind reflects the state of your body, and vice versa. If you are negative and complex mentally, then that drags you down. You will feel tired, unwell, depressed, and your body will take on symptoms of many diseases. If this mindset goes on long enough, your body will actually create disease conditions to cope with your mental state.
The fourth and most important principle is to keep it simple. I truly believe this is the most important principle for optimal health. When we don’t interfere with the body’s ability to heal itself, when we allow life energy to flow through us, then we are truly well.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
A Life in Balance through Health
The purpose of this blog is to explore health by looking at things simply.So often things are so complicated when we look at health, it's difficult to know which way to go. Often the signs and symptoms are right there in front of us, and we just need to stop and look and listen to our own bodies and to our own answers.
We want to help you actively think about your health care options and lifestyle choices, and ask the questions that will lead you to the best decisions for your own health.
We'll explore the categories that create balance in one's life, because creating balance optimally can lead to a much healthier life. We'll help you create this balance by discussing different health topics and helping you to create new options and alternatives that you may not have considered before.
If there's a special issue you want to talk about, please contact us through http://www.actuschiropractic.com/.
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