The way your body works is truly amazing. You take in air, food and water, and from those raw materials, you manufacture everything you need to run millions of chemical reactions, to maintain trillions of cells, to keep your heart beating 100,000 times a day, to think intelligent thoughts and take meaningful actions.
It’s a remarkable, miraculous process, and Nature does most of the heavy lifting – these body functions are mostly automatic, not requiring our conscious direction, but that doesn’t mean we can’t choose lifestyle habits that make it easier for the body to work well. When you understand the way the body runs, it becomes clear what you can do to be healthier.
All body parts and functions are under the supervision and control of the brain, so taking care of your brain is necessary for optimal health. There are three kinds of stress that affect your brain – emotional stress, chemical stress, and mechanical stress.
Emotional stresses, like upsets, work or financial pressure, or family issues, can be relieved with stretching, yoga, massage, connection with trusted friends and advisors or counseling. Chemical stresses, such as toxic environments, intake of excessive chemicals in processed foods, or poor nutritional decisions, can be helped with cleanses, better food choices, and proper nutritional supplementation. Mechanical stresses, like wear and tear on your body and injuries to the spine and limbs, can be dealt with through exercise, better rest and sleep cycles and chiropractic care. Each of these habits improves brain health and decreases brain stress.
Take good care of your brain, and it will continue to take good care of you.
Can Gratitude Improve Your Health?
The holiday season is more than a ploy for greeting card and toy manufacturers to fatten up. At the foundation of the holidays is a spirit of gratitude and a sense of good will toward our fellow human. This is a lovely sentiment, but besides being nice it turns out that it may well have a positive influence on your health. Here are some of the findings and remarks of some contemporary experts:
From Psychiatry MMC, November 2010:
“Gratitude is the appreciation of what is valuable and meaningful to oneself; it is a general state of thankfulness and/or appreciation. The majority of empirical studies indicate that there is an association between gratitude and a sense of overall well being.”
(Randy A Sansone MD and Lori A Sansone MD)
From the Huffington Post Blog, “The Neuroscience of Why Gratitude Makes Us Healthier,” November 2011:
“Gratitude, it turns out, makes you happier and healthier. If you invest in a way of seeing the world that is mean and frustrated, you’re going to get a world that is, well, more mean and frustrating. But if you can find any authentic reason to give thanks, anything that is going right with the world or your life, and put your attention there, then statistics say you’re going to be better off.
(Ocean Robbins)
From Psychwiki.com, “Does Gratitude Cause Happiness”:
Within psychology, there are also numerous practical ideas about the importance of feeling thankful. In Maslow’s Self Actualization model, Self Actualized people are said to be “incorporating an ongoing freshness of appreciation of life” (Huitt 2004). Part of Dr. Martin Seligman’s website on “Authentic Happiness” includes exercises designed to help one feel and express more gratitude, including the Gratitude Visit … In more empirically based psychology work, gratitude has been statistically linked to happiness, pride, and hope in a study of college freshmen
(Overwalle, Mervielde, & De Schuyter, 1995).
Can Gratitude Improve Your Health?
The lack of gratitude has been found to be characteristic of clinically diagnosed narcissistic personalities (McWilliams and Lependorf 1990).
Gratitude was found to be rated among the top 5 personal “strengths” in a survey of 24 strengths given in 40 countries (Park, Peterson, & Seligman, 2005).
From happierhuman.com, “The 31 Benefits of Gratitude You Didn’t Know About: How Gratitude Can Change Your Life,” July 2012:
A five-minute a day gratitude journal can increase your long-term well-being by more than 10 percent. That’s 2.5x the impact of winning more than $1,000,000 in the lottery! How does a free five minute activity do what $1,000,000+ can’t? Gratitude improves our health, relationships, emotions, personality, and career. There is even reason to believe gratitude can extend your lifespan by a few months or even years.
(Amit Amin)
These are only a few of many research projects that demonstrate a connection between being grateful and being healthy and happy. It may seem unrelated at first, but if you think about it, just being thankful for your blessings, however few or many, should make you feel good and reduce your stress — and it will set the stage for those you influence to do more of the same, paying it forward.
In this season of good will and thankfulness, let’s go out of our way to show our appreciation to those we touch and serve – it’s good for them, and good for you, too.
Six Tips For Healthy Eating
Kristen Aldridge of Shape Magazine provides us with some simple and useful ideas for managing our eating and staying fit during the holiday season, based on six tips from chef and holistic nutritionist Tricia Williams of FoodMattersNYC.com.
- Pregame with chia seeds. Before you party (and eat) the night away, add a tablespoon of chia seeds to a glass of water. Rich in antioxidants and minerals, these little seeds expand in your stomach, curbing cravings while reducing inflammation.
- Plan your calories. If you know you’re going to indulge for dinner, plan your day of eating ahead of time so you can monitor your caloric intake. “Have a green juice for breakfast and a lighter lunch so you can prepare to splurge for the night out,” Williams says. “Low glycemic foods like oatmeal or quinoa with fresh berries are also great options. Since they metabolize slowly, you’ll feel fuller longer.”
- Be a food snob. Scope out the spread before you chow down. What makes your mouth water? Zero in on that and steer clear of the rest. If you can muster, stay away from bread, cheese, and crackers.
- Stay away from grains. “What’s interesting is that I find people consume less alcohol if they’re consuming less grains,” Williams says. “You could easily go up to 2,000 or 3,000 calories at a party with a few glasses of wine, so it’s definitely something to try!”
- BYOD. If appropriate, bring your own dish! You’ll have a delicious, healthy option that you actually like. “If you’re bringing a dessert, it’s easy to swap out refined white flour for oat flour,” Williams says. “You can also substitute coconut sugar for white sugar. It has fewer calories and you won’t experience the crash.”
- Have a plant-based plate. Make sure 80 percent of your plate is plant-based. The rest should be mostly protein and a little bit of fat. “Allow room for a tiny dessert, but try to fill up on as many veggies as you can,” Williams says. “And your protein portion should always be the size of the palm of your hand.”
Most good eating habits are common sense – think before you eat for the holidays, and stay fit and healthy!
For Your Health,
Dr. Wendy Lanser D.C.