Build a Solid Foundation of Health
Getting well and staying well doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does require the willingness to change and of course, taking action. The key is to start off by implementing the essential components of good health and then expanding from there. While it’s easy to brush off these basics as being “too simple” and opting to find health in an exotic pill bottle, it’s these essentials that build the foundation from which everything else emerges. Faulty foundation leads to a faulty house. Solid foundation leads to a solid house.
All chronic health problems, from back pain to digestive issues, can originate from any of the 3 levels of health: structural, nutritional, and emotional wellness. To optimize your full potential of health and wellness, it is essential to examine all 3 areas.
Structural Health
This includes your posture, joint and tissue mobility, and general fitness level of your body. Injuries from car accidents, falls, work, or sports can cause postural misalignments and tensions creating pain and dysfunction long after the event occurred, often leaving residual imbalances within your frame. While treatment is usually the best option for taking care of these aspects, you can almost always improve your structural health on your own by keeping physically fit. Your postural alignment is directly affected by the degree to which you live a sedentary lifestyle—meaning not moving enough. It’s the “use it or lose it” philosophy. Get outside and get moving daily, even if it’s just for 15 – 20 minutes of walking to begin.
Nutritional Health
Infusing your diet with high quality, nutrient dense foods fuels and regenerates your body. However, it is equally important to eliminate poor quality foods that clog your engine and rob your body of vital energy. Improper eating habits easily affect your blood sugar levels, digestive health, and immunity leading to aches and pains, chronic illness, and emotional stress. Start off easy—take out one thing from your diet that you know isn’t good for you and commit to putting one thing back in such as green leafy vegetables. Many people are deficient in vital nutrients such as vitamin D, magnesium, and omega 3 fats. Including superfoods in your diet such as walnuts, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, wild salmon and getting adequate daily sun exposure will give your body and mind a boost.
Your body is a detox machine, constantly processing toxins from your environment, the food you eat, and your thoughts and emotions. Your liver, kidneys, lungs, colon, and skin all support your body’s ability to process what it doesn’t need and maintain optimal health and balance. Stress, poor eating and lifestyle habits, and chronic illness influence your body’s detoxification ability making it difficult to function optimally. Dietary imbalances can create yeast in the gut which secrete their own toxins and jam up the liver. Emotional stress compromises the flow of “chi” or energy in the body as well as produces chemicals that act as toxins. You can optimize the function of your detox organs by taking care of your basics: move your body daily, breathe deeply, eat well, and smile often. Certain herbs and nutrients can also be used to boost the health of your detox organs such as milk thistle, dandelion root, and organic green tea.
Emotional Wellness
This is the trump card. The most important aspect of your health and wellness is in direct relationship to how you feel emotionally on a daily basis. Life is full of stressors and situations that need to be dealt with. What matters is how you adapt to “what’s going on”. Stress can accumulate affecting your immune system, adrenal health, digestive secretions and literally every cell of your body. Most of the time it isn’t what’s on the forefront of your mind that is affecting your body, but rather what’s on the back burner. Simply taking a few minutes per day to reflect, meditate or pray can flood your body with healthy hormones and set it in the right direction.
Remember, a healthy and balanced lifestyle is the best prevention against disease and disharmony, as well as the best recipe for optimum health and wellbeing.
Practitioner Support
Prevention is the key but we all need help from time to time. When someone comes in to my clinic, I assess all 3 levels of health and use therapies such as homeopathic medicine, osteopathic manipulation, and energetic balancing techniques to address individual concerns. Homeopathic medicines stimulate the self-healing mechanism of your body and can be used for a wide range of complaints from acute injuries to chronic health problems. Osteopathic manipulation releases tension and pain from your body, and energetic balancing techniques improve the flow of “chi” in your body to improve physiological function. By integrating these and other complimentary therapies, chronic pain and many other health issues can be resolved.
If you feel you need practitioner support, give us a call.