Our health should be the most important thing in our lives. As much as we all know this, it is one of the hardest things to achieve and maintain. Some of us may start off well and then the reality of keeping up with all that hard work is too much.

As a health practitioner part of my job is to help people understand more about health and how to empower themselves with the knowledge of what health is and how to achieve it. Often this conversation is started when a practice member says to me something like, ‘Dr. Lisa I got this cold from Mary-Jane at the office’. I usually then ask them, ‘Was there a time when you went to work and someone was sick and you didn’t get sick?’. 100% of the time the answer will be ‘YES’.

So it is not the other person that is the issue here, it is the state of the individual’s health. If your body is run down, then you are more likely to get sick. The more run down a person is and the more stress that person is under will determine how sick they get. 

Most people feel that their health is already predetermined by their genes. The genetic blueprint that their mum and dad gave them. We now know with research done in the are of epigenetics that one single gene can be expressed in over 400 ways. It is in fact the environment that the gene is in that will determine how that gene will be expressed, whether in a healthy way or in a way that will cause dis-ease and eventually disease. 

So YOU are in control of YOUR HEALTH. How you live you life, each and every day will have a major determining impact on how you are feeling now, your resilience and on your future health outcome. We can look at 3 areas of your daily life that will have the biggest impact on your health. 

These are :

  1. How you Eat
  2. How you Think
  3. How you Move

1. How you Eat

This is such a big topic but a few things to keep in mind are:

 – eat as close from the source as possible, in other words, fresh food

 – eat foods that are from nature not foods made in a lab

 – eat seasonally     

 – eat mainly plant based foods 

2. How you Think

Our thoughts have an impact on our physiology. Happy thoughts create happy chemicals in our system and sad or negative thoughts create unhealthy chemicals in our system. Stress causes an elevation of cortisol, a chemical that is involved with our flight or fright response and if this chemical is elevate for too long, with prolonged stress, then our health will suffer. This may look like chronic pain, high levels of inflammation, and extremely low energy. How many people do you know who are chronically tired? You perhaps?

To help our body get out of the flight or fright response we can do things like meditation, praying, yoga. We know that a chiropractic adjustment helps our body do just that – it helps us get back into the rest and repair state, the healing state. 

3. How you Move

Our body is made to move. 90% of our messages going to the brain come from our spine. So it is super important that our spines move well for our brain to receive all the information and make all the appropriate responses. A spine that is moving well will ensure that your your whole body is moving well, helping you to get the most benefit from exercise. Chiropractic care helps to improve and maintain a healthy spine, allowing for the most ideal alignment and optimal function. 

So hopefully having this awareness of what great health is will encourage you more to do the right thing by your body AND enjoy the rewards of putting in the effort.

You are worth it!

Categories Blogs, Wellness