What Truly Makes Us Healthy?

Do you know what truly makes you healthy?

Is it only eating one particular food group? No

Is it taking a drug or supplement? Nope

Is it hiring a personal trainer? Nooo

Adapt for Optimal Health

What truly makes a person healthy is their ability to adapt! We CANNOT control what goes on around us but we can, however, control how we respond both externally and internally.

There will NEVER be a time when we are invincible to the stress and challenges of life. That is not the point of embarking on a health and healing journey. At times, we may experience symptoms and sickness, it’s a part of life.  But our ability to listen, respond, and adapt is ultimately what determines our overall health.

For centuries, human beings have been exposed to countless disasters, famines, plagues, and other physical, environmental, and social challenges. Each time coming back stronger, more bio-diverse, and more resilient. It is almost as if these challenges were a gift to propel us in the direction of a more abundant, joyful, and prosperous future.

We wouldn’t be where we are today without the challenges and stressors of our past. The same way a bodybuilder exerts tremendous energy and strain in the gym. By doing this, it forces his or her body to adapt and come back stronger next time. It is when these stressors remain unintegrated (i.e. we haven’t allowed our nervous system to make sense of them) that we begin to experience a decrease in our quality of life.

Optimal health is defined as a complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being. Not merely the absence of symptoms, illness, or disease.

Physical discomfort, fatigue, headaches, brain fog, hormonal imbalance, digestive issues, anxiety, depression, emotional instability, and many more are simply a sign of our body’s inability to adapt. Symptoms are a calling to us to listen and look deeper within to the source.

Health is a Journey

Covering up symptoms does not make one healthy. This is because it does not addressed the true cause of what got someone there in the first place. Ignoring them by covering them up makes us more vulnerable to future stress and challenges because we have not improved our ability to adapt.

Often, when we work with people, they can pinpoint a time when things started to “go downhill“. This is often a period in time when they were unable to adapt and usually for a very good reason. A traumatic experience, an old injury, a stressful job, or an emotional relationship, their body-mind hasn’t been the same since.

This period in time led to a cascade of events that have altered their physical, mental, or emotional well-being. As a result, symptoms arose and led them to believe they are unhealthy. 

Most people have sought care from numerous health practitioners. They have tried countless treatments, remedies, and ‘quick fixes’. Majority of the time, the symptoms still persist. Or, symptoms go away but the person still feels like something is off, leaving them feeling stuck, hopeless, and distraught.

Rather than treat the symptoms (effect) we must address the cause by supporting the body back to a place of balance. where it can integrate stress and begin to fully adapt and heal. This is the healing journey and leads to what truly makes us healthy, vital, and whole.

5 Pillars of Heath

1. Take care of your Nervous System– I could talk all day about the Nervous system. Simply put, it is your master control system. The level to which your nervous system is communicating determines the extent of information and intelligence your cells and tissues receive. Adaptability begins with the nervous system. More communication and less interference enhance your ability to adapt to stress. This allows your cells and tissues to continue to receive vital life-force information.
   Neural Integration, the process we lead people through in our office, is the most efficient way to integrate and enhance nerve flow, hence why we place so much emphasis on it. Other ways include meditation, exercise, yoga, drinking plenty of water, breathwork, and more. 
2. Eat whole foods from the Earth- The energy our cells need to repair, adapt, and grow can be found in fresh plants, vegetables, fruits, AND water from the Earth. You CANNOT get the same level of nutrients from a store-bought, packaged box meal. In fact, these processed foods hinder our ability to adapt and play a significant role in our overall health. Avoid foods such as processed oils, refined carbohydrates (bread, pasta, pastries…), sugar, GMO foods, and alcohol.
3. Practice mindfulness- Your ability to respond to stress, whether real or perceived, is vital to maintaining a healthy mental balance. Sit for 10 minutes in meditation, practice grounding your feet in the Earth, get 10 minutes of direct sunlight, or go for a 10-minute walk with no distractions. These are all simple ways to practice mindfulness and enhance your ability to respond to stress.
4. Get moving- 20 minutes of moderate-vigorous exercise a day has been shown to significantly improve health, and reduce all-cause mortality. Find time to move every day. Work for 20 minutes to get your heart rate elevated to above your normal resting rate and stay there. Don’t overcomplicate it to start, simply start wherever you are at.
5. Get some rest– Aim for AT LEAST 6 hours of sleep every night to allow your body to recoup. Adequate sleep enhances your immune system, physical health, and emotional well-being. This is also the time for our nervous system to process stress from our day and prepare us for a new day.

Final Thoughts

Will doing all of these for the next week radically transform your health and eliminate chronic disease? Most likely, no. And to be real, nothing will. There is no magic pill or short cut to creating true optimal health. Health is a journey and process of becoming more whole. A journey you often don’t know you need often until it is too late. These simple steps will begin to propel you in the direction of health and vitality. You will become more adaptable to future stress and remain in a consistent state of balance.

What makes you healthy is not what you do once or twice, it is what you do repeatedly over many years. I invite you to stop thinking in terms of days, weeks, and months when it comes to your health. Instead begin making decisions in terms of 7 years. 

Every cell in your body (100 trillion!) is brand new every 7 years. That means YOU are essentially a brand new person every 7 years. In the big picture, what you do today is relatively small. But, when you compound that every day for the next 7 years your health and life will be radically different.

Simply shifting your focus of what makes you healthy from a quick temporary fix to a consistent simple practice can help create lasting change for years to come.