Do you depend on luck for your health? Or do you make conscious choices to be healthy every day?
Believe it or not, health is a conscious choice. Genetics can play a role in your health, but what you do on a regular basis has a bigger impact. What you eat, how much you sleep, how much water you drink, how much stress you have, how much exercise you get, and even how healthy your spine is all have a big impact on your overall health and wellness.
Health is multi faceted, meaning all areas of your health have to work well together. You are only as strong as your weakest link, so any area of your health that is lacking will affect all of the other areas.
For example if you exercise regularly, but have a poor diet then you are not truly healthy. You can not exercise away a poor diet. What you eat is about more than how much you weigh. Your body depends on the nutrients you get from food to carry out all of your physiological functions. Food is fuel for your body to work properly. If you put garbage in then you can expect garbage out. This is why you can feel so poorly after eating highly processed foods loaded with preservatives and other harmful ingredients.
When it comes to your diet, it’s a best practice to:
🍟 avoid processed foods
🍭 avoid sugary foods
🌈 eat the rainbow
☀️ eat seasonally
🥦 eat organic
🌱eat grass fed and/or pasture raised
🥑eat whole, nutrient dense foods
Hydration is another key to health. Many people just don’t drink enough water. If you are drinking coffee and soda all day long you are depleting your body from the hydration that it needs. Proper hydration contributes to regular bowel function, optimal muscle performance, and clear youthful looking skin. You should strive for drinking 64 ounces of water per day. You can include herbal teas and water rich foods towards your water intake.
If you are not drinking enough water you can see symptoms like fatigue, headache, constipation, irritability, brain fog, muscle cramps, urinary tract infections, weakened immune system, and dry skin.
Movement is the key to life. 50+ years ago when someone injured their back they were put on bedrest. We now know that is the worst thing we can do for an injury. Even after surgery, they are trying to get you up out of bed as quickly as possible to get you moving.
You should try to get in 3-5 days a week of physical activity, with three of those days including strengthening exercises. Walking 20 to 30 minutes a day will have many positive effects on your overall health and wellness. Find something that you enjoy doing and stick to it.
One of the biggest areas that I see people avoid in their health is their spinal health. Your spinal health is a major part of your overall health and wellness. This is because your spine protects your nervous system.
Your nervous system is the master controller of your body, controlling every function of every single cell, tissue, and organ. When your spine shifts out of alignment this not only put stress on the surrounding soft tissues but also put stress on the delicate spinal nerves. This in turn can have an ill effect on your overall health and wellness.
You probably know someone, or perhaps experienced yourself, a disc herniation. Often times a disc herniation will occur in the low back and effect the sciatic nerve. Because the sciatic nerve sends strength and energy all the way down the leg into the foot, someone with a disc herniation in this area may feel pain, numbness, and tingling all the way down their leg and into their foot. But what if the nerve was going to a vital organ? What do you think your symptoms might be?
If you are waiting to see a chiropractor until you are in pain, this is like waiting to see the dentist until you have a toothache. Get your spine and posture checked regularly, to keep your spine healthy and avoid having a spinal health issue in the first place.
Don’t depend on luck to be healthy and to stay healthy. Make sure you are taking the necessary steps on a regular basis to keep your body at its top performance.