For 2020, lets try to find New Year resolutions that really improve our health and well-being. You probably know all the points cited below but sometimes you need to get reminded of the same things over and over until it clicks. All of the following resolutions, when adopted, have the potential of giving you more energy, making you happier and a lovelier person. Increased vitality is the first thing Osteopathic Practitioners at Ananta want to see in your body. Vitality is needed for all those lovely techniques to really stick, have an effect on you and be long lasting.
Eat to be Happy
Eating well might be a no-brainer for many of us but our general relationship with food can be re-evaluated at times. Food should bring joy in our lives. Eating the right food for our body has the potential of bringing so much satisfaction and feeling of wellbeing. It is not always about counting every calories we consume to maintain a perfect waist but more about eating what makes our body function at its best. There is a variety of diets out there and they all have their pros and cons. Some are tailored for specific health problems and should only used for specific purposes. Diet is something that changes overtime. It evolves with you. At different moments of your life your body will need different types of food. Developing the kind of relationship with yourself where you become really in tune with your nutritional need is a great strength to gain overtime.
When you are younger you have a faster metabolism, you are growing, you can overindulge and your body will forgive you. Over the years, however, your body slows down, it doesn’t need as many calories and it might also need a different balance of macro nutrients (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins). You might also develop intolerance for certain products. Sometimes it can be challenging to figure out what is good for you or not. Eating products that you cannot tolerate can trigger different inflammatory reactions and even affects the healthy gut bacteria we all need so much. You might come in our office for lower back pain but the inflammation in your gut is negatively affecting the muscles of your abdomen and the joints in your back. A visit to a naturopathic doctor or a nutritionist could help you figure out if you have dietary intolerances or gut bacteria imbalances. Your Osteopathic Practitioner can then work in conjunction with the naturopathic doctor in better targeting your musculoskeletal system as well as working at improving your inflammatory system and overall digestion.
Sleeping more and better
Lack of sleep is something that has unfortunately become a trend or almost of way to way of living. We even hear people talking about sleep like it is a waste of valuable time. Lets just be clear, sleep is the most important factor in health. Why? Because you heal your body when you sleep. Your body needs to replenish itself in order to keep being active. People who lack sleep are most susceptible to heart problems, to weight management challenges, to inflammatory reaction, to poor immune system and a wide array of neurological and hormonal issues. Being chronically tired affects the global vitality of your body, which is basically the expression of health in your body.
The amount of sleep you get is important but the quality is also important. If you are consulting us for any biomechanical issues such as sore neck or lower back, you should start your healing journey by reviewing to quality of your mattress and pillows. Most mattresses have an optimal number of years for optimal support. Ten years is usually the maximum you can get out of a mattress and consider cheaper mattresses having less life span. A proper pillow and mattress combination is essential in preventing neck and back pain. You might consider starting sleeping with a pillow between your knees if you tend to twist your lower spine and pelvis while you sleep.
Being attentive to your sleep cycles can also improve your sleep overall. You probably notice a time at night when you naturally get sleepy. If you keep being active at that time you naturally wake up and have energy for a couple hours more. Try to observe these natural dip in energy and plan your going-to-bed moment around that time so that when you close your eyes you naturally fall asleep. Many people complain of having difficulty falling asleep but they will also say that they go to bed “past their bed time”. If you are having problems figuring out what the best time to sleep is, there are some apps out there that will measure your sleep cycles and then tell you what time you should go to bed so that you can asleep well and have a full night of sleep.
Stop being a unduly influenced by your phone
We all love technology and are addicted to it. Most people tend to look at their phone much too late at night. The light emitted by your phones can affect the secretion of melatonin by your pineal gland, therefore interrupting your naturally circadian rhythm. The light inhibits your brain from feeling tired basically. In 2020, avoid working on your phone and tablet an hour before bedtime and seeing how you naturally fall into a sweet slumber.
We can now monitor how much time we spend on our phones with built in apps. It can be quite alarming to see how much time we spent gazing at the screen especially when the app tells you where on the net you spent that time. Do you find yourself complaining there isn’t enough time in a day to do everything you want to do? You wanted to take those Spanish lessons but you don’t think you can squeeze it in your schedule? Try to be smarter about returning emails and doing online research and you might find that you have a couple extra hours a day to do activities or read an actual book. Prioritizing and managing time is now a vital skill to develop, as life only seems to get busier. Don’t miss out of activities that could actually enrich your life.
Be smart about your physical fitness
The benefits of physical activity are well known: decreased chance of cardiovascular disease, low change of diabetes, weight management, stress management, sleep quality and more. People unusually fall into 2 categories nowadays: too much exercises or too little exercise.
Too much or too intense exercising can actually be quite detrimental to your health. There is no added benefits to being intensely active to being very active. A person with 6% body fat doesn’t have less chance of heart problems with someone with 12%. Intense physical activity is more than ever a trend. The adrenal rush is great and you can see results quickly but overload on joints can lead to overuse of your joints leading to overuse injuries and make you prone to arthritis in later age. Intense workouts need a post-workout time for the body to unwind and get into a healing phase. If you always do very intense workouts without proper relaxation phase, you can put your body at risk of adrenal fatigue and other ailments. Try to limit those intense workout to only a few a week and mix them with other lower intensity and stretching time.
Some people think that you need to be very active to see the benefits of physical activity but a daily brisk walk of 30 minutes can already curb the long term effects of inactivity. You might feel limited to exercise by your busy life. You might feel that the extra 10 minutes to go to your local gym is already a stretch and it might be. In that case, find a strategy to exercise at home. Maybe buy a few pieces of equipment like a yoga mat, a few elastic bands, a fitness ball or a TRX suspension trainer and start doing short circuit workouts at home. It might feel difficult to motivate yourself to start with but perseverance will pay off overtime as it will become easier and maybe become a habit. There are tons of fitness apps out there. You’ll save time on getting to the gym and back and you can jump straight in the shower after. Even a short 20 minute workout everyday in the morning or evening can do all the difference in your body.
Become better at being stressed
Perceived stress is a very interesting concept. We all experience stress, some more than others. Stress can also be positive as it is a motor for changes and motivation to advance in life. This year, my body gave me warning signs that I had never felt before. I went to my naturopath and she told me it looks like signs of adrenal fatigue. At that point I wasn’t feeling like a was a stressed person. I had this image of a stressed person in my head and that didn’t look like me. But years of moving around the province, starting businesses, going to school, and marriage had finally had its toll on me. Looking back in time, I should have seen the signs and do the appropriate things to support my system. We can’t always change the challenges of life but we can do the appropriate things to support our body during those bouts of intense life activities. First of all, you have to become more aware of stress. Then recognize that stress is not always negative but you are going through a though time. Engage in the right actions to support your system: see a naturopath for the right supplements, try to sleep more, engage in physical activity but reduce the intensity (crossfit vs yoga), prioritize things in your life for a period of time, eat healthy food, and talk to someone (friend, lover, counsellor).
Deal with your &*#+@!
If you are experiencing depression or anxiety and you find that your body aches are not going away even with the help of formidable practitioners…you might want to consider that, at this point in your life, your emotional, psychological or spiritual health might be sabotaging your wellbeing. We all go through tough times, and we might not always realize it. Sometimes, we need someone to ask the right questions to realize that we might be holding a grudge, or keeping resentment, or holding pain (from a recent problem in our life or from a much older situation). Maybe your body is sending you alarm signals in the form of pain or discomfort to let you know its time to address these deeper issues. And that’s ok. There are many professionals out there offering a multitude of modalities that could help you release these emotional tensions. The combination of seeing an Osteopathic Practitioner as well seeing a life coach, for example, can be very powerful and offer much longer lasting effects. The hardest part is to find the courage to get started and going to your first session but once you are in doing self-work, you will quickly see how lighter your life feels like.
Breath Better
Breathing is the first thing we do when we are born so we should be specialists or pros at breathing, right? Surprisingly, breathing effectively is more challenging than you think. A majority of patients we see need to be instructed how to breath again. The worst part is that most of use don’t realize we breath improperly. Stress plays a big role in altering breathing patterns. When asked to pay attention to their breathing, many patients will report holding their breath for long periods of time without realizing they do it and then having to take a very deep breath in. Breathing should happen when using your thoracic diaphragm to move your ribs cage in all direction: anterior, lateral and posterior. Your belly should almost equally be filling in with air. Your neck and shoulders should only be engaged at the very end of a deep breath. If you don’t expand your cage, you might overuse your neck and shoulder muscles, therefore you might be coming at Ananta because of sore trapezius and neck muscles. If only your belly is filling up, you are putting a lot of pressure on your abdominal organs and on your pelvic floor. Diaphragmatic breathing as you learn in yoga is a great tool used for yoga but it is not the natural way of breathing. You shouldn’t be sucking your belly inward when breathing. Re-learning to breath properly can have all sort of magical effects: lower neck and shoulder tension improvement, decreased headaches, decreased blood pressure, nervous system balancing, stress management, chronic pain management, sleep improvement and more. Breathing better should probably be your number one priority in 2020 as it is the most basic thing we do as humans.
In Conclussion…
Osteopathic Practitioners at Ananta want to see your health improve and are here to put you on the right track but your health starts with you. We can help you with some of the aforementioned points and we can help you find the right complementary practitioners for the other points. It is all about working as a team and tailoring the best strategy for you.
On behalf of the Ananta Wellness & Osteopathy Team, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!