The Key to Overall Health: Optimize Your Nervous System
Redefining Stress: How Our Hectic Modern Lives Take a Toll
Many of us don't realize just how much stress can underly our everyday life, there are many surprising factors that can stress both our body and our mind and believe it or not they share a physical connection that is pretty well understood but not very well integrated into general practice medicine. The key to optimal health is understanding our nervous system and the path leading up to chronic health conditions. By following the right path for you as an individual it is 100% possible to maintain great quality of life as we get older.
Many of us from age 30 onward suffer aches, pains, fatigue and more every day, what we don't realize is these types of issues should become a feature after 60, not in our 30's and 40's, what we're also not recognizing is that this is our body giving us signals to tell us it's not getting what it needs, and these are often very early signs of more serious issues as we age. We should not experience these symptoms, but many of us settle for it, thinking our body is supposed to turn to crap as we get older, that's how we justify the substandard quality of life we are left with, when in reality there is a whole lot we can do about it.
It's these signals that our body gives us that I'm going to address here, once you learn how to understand the signals and your stress factors, finding better health, fitness and quality of life actually gets quite a bit easier.
Making Quality of Life the Ultimate Goal
This is about finding balance, elevating your quality of life, nurturing your physical body so you can still do anything you choose to. This can still include eating that beautiful piece of cake or enjoying a good party with your friends.
Achieving quality of life balanced with good health is so much easier than trying to resolve poor health once it sets in.
Chronic Health Conditions: We're Living Longer But We're Not Living Better
According to statistics our life spans are technically becoming longer, but we are spending more time suffering poor quality of life as a result of chronic health conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, hormone imbalances, kidney disease, cancer, sleep apnea, neurological conditions, insomnia and some mental health conditions. Some chronic illnesses we cannot control, I'm not going to try to tell you I have the magic cure for cancer. But there are so so so so many chronic health conditions for which we can make lifestyle choices that can either have a positive, preventative impact or provide quality of life even when living with chronic health conditions.... we do not just need to accept it. Life does not need to be all downhill after 40.
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Yes, we always hear about diet and exercise, we keep getting the same messages pumped into us, but are all those messages correct, is that all there is to it? I have spent my whole adult life being a health-conscious exerciser, why now at 43 do I now suffer with ME CFS and seem to constantly experience symptoms generally experienced by those over 60? Why do so many other lifetime exercisers I know, now only just in their middle years suffer with chronic health conditions such as high blood pressure, fatigue and back and joint pain? Yes there is more to it and it really isn't all that complicated.
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Below is a reminder of some health & fitness fads & obsessions, I'm not saying that any one of these things is bad, I've tried every single one of them and found a lot of enjoyment with some, but really, they actually take a lot of time and effort to put into practice, a lot of time wasted in my life.
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Diets: Low Carb, low fat, high fat, high protein, gluten free, calorie deficit, intermittent fasting, keto, raw food, juicing, whole foods, sugar free, organic.
Exercise: More is better, cardio, high intensity interval training, weight lifting, treadmills, rowers, ab rollers, crossfit, yoga, pilates, group fitness classes, dance classes, running, triathlons.
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Before we go further, here's a quick intro on Inflammation & Oxidative Stress, both of these are key factors in chronic health conditions.
Inflammation & Oxidative Stress
Inflammation and oxidative stress are major buzzwords at the moment, these two things are closely connected and both can cause the other. It's helpful to understand that these two things are major contributors to all those chronic health conditions and I'll talk more about this further down. In short, it's a natural reaction for our body to try to repair itself using inflammation, it's a healing mechanism that allows the body to repair and regenerate cells, but as always, too much of a good thing can be bad.
Sometimes it's the inflammation response itself that goes wrong, such as in cases of sepsis or "blood poisoning". In other cases it's simply us doing things to our body that continually cause the inflammatory response, our body cannot handle too much inflammation, it keeps trying to process it out, and sometimes loses the battle, over time resulting in chronic illness.
The Nervous System: Our Body's Command Centre
Our nervous system controls every bodily function and there are ways we can look after it, to help it help us achieve quality of life for longer. Yep you heard me, your nervous system, now don't switch off thinking this is a topic that doesn't apply to you, the health of every single person on this planet is controlled by their own individual nervous system, most of us have no idea how it works. Every single one of those health & fitness fads I mentioned earlier will impact our nervous system, which is why focusing on only one of those fads doesn't work, we need to learn how to optimize our nervous system and start redefining stress to understand what it is doing to us.
This isn't about you sacrificing everything you love, because that's going to effect our stress response which is an integral part of this equation. We are covering a specific element of our nervous system today, the one that operates behind the scenes, our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). Just because it's working behind the scenes doesn't mean we can't control it. It has a direct relationship with inflammation and the type of activities we choose to do and what we put into our body. You will find some health circles are buzzing on this, just not enough... yet. The scientific data is now there and more and more studies are being done to support our understanding of this functionality, it just so happens that ancient practices such as Yoga and Tai Chi have understood this all along, it's a really good example of how we haven't had the evidence based research to back it up, so modern medicine has refused to utilize that ancient knowledge. That is now changing, get on the band wagon now, rather than be disappointed you didn't sooner, for the sake of your health, learn how to optimize your nervous system.
To be clear, once we are at the point where we are suffering with a chronic condition, our ANS is already suffering dysfunction, often times there is no going back, but do not fear, there are effective tools beyond drugs that can help you prevent and/or manage symptoms, that is how we maintain quality of life. This next bit is the most technical, don't get too caught up on the technical, if you get the gist, that's what matters.
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Two Sides of the ANS
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The two most important elements for you to understand are:
1. The Parasympathetic Nervous System (PSNS also called Rest & Digest), when this system is activated, our body is at rest and free to carry out its maintenance functions, simply put.... many of the functions in our body that keep us operating, from digestion through to blood pressure.
2. The Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS also called Fight or Flight) is activated when our body is responding to a potential threat or stressor, this can be physical or emotional. This triggers a whole host of reactions, including stress hormone and adrenaline production, glucose release, increase in heart and breath rate, digestion goes on hold and an inflammatory response is triggered, all in aid of allowing the body to give an energetic response to help the body cope with what it needs to do.
Fight or Flight as a description in itself should clue you in on the fact that we should not be in this state much of the time, it's emergency only. But many of us operate with busy lives in an ongoing, low-level state of stress, meaning we operate in SNS more than we should and so our body doesn't get to activate the PSNS anywhere near enough. So, if our body doesn't get to activate the PSNS enough, and we are in inflammation causing SNS activation for too long, what does that mean?
We are not maintaining the delicate balance needed between SNS and PSNS for our body to function optimally. Our body doesn't get to perform its maintenance functions, it can't digest food properly and absorb all the nutrients it needs to, sleep can be disrupted so our body can't repair itself, our hormones get thrown out of balance, we release too much glucose, our heart and lungs are working overtime all the time.... we have too much inflammation and our body can't cycle it out properly. This plays a part in every one of the chronic health conditions I listed earlier.
Do not underestimate the effect that low level ongoing stress has on this system. Often times we don't even recognize stress, we get so used to it, that is why it's quietly killing us.
Optimize Your Nervous System - Part 2
You've learnt a lot here about what your nervous system does for you, but what do we actually need to do to optimize it? I'll give you a whole lot more info on how to do this yourself, learn what types of exercise promotes SNS and what promotes PSNS. Learn how to identify when you're pushing one more than the other and what to do about it.