Are you considering how to optimize your health? Do you suffer from a chronic disease that greatly limits your quality of life? Perhaps you don’t have the means to be able to afford a thousand supplements and a thousand tests?
In this article I will go over three lifestyle essentials that can result in huge improvements in health. I always emphasize that if we want to be healthy, we have to go back to the basics, knowing how to listen to what our body is asking, and knowing how to give it what it needs. And remembering that this isn’t an instant fix, it is a lifestyle and people often will see results within a few months. I usually recommend for people to make these changes everyday for at least 3 months to see lasting changes. Remember, there are many types of intelligence, but for me the key to success is not how smart you are, but how consistent you can be with taking care of yourself, because consistency, dear reader, is where power is.
Ok, here we go!
First: Align your schedule and lifestyle to support a healthy circadian rhythm.
Due to advancements in technology and evolution, we currently find ourselves in an age of convenience: we live in houses that have heating and air conditioning, we cook food on electric stoves or those that require a simple dial to start a flame. We can have most that we need delivered to our doorsteps. Yet our genetics are not that different from our ancestors who lived very different lives.
In regards to the daily schedule, our ancestors worked with sunlight rather than artificial, thus were limited in working and awake hours. Candle light was the only option for more of our history than electric light. Add to this that the days were filled with being outside, physically active and with community. And the only blue light experienced was around noon!
Compare this to what is so common now, sitting, inside, without needing to adapt to different temperatures, awake and on screens with artificial light until all hours of the night. A significant amount of humans today go to bed 5 hours after the sun has set! And with little break from blue light, it’s no wonder there are so many sleep issues, and fatigue issues nowadays.
When will I stop being tired? When will I wake up in the morning with energy? These are questions that we constantly ask ourselves and for many become chronic issues.
So to start, wake with the sun and try to go to sleep before 9 pm. Limit blue light after the sun sets, even consider using candles as they do not disrupt melatonin nearly as much as artificial light. This requires a lot of discipline as so many of us are on our phones so much! There are also apps that decrease the blue light, as well as blue light glasses for when you genuinely have to be on a screen past sunset. Do your best and I promise you will notice a lot of benefit.
Second: Simplify and Optimize Your Diet
Consider how much our diet has shifted recently, even within the past 100 years! From the introduction of processed food in recent years, to the increase in consumption of foods that were only present in a small quantity in our diets historically but now are dominant food groups (such as wheat and gluten). Have you noticed that nowadays when you go to the grocery shop to buy food, at most there are a couple of places where there is fresh food, and everything else is packed with a thousand additives, colorings, and stabilizers?
How many people are not used to cooking their own food, and instead dedicate themselves to work more and more hours, continuing with a sedentary lifestyle, and letting someone bring the processed food to their work or home so they can continue with their lives? Consider the long term damage to our microbiota and immune system, and how this translates through the generations.
So here is my advice: Feed your body and your soul with what it needs, quality, local, non-toxic, additive-free products, with ingredients you know and with recipes that you could reproduce in your kitchen.
Eat meat, small white and blue fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and fermented foods. Limit the quantity of dairy products, and if they are from goat or sheep even better. Get rid of legumes, cereals, sugar and alcohol from your life.
Eat a variety with many colors. The more colors, the more antioxidants. If you currently suffer from any health struggle, you need a lot of antioxidants to combat the oxidative stress that goes alongside with most symptoms.
Without gut health it is hard to be healthy in general. We need a healthy gut for a functioning immune system and to feel mentally/emotionally well. Repairing your gut starts with the foods you eat, it can take time but it can be done!
It can be hard, we can go through waves of feeling deprived, we have to face our addictive tendencies, make more time for shopping and cooking meals, etc. However, there is no greater pride than when you look back and see how dedicated you are to your own health and what you have achieved and learned along the way.
Third: Retrain your Brain
What do we currently understand about how the brain is wired, and why retraining? The brain has the ability to structurally change and create new neural circuits throughout our entire lives. Before we thought that it was impossible to do it beyond the age of 30, but in recent studies it has been seen that it is clearly a function that can be done throughout our lives.
And why is brain retraining so important? Well, because our mind can be our most powerful tool and ally, or it can work against us if running on fear for instance. I like to think of my mind is an adviser. I can decide whether to listen to it or not, but it will not rule over me. If I always listened to what my mind says I woudn’t do much, I would never go outside my comfort zone, try new things, or even trust in my ability to heal. My life has changed so much for the better when I shifted to this way of relating to my mind.
When you suffer from a chronic disease, what happens is that anything that reminds you of that disease creates negative neural circuits that enhance the symptoms of that disease.
I’ll give an example. I have fibromyalgia and I had one of my worst flare-ups one day when I was at a wedding with a lot of people. Now every time I am invited to something where there will be a lot of people I unconsciously relate it to the pain I suffered and every time I go to an event I come home with a flare. This makes me stay at home more and more to avoid this type of situation and in the end these situations make me so panicked that I don’t want to see more people anymore, but by doing so I am sadder and more depressed and then my illness too gets worse instead of better.
It can be a vicious circle that we have to get out of somehow if we don’t want to be stuck there forever.
There are many different programs where they use a series of tools to eliminate these pathological circuits and create more positive circuits again. We end up raising our vibration with gratitude and trust, get our mind to be more “on our side”, and the symptoms improve little by little. It is so important to get out of fear, for finally then can the body start to repair.
But as always, what is the most important thing about brain retraining? Of all these tools? Consistency! And watch how your life and health change!