The Pillars of Health

 

 

Pillars of Health

We need to remember what we need to be doing in certain categories to improve our health and well-being.

Yes, I want people coming in for chiropractic care.

Yes, I want people utilizing chiropractic care as a health and wellness tool rather than just pain management, so it's good for us to step back and look at, well, what is that health and wellness picture for all of our patients?

What does that look like?

What are the Pillars of Health?

So first and foremost is sleep, which is awfully or often ignored but cannot be overrated.

We need to sleep and rest, and signs of lack of sleep can be things from irritability to exhaustion, forgetfulness, and higher blood pressure.

Your blood pressure can go up when you're not sleeping properly.

There are a number of different things, increased anxiety, that are affected if you are not getting sleep.

So remember, with adults, we want to be in that seven to eight, maybe even nine-hour range.

Kids are going to be closer to nine to 10 hours a night, they need more rest than adults, but we all need adequate sleep for our bodies to function properly.

The second category is food.

We need to eat nutritious stuff.

We can't live on processed fast food and candy.

It's not a recipe for success.

We need to be eating healthy foods, fruits and vegetables.

We need to eat healthy meats, preferably locally raised, if you can source that.

We need to eat real food, not processed stuff sitting on a shelf that can last for years and years sitting there.

That's not a good thing.

So consuming the right foods doesn't mean you can't have a cheat day every now and then.

Most people do because you're still human, and food tastes good, so having that now and then is okay. But the vast majority of the time, we need to be eating from a healthy menu.

Water.

You need to be hydrated.

Your body is 70% water.

Your blood is 90% water so hydration can affect blood pressure and blood flow.

It affects every aspect of biochemistry.

If you're dehydrated, you are affecting how your body works.

So the good rule of thumb here is 64 ounces a day would be the minimum eight glasses of water, so to speak; if you can get more than 64, that's great.

But remember, if you're at 32 right now and get to 48, that's still a big improvement, so work slowly at getting towards that 64 ounces a day.

And properly hydrated people find out also that they eat less food because food has water in it too, and if you're dehydrated, your body will actually eat more food than it needs just to get water.

So if you work on hydrating, you'll naturally decrease the calories you eat.

That's a big plus.

Movement and chiropractic care would fall into this category, but we are creatures designed to be up, moving around properly moving.

Yes, we need to sit occasionally, but sitting should be the exception rather than the norm.

So in this category, getting exercise regularly, if you have a desk job, hopefully, you have a sit-stand option, and because when you're up and working the seer at the keyboard, you can be rocking side to side, you can still incorporate subtle movements into your day-to-day life, and that really helps our basal metabolic rate, which is what is used, which uses 70% of our calories, our total calories, 70% of that is used by just having our resting basal metabolic activity.

And if we incorporate a little more movement into your day, you'll see your metabolism go up and help you lose weight and feel better.

Number five is attitude.

This does matter.

Our outlook, how we look at life does affect our health, so working on being positive, not discussing, and always bringing in negative stuff from the news into our world, we need to protect what goes in here, just like we need to watch what goes in your mouth.

You can't just eat junk food all day and be healthy.

Well, you can't just listen to junk news and all that all day and be healthy as well.

So protect what you listen to, and watch who you listen to.

Your sphere of influence will affect this as well, but these are the big five pillars of health that I look at with patients to help them better understand how to improve their overall health and well-being.

 

Call our office today to schedule an appointment to kickstart your healthy life: 530-221-8443

 

 

*The transcription is auto-generated by a program and may not be accurate. In order to ensure you get all the information from the video properly, you must watch the video.