What is health? A check-up with your doctor often focuses on making sure we are not sick – checking our blood pressures, mammograms, pap smears and colonoscopies. These are all excellent things we must keep on top of, but do not always necessarily focus on “health”. You can have all good check-up results but still not be healthy. That is because health, or wholeness, is really not just a physical concern; it starts with something only we can do for ourselves – focusing on well-being, both mentally and emotionally, which in turn leads to promoting a healthy body.
Doctors, herbs and medicines do not heal us. These options give our bodies the right building blocks to work with in order to for our body to heal itself. When we cut our finger for example, our body sends special substances, called platelets, designed to form a seal at that spot to protect the body from germs and bacteria. The hole eventually closes up like nothing ever happened. This kind of repair is happening at every minute of every day in our bodies by our immune system. We have cancer cells popping up daily, we are constantly bombarded by toxins in or food/air/water, and we are always exposed to bacteria and viruses.
Yet most of us do not get sick from these things at the same rate we are exposed to them. Why is that? Because of a healthy immune system. It works to on a minute to minute basis to keep our bodies in a constant state of healing. “Feeling stressed” however, makes the immune system not healthy. Feeling stressed sets off a its own set of hormones and messenger chemicals that gets the body ready for the “fight or flight” – the same system that goes into action when the body is in danger. Your blood pressure goes up, the heart pumps faster, the intestines slow down, and the immune system shuts off – just to name a few. This system works great when there is real physical danger – you want to be using all your energy to get away or defend yourself.
But it does not work well when it is always “on” due to feeling stressed – from bills, traffic, arguing with family, the boss at work, deadlines. You know the drill. This constant state of being stressed often leads to the common ailments we experience. Here are just 5 common ways this happens:
1. Headaches With stress, certain hormones set off a series events in your brain that stimulates your nerves and causes your blood vessels to swell. In many people this is felt as tension headaches and migraines.
2. Stomach Upset/ Reflux/ Irritable Bowel Disease Chronic stress, and its sister emotion anxiety, lead the body to make more stomach acid, which in turn leads to heartburn. The stomach also can take longer to empty food, which causes gas and bloating, and cause the intestines to contract more, leading to cramping and diarrhea.
