Move outside your boundary

Does achieving wellbeing have less to do with what you eat or how much you exercise, and more to do with what you think, believe, feel and experience?

When we think of caring for our bodies we often associate this with eating a healthy diet, taking vitamins, regular exercise and getting 8 hours sleep. While these are important health promoting factors, they only treat the physical body, and are only part of the answer.

In Naturopathic medicine it’s known that the body has it’s own self-healing system that enables you to heal diseased tissue, balance your hormones, maintain healthy weight and prevent disease. The body fights cancer, repairs protein breaks, prevents heart disease, and fights viruses and bacteria every single day.

So why are we getting sicker?

Each week it seems there is another diet, a new super food that claims to treat just about everything, the medical establishment offer a plethora of medicines and surgical procedures and then we also have nutritional supplements to treat our deficiencies. Let’s face it, we take more medications and supplements than ever before – but chronic illness continues to rise. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has estimated that chronic disease is responsible for nearly 80% of total disease and injury.

What is the missing link?

Most traditional health promotion tends to focus on the “tip of the iceberg” addressing the “unhealthy behaviours” that people use to deal with their emotional pain. Rarely do we look below this line to address what creates these unhealthy behaviours and without addressing this part, we can’t move forward.

So if you have strived to follow all the “right” health practices but still don’t feel well, then you’re experience is the proof.

Wellness begins by identifying and removing the obstacles to health and encouraging our body’s own healing ability. So rather than merely suppressing illness, we need to explore how these physical manifestations are connected to underlying mental, emotional, social and spiritual pain.

In my understanding of scientific literature and from over 10 years clinical experience is that no matter how great your diet is, if your body is flooded with poisonous stress hormones your body’s natural ability to heal and maintain homeostasis will be switched off.

Dr Lissa Rankin, an integrative medicine physician , undertook research into how your lifestyle impacts your body and found that social isolation kills as many people as smoking and twice as many as obesity. Statistics show that 40% of adults classify themselves as lonely. So making connections and having relationships could actually save your life!

Science also shows that people who are part of a supportive community have half the rate of heart disease when compared to lonely people. Even Social media connections don’t alleviate loneliness and can even increase the longing for real connection.

Research undertaken by Dr Herbert Benson showed that when the body is under stress, the sympathetic nervous system is triggered and the body is flooded with stress hormones such as cortisol, epinephrine and adrenaline. Once released, the body is shifted into fight or flight response, which is a survival mode, and the healing systems are shut down.

The relaxation response is where the parasympathetic nervous system is stimulated, which releases calming and healing hormones that flip the healing systems back on.

When we become sick or unwell, our self-healing mechanisms have been disabled

Our body is not designed to cope with chronic stress and it is estimated that we have between 50-100 stress responses per day. Feelings such as fear, anger, frustration, resentment, and other negative emotions trigger the stress inducing sympathetic nervous system. Whether your body is in real danger or not, your mind believes you are and initiates a hormonal cascade.

You might not know what triggers your stress responses during the day, but it’s important that you do.

Some examples of stress can be:

• Giving up your life for a pay check
• Being in a toxic relationship
• Ignoring your desires and dreams
• Having concerns around money
• Insecurity about your future
• Childhood or past traumas
• Feeling lonely and alone
• Feeling out of touch with your life’s purpose
• Not feeling connected to Source
• Feeling invisible or experiencing feelings of guilt, shame or resentment,
• Not expressing your creative genius
• Being hungry or starving for good nutrition
• Fear and worry thoughts
• Pessimistic world view
• Feeling helpless

We need to look beyond just our biochemistry because we are fuelled through our thoughts, emotions, beliefs and life experiences. Mind, body and spirit are one unity and health is defined as wholeness.

So maybe you need to listen to your heart or be honest about what is not working in your life. If you’re sick you may have assumed that it’s due to a genetic factor, poor diet, not enough exercise, or vitamin and mineral deficiency – which may be true. But what if work stress was a factor or even the cause?

You might be surprised to realise that your medicine may be in the form of finding new ways to handle work stress, choosing work that is fulfilling, taking time to spend on creative endeavours, forming deeper relationships, moving to a healthier environment, having more freedom, encouraging self expression or following a dream.

Over the years I have come to understand that health and healing is a deeper process than just treating the physical condition. While I incorporate nutrition, herbal medicine, gut and detoxification programs into my practice, it works alongside addressing the emotional issues that underlie illness. Improving your physical condition gives you the strength, builds reserves and increases your confidence to tackle what lies beneath.

If you are sick, unwell or just sick of feeling tired, I invite you to consider what areas of your life might need attention and which may be the underlying cause to your condition.

I would love to here your comments below, or for more information you can contact me directly. Details here: https://vesnahrsto.com/contact-me/

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