Tuesday, January 1, 2008

First Principle To Wellness: Listen To Your Body

From birth to death, your body is creating and recreating itself with the nourishment received from the foods you eat. The foods you consume is the only way you get the required nutrients. Can you imagine what happens to your body when you take in foods that lack nutrients?

Health is a continuum - you have optimal health or wellness at one end, and degenerative disease or death at the other.

Moving from optimal health toward the other end, you experience having low energy. You may feel discomfortable after a meal. It may go away after a few hours. Do you know that your body’s own innate capability to restore and heal itself without help from you?

Your discomfort may happen again a few more times. You may get over-the -counter medication for discomfort. Or it got you worried enough to visit your doctor. Your doctor may give you some medication and you find the problem disappears.

On the other hand, your discomfort after a meal become worst. Now you experience heavy bloating and gas. Again your doctor would prescribe you some medication. Should your discomfort persist, your doctor will be able to make a “diagnosis” and give a clinical name to your problem – oh, you have gastritis, diverticulitis or irritable bowel syndrome.

In a wellness point of view, the time to look into the problem is when you have the first small signs. The first rule is to listen and take heed to what your body is telling you. This will help you make effective changes in your lifestyle that has an impact on your entire well being. For example, if your indigestion happens when you are stressed up, then you can look into stress management tools. If it happens after taking milk, then you would consider eliminating diary foods.

Most people love short cuts and make short-lived attempts towards wellness. They would start a new diet each week, make New Year’s resolutions that would be forgotten before end January, and many other plans get diminished by their daily life’s activities. Oh yes, they did try.

To have a lasting changes in lifestyle, you need a plan. For this plan to work, you need to work your plan.

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