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| A Brick in the
Foundation: Physical Health Back to Enhancing Your Power Supply |
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| by Jennifer Bloome | |||
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In the article “Laying the Foundation for Wellness,” I described six dimensions
or factors that help us achieve balance in our lives: physical, emotional, social, environmental, spiritual,
and intellectual. When you achieve a balance of these factors, you maintain both good health and quality of life.
Each of you will have your own balance of these factors to maximize your wellness. Over the next several months,
this column will be dedicated to exploring each dimension and how you can use it to improve your health. This
month is dedicated to the physical dimension. Of all the dimensions, the factors in the physical dimension are perhaps the most tangible. This is the dimension that is out in front of us everyday — both literally and in terms of advertising and the media. This dimension is filled with individual physical factors: what is your age, what do you weigh, what’s your daily nutrition, how much exercise do you get on a daily basis, do you have a chronic disease? Each of these factors could have an entire article (or book!) dedicated solely to a discussion of that factor. While those topics may come up in later articles, this article is focused more on the overall role of physical health in maintaining your quality of life. This discussion centers on asking yourself two basic questions:
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| How physically healthy am I? |
More from Jennifer Bloome | ||
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Even though we carry our bodies with us everyday and we are bombarded with information about how to take care
of them, knowing if we are healthy can still be something of a question mark. We can go about learning about
our health in several different ways. One way is to seek information about ourselves from others; in other words,
we can go to the medical community.
Medical Answers The medical community will give basic information to you that can be life saving. Many medical markers can be measured: weight, body mass index (BMI), cholesterol levels, blood pressure, pulse rate, and bone density are just a few of the standard tests. In addition to some of these standard markers, there are also tests for many of the major catastrophic illnesses such as cancer and diabetes. |
Why Self-Care? Laying the Foundation for Wellness Guilty Pleasures A Brick in the Foundation: Social Support A Brick in the Foundation: Emotional Health Holiday Markers A Brick in the Foundation: Environmental Health A Brick in the Foundation: Spirituality | ||
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Standard tests are very important, but many of us stop there with the assessment. If we have a “clean bill of
health” from the doctor, we put thoughts of improving our wellness out of our minds. We may have good intentions
about eating better or drinking more water, but more than likely those thoughts are shoved away by the pressing
matters of the day. On the other end of the spectrum, there may be times when you aren’t feeling well and all of
the medical markers come back “within normal limits.” If the doctor says you aren’t sick, are you still ill? Internal Answers While the medical community gives us very important information about our bodies, doctors are not the only experts. Their information comes from comparing our information to the “average” or “normal” person. This can be very helpful in some cases. But, the “average” person doesn’t really exist because those numbers are based on taking an average of a very large group of people; sort of the “One Size Fits All (Nobody?)” philosophy. You are the expert about your body; you are the one who lives inside your skin 24/7. Our bodies give us clues on a daily basis about how healthy we feel. But, most of us don’t listen very carefully to our bodies. Then, when our body is talking so loudly to us that we can’t ignore it anymore, we assume that the signs and symptoms are just part of modern day living. We can learn a lot about our health by just slowing down to listen and to ask: How do I feel today? Are you full of energy or tired? Do you have aches and pains? Do you have moods that fluctuate daily or over the course of a month? How many over-the-counter medications do you take to feel good? Do you take antacids, pain relievers, or sleep inducers? What we dismiss as part of modern day living can be signs that a body is out of balance in some way. Even though we see countless ads for Tums, Rolaids, or Pepcid AC, it doesn’t mean that it is “normal” to need to use those aids. Sure, they help to get rid of some very painful symptoms and can be fine for occasional use – but those symptoms still mean that something is wrong inside your body. Learning how to bring our bodies back into balance is the first step to keeping this dimension in balance. To do this, you need to hone your listening skills. Learning to slow down and really listen to your body takes practice. One of the ways to do this is to begin to journal some of your feelings. Each evening take 10 minutes out to note what you ate for the day, how much sleep you had the previous night, how much water you had to drink, what type of exercise you had during the day, how did you feel. You can take note of anything that seems to be of importance. Depending on the signs and symptoms you are looking at, you can make notes in your journal several times during the day. For example, let’s say you are having problems feeling tired during the day. You may want to carry your journal with you and keep track of when exactly you first notice the feelings of fatigue. Is it right after lunch or always at 3 p.m.? Once you have journaled for several days or weeks, you can start to look for patterns. Where is the line where my life feels out of balance because of my physical health? you begin to notice patterns, you will begin to see what causes physical problems and when those physical problems start to cause issues in other areas of your life. Some of the issues with the physical dimension are difficult to tease apart from other dimensions. For example, let’s look at weight. Not only is weight an issue for your physical health, but also your emotional health. Weight can seriously affect your self-esteem, which is in the emotional dimension. Excess weight can also cause you to make changes in activities that you do, or people you see, so it can affect the social dimension. Learning about your physical health patterns, though, can be the key to bringing other dimensions back into balance. What this physical dimension is really about is realizing that you have a partnership with your body. When you treat your body one way you will feel a certain way, when you treat your body differently, you will feel different. This dimension is about discovering the relationship you have with your body and figuring out what you can do to improve that relationship. This dimension is about trusting yourself to know your body well enough so that you can identify a problem early enough to keep it from disrupting your quality of life. If you have specific questions about how you can change aspects of your physical dimension based on diet, exercise, or other physical factors, please email me at Jennifer@AnjiOnline.com. |
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