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Easily missed keys to optimal health

Easily missed keys to optimal health

Posted by Henry Maitland on 29th May 2019

Essential strategies on your road to building robust health 

Summer is coming and it’s a great time to ride the wave of optimism and enthusiasm that comes with the good weather to kick start your health programme or taking it to the next level. Today were looking at the most essential health hacks, the ones that are easy to miss yet will, in the long term, give you the best results whatever your health goals may be. Make sure you don’t miss out on discovering these 5 easy to miss health tips that, if applied, could help you lose weight, build lean muscle mass and achieve higher levels of energy and mental clarity.

Meditation and positive thought

Meditation and relaxation can have a very powerful effect on boosting our immune system and overall health. We only have one stress response, fight or flight, and it’s this response that plays a major role in immune suppression along-side changes in metabolism and potentially weight gain. When we combine an over stressed body with other factors such as a poor diet and inadequate sleep we have a recipe for an unhealthy and potentially unhappy person.

Spending a little time on a daily or even weekly basis practicing meditation is a proven way to help train the mind to be calmer. We can learn to observe out internal world, to observe the thoughts that come up and to observe the emotions or feelings that energise them. When we learn to observe we can begin to let go as we recognise that the thoughts and feelings are often self-afflicting and not the actual truth of matters. We can truly learn to pay far less attention to the unwanted thoughts and in time they dissipate and so we create more internal space and peace.

This effectively tones down the fight of flight response calming the body which leads to better digestion, more relaxed muscles and a strong robust immune system. 

Chi harvesting – the 4th food

This is a powerful practice, so simple that it might be disregarded as unlikely to do anything, even more so if you are not familiar with the concept of Chi energy.

Chi is the energetic life force of human physiology, it courses through our meridians charging our chakras and nourishing every cell and so every system in our bodies. Many describe Chi energy as the 4th food, the others being air, water and the food we eat.

Take a look at the various practises for drawing Chi energy into the body. Find one that suits you and practice daily. This can be as simple as sitting and breathing slowly and deeply as part of meditation. If you have not practiced Chi harvesting before then I totally understand that it can sound a little ‘far out’ it’s really not.  As you’re breathing in feel the energy draw into your body, often it will only be felt as a small tingle in the hands or face, don’t disregard this feeling but move to it. The sensation of Chi energy for me is now a full body powerful visceral sensation, not at all subtle! It feeds my body, coursing through the meridians and charges all the bodies organs, all the body’s cells. To Feel Chi energy, is simply to tune in to a different set of inner sensations. We can feel anxiety, fear and anger. Why not be able to tune in to feel peace, inspiration and bliss these are some of the expressions of Chi energy.

High quality nutrient dense food

“Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine shall be thy food.”(Hippocrates460-377 B.C.) So Hippocrates had this sussed out a long time ago, which means as a race we had the basic answer to one of the major concerns of our time and we are still not getting it!!So how do we balance our physiology and find optimal health with food? Firstly, we look at the source of the food as not all foods are created equal.  Make sure that the foods you buy come from the best source possible, this will usually be locally grown or organically produced. You could be buying theoretically great health building foods but if they come from dead chemically polluted soils it could be causing more damage to your overall health by adding to your total toxic load with herbicides and pesticides.

Foods such as dark leafy green vegetables, nutrient dense fruits and high-quality local organic meats are all great for charging up your immune response. It’s also worth taking in to consideration how you prepare your foods as over cooking or in some cases simply exposure to heat will damage the beneficial chemical components.

Remember food quality is key and don’t underestimate how bad commercially grown food can be let alone the processed stuff. 

Get a good night’s sleep

It’s obvious I know, but it’s still a key way to make sure you keep your overall health and wellness robust and primed for life. On many levels not getting enough sleep can enhance a negative state of health and amplify other health factors. Simply put if we stay up too late on a regular basis we get ‘run down’ this can change our perception leading to a more negative self-perception along-side key physiological changes that can lead to weight gain.

It seems to be generally considered that 8-10 hours of sleep per night is optimal for a strong robust and healthy life. To match this to the circadian rhythm or flow of sleep related hormones we would want to be in bed by 10pm and get up around 6am. The pattern allows for optimal physical and psychological recovery.

To make sure you get a good night’s sleep avoid over stimulation too close to bed time (not that type of overstimulation, that type is good for you and has also be shown to boost immune response. unless it leads to a baby in which case the sleep deprivation will undoubtedly suppress it! I meant over stimulation from the TV, bright lights, eating sugary snacks or exercising too late at night.

If you have difficulty getting to sleep due to anxiety or overthinking then please look in to breathing practises and a form of meditation, mindfulness training or other ‘inner practice’ I have found that often small interventions with this work can have a very positive effect in aiding getting to sleep but also depth and quality of sleep. 

Powerful supplementation

If food can be your medicine then refined whole food raw organic superfood supplements or other ranges of cutting edge life enhancing supplements for ‘bio hacking’ are a truly kick ass way to boost your overall health and wellness and take your personal levels of life performance to the next level.

When we’re considering any supplementation remember food comes first! I have however found that even the best organic whole food diet does not cover all the basis I require. It seems to me, I hope temporarily, that we live in an era where chemical toxicity is high and soil quality is generally low. This makes it difficult to get all that we need purely from food. It can also be challenging to get this level of food quality for each meal making products such as natural whole food meal replacements very beneficial. I love living fuel and the all in one by garden of life.When we’re considering bio hacking or tweaking the bodies physiology to produce even higher levels of performance we need to be even more careful. If we are respecting all the foundations of health covering eating well, meditation, optimal sleep, good hydration, optimal breathing and attention to our thoughts then we can truly tune the body up a few gears and get powerful results in a healthy way.

Remember it’s better to manage wellness then to manage illness! It’s a sure thing that we will be managing one or the other so why not make the choice to take action and stay in a state of optimal health feeling strong and energized for all of life’s challenges.

In health and happiness

Henry