Spring is one of my favorite times of year in south Louisiana. We've got longer days, beautiful weather and the feeling growth and life in the air.
With the alure of relaxing spring days and summer gatherings ahead, many of us begin our Spring Cleaning. This usually consists of opening the windows, sweeping off the porch, cleaning the furniture and getting the garden ready but this year I'd like you to try a different type of Spring Cleaning...
Spring Cleaning Your Health!
As in nature, we have seasons in health as well. After the wintertime dormancy and energy conservation, Spring begins a time of increased activity and renewed vigor. It creates a great season for improving health, fitness and energy.
The building blocks of Spring Cleaning Health:
For Spring Cleaning your Diet I recommend just that: Find the area's you already know you can improve and clean them up.
This almost always starts with sugar and prepackaged foods. Minimizing both can be a huge relief for your body and immune system. Minimizing or eliminating sugar for even 30 days has been shown to reduce blood sugar, pain, inflammation, bloating, and GI distress all while improving body weight, oral, liver, and heart health.
-Commit to cleaning up one area of your diet over the next 90 days.
With the alure of relaxing spring days and summer gatherings ahead, many of us begin our Spring Cleaning. This usually consists of opening the windows, sweeping off the porch, cleaning the furniture and getting the garden ready but this year I'd like you to try a different type of Spring Cleaning...
Spring Cleaning Your Health!
As in nature, we have seasons in health as well. After the wintertime dormancy and energy conservation, Spring begins a time of increased activity and renewed vigor. It creates a great season for improving health, fitness and energy.
The building blocks of Spring Cleaning Health:
- Diet
- Movement
- Inflammation
- Energy
- Mental & Emotional
For Spring Cleaning your Diet I recommend just that: Find the area's you already know you can improve and clean them up.
This almost always starts with sugar and prepackaged foods. Minimizing both can be a huge relief for your body and immune system. Minimizing or eliminating sugar for even 30 days has been shown to reduce blood sugar, pain, inflammation, bloating, and GI distress all while improving body weight, oral, liver, and heart health.
-Commit to cleaning up one area of your diet over the next 90 days.
Movement is another great Spring Cleaning activity.
Cleaning up movement is something I recommend to all my patients. If you have tight or restricted areas, commit to doing 5-minutes of mobility and/or stretching each day to clean up the health of that area.
If you don't have any specific area that you need to work on improving the muscles that tighten due to sitting is a great start. That means that you'll work on loosening up your chest, the base of your head, front of your hips, hamstrings, lower back and calves.
Work on a 10-minute routine that reverses the tight muscles associated with sitting. You can check that out here and here.
Cleaning up movement is something I recommend to all my patients. If you have tight or restricted areas, commit to doing 5-minutes of mobility and/or stretching each day to clean up the health of that area.
If you don't have any specific area that you need to work on improving the muscles that tighten due to sitting is a great start. That means that you'll work on loosening up your chest, the base of your head, front of your hips, hamstrings, lower back and calves.
Work on a 10-minute routine that reverses the tight muscles associated with sitting. You can check that out here and here.
Inflammation should always be cleaned up as it is the primary driver of many of our aging, pain and healing issues. The best way to address inflammation is from a multi-modal approach.
Commit to improving one aspect of your inflammation this spring!
- Clear current Inflammation with Fasting Mimicking Diet. Fasting causes your body to turn on its internal survival mechanism where it seeks out damaged or unhealthy cells to "eat" for fuel. Some of these cells are inflammatory or dysfunctional cells. Research shows that doing consistent 5-day FMD improved inflammatory markers by 50%.
- Supplement: Adding a good Fish Oil, Turmeric and Glutathione supplement to your health regimen will improve your body's ability to process inflammation in a healthy way instead of blocking it.
- Cryotherapy - whole body cryotherapy where you reduce your core temperature to stimulate the release of hormones and survival mechanisms in your body causes a reduction in overall systemic inflammation while improving immune function.
Commit to improving one aspect of your inflammation this spring!
Energy is one of the easiest aspects on this list.
To improve energy, you'll want to reset your circadian rhythm and improve hormone regulation.
Do a 30-day sunrise earth experiment to track your energy. Commit to watching the sunrise with your feet on the earth for 30 straight days. I've had many people join me on this experiment over the years and the results never cease to amaze.
You can also begin to clean up your energy with PEMF therapy. Pulsed Electromagnetic Field therapy improves the energetic communication of your cells to improve healing, blood flow and cellular aging.
To improve energy, you'll want to reset your circadian rhythm and improve hormone regulation.
Do a 30-day sunrise earth experiment to track your energy. Commit to watching the sunrise with your feet on the earth for 30 straight days. I've had many people join me on this experiment over the years and the results never cease to amaze.
You can also begin to clean up your energy with PEMF therapy. Pulsed Electromagnetic Field therapy improves the energetic communication of your cells to improve healing, blood flow and cellular aging.
Spring cleaning your Mental and Emotional health may be the most important of all.
Start with doing one thing from each list above. Your brain and body work together if one is stressed so is the other. To truly improve your overall health, you'll have to work on both.
Take a walk. Walking outdoors has been shown to reduce risk of depression by 30%, decrease anxiety, and feelings of negativity while boosting those positive. A tip here is to walk without music or audio. In one study, participants were taught to count their steps in a one, two, one, two fashion as a walking meditation. If they found their mind wondering they just came back to their steps. That group showed the most stress and anxiety improvements of all the exercise groups!
Try a daily meditation. In a similar idea as above meditation has been shown to improve many aspects of stress, anxiety and even pain. Start with a simple sitting meditation where you notice your breath going in and out. If you find your mind wondering good job that is the whole idea. Just gently bring your focus back to your breath. I have found that even 5-minutes of meditation per day can be very helpful!
Lastly, keeping good hormone balance can be a great Spring Cleaning for Mental and Emotional health so consider adding a supplement such as ashwagandha. While it has been shown to improve many areas of health specifically Ashwagandha has been shown to improve stress and anxiety better than a placebo and in some cases equal to that of certain prescription drugs.
Commit to doing one new thing for your Mental and Emotional health for the next 90 days!
Start with doing one thing from each list above. Your brain and body work together if one is stressed so is the other. To truly improve your overall health, you'll have to work on both.
Take a walk. Walking outdoors has been shown to reduce risk of depression by 30%, decrease anxiety, and feelings of negativity while boosting those positive. A tip here is to walk without music or audio. In one study, participants were taught to count their steps in a one, two, one, two fashion as a walking meditation. If they found their mind wondering they just came back to their steps. That group showed the most stress and anxiety improvements of all the exercise groups!
Try a daily meditation. In a similar idea as above meditation has been shown to improve many aspects of stress, anxiety and even pain. Start with a simple sitting meditation where you notice your breath going in and out. If you find your mind wondering good job that is the whole idea. Just gently bring your focus back to your breath. I have found that even 5-minutes of meditation per day can be very helpful!
Lastly, keeping good hormone balance can be a great Spring Cleaning for Mental and Emotional health so consider adding a supplement such as ashwagandha. While it has been shown to improve many areas of health specifically Ashwagandha has been shown to improve stress and anxiety better than a placebo and in some cases equal to that of certain prescription drugs.
Commit to doing one new thing for your Mental and Emotional health for the next 90 days!
Spring Cleaning Take-Away's
| Spring can be an amazing time for your own health and growth. Adding even just a few new habits can leave ripples that will improve your health long into the future. Start small, stay consistent. Happy Spring Cleaning! | |
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