The Best FREE Healthcare!
By Kim Marquardt, RN MSN
This blog post is from the Nurse Kim archives of myth
busting. I want to share some "alternative" or maybe just lesser
known health and wellness viewpoints for you to chew on.
*These posts are not intended as official medical advice.
They ARE meant to be fun, informative, and thought
provoking, hopefully sparking an interest for you to do your own research (you
can start with the links I provide!) and discover the marvels of the human body,
and how it can function at its optimal performance level if we understand how
it works and interacts with our environment and our diet.
I have a passion for health and wellness through lifestyle
and nutrition and have done thousands of hours of research in addition to being
a registered nurse for 23 years. I have done A LOT of self-experimentation in
and around diet, lifestyle, body care, and supplementation and have spent a lot
of time looking into the science behind it all (or lack thereof!). Check back
weekly for the latest post!
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Let's jump back into it!
Sleep
Sleep is often an afterthought of health and wellness, but practitioners
who know their stuff should be inquiring about your sleep patterns to assess
the root cause of many associated health concerns including weight gain/inability
to lose weight, hormonal imbalances, mood disorders, high blood pressure, etc. Chronic
sleep deprivation, even outside of these health factors, can shorten
your life. Yikes!
Our modern world has (once again) seriously messed up the body’s
circadian rhythm linked with our natural environment. Indoor living, constant
use of sunglasses, artificial
light/electricity, and blue
light from devices, among other things, all consistently confuse our bodies
that are ancestrally wired to respond to light and dark in a natural environment.
Most people just think of the things that keep us awake and
alert, like lights and devices, which are indeed a huge problem. But did you
also know that not getting unfiltered sunlight into your eyes early in the
morning can set you up for a sleepless night?
Turns out sunlight
in the eyes in the early morning hours sets the timer for when the body
will release melatonin, your sleepy juice. So, if you are either inside all
morning, or not waking up until later in the day, that rhythm will be impacted.
Some sleep disturbances or night shift work cannot be helped, but here are some
sleepy time tips that most of us can work on to improve our sleep hygiene,
and overall health. If you can’t do them all, just do some, and start small:
- Go outside in the early morning sun without sunglasses on and increase bright light exposure overall during the day.
- Limit or eliminate daytime naps.
- Eliminate caffeine late in the day.
- Consider turning lights off in your house when the sun goes down.
- No devices or TV for 1-2 hours before bed.
- If you must use devices close to sleep time, install an app to reduce/eliminate blue light in the evening or wear blue blocker glasses.
- Try to keep your bedroom less than 70 degrees.
- Go to bed at the same time every night.
- Get it as dark as possible in your bedroom at night.
- Consider a magnesium glycinate supplement. Melatonin supplements can be used short term but are not good to use long term.
Exercise
Workout enthusiasts skip this hack, unless you want to be seriously
annoyed by my lack of enthusiasm, lol. Exercise is officially my least
favorite topic so let’s make it as quick and painless as possible.
- Walk.
- Briskly.
- 20 minutes a day.
That’s it… truly, that is all you need
to do to get your body in a great place physically, exercise wise.
You can do it barefoot outdoors in
the sunshine to simultaneously knock out 1, 2, and 3 from last week if you want
to get really fancy (and if you have green space where it would be safe to walk
barefoot!)! Those who want to take things a step further can consider some resistance
training 3 or 4 times per week. This requires no weights or complicated
equipment, just you and your body. Great resistance training exercises are push-ups,
planks, sit-ups, lunges, and squats.
You can certainly get more sophisticated
in your workout regime as you see fit (pun intended), however, in the spirit of
Nurse Kim myth busting I will challenge the assumption that hard cardio
is beneficial and the more, the better. No and no. Not
only can it damage your heart and blood vessels, but chronic hard cardio can
also cause weight gain! What!!?? Yeah. It does this by negatively impacting
your hormones.
If you think about it through an ancestrally
appropriate lens, this makes perfect sense. Chronic, hard stress and activity on
the body is sending the message to your system that the environment is not safe,
and you are having to work really hard to stay alive. Your body doesn’t know
the difference between a lion and a treadmill. This in turn, sends a message to
up your cortisol levels, the stress hormone. A chronically elevated cortisol
level puts your body into survival mode, tells it to store fat, and interferes
with blood sugar regulation. It also messes with sleep, and we saw how
detrimental that can be above. So…
Ditch the cardio for (brisk) walking,
maybe go back to 5th grade P.E. and do some sit-ups and push-ups a
few days a week, and call it good. You’re welcome.
Breath Work
Like grounding, at first glance, this might seem kinda woo-woo.
But since by now you know me, you know I love me some science, and yes, there is science
to back up the benefits of breath work.
For those of us newer to some of this, such as myself, no…
breath work is not chewing spearmint gum. It is rather the practice of using various
breathing techniques to harness and control the release of endorphins and other
chemicals that can affect mood, improve, sleep, reduce stress, improve muscle
tone, and aid digestion just to name a few. Many times, we don’t think about this,
but our bodies are fully equipped with internal pain relievers, mood enhancers,
reward centers, and so many other regulating abilities. Any method we can learn
to purposefully tap into these systems (i.e., hack them) can create a tool for
us to improve our responses to the world around us.
There are a number of different breath work techniques. The easiest one to start with is simply deep breathing, also known as box breathing or square breathing:
- Breathe in counting to 4 slowly.
- Hold your breath for 4 seconds.
- Slowly exhale through your mouth for 4 seconds.
- Repeat steps 1 to 3 until you feel re-centered.
Meditation
Meditation… another one that I am fully novice at and admit
I have a really hard time with simply because I cannot sit still very long. Meditation
without a doubt has life giving, and perhaps lifesaving benefits. The best implementation
tips I have for you are:
- Keep it short and sweet at first.
- Use an app or other tool to guide yourself.
- Be okay with messing up or not doing it perfectly.
- Sway. I find that I can meditate much more effectively if I rock or sway. Just gently. No idea why (maybe it’s the not sitting still thing) but see if it works for you.
- Try it in the shower or bath, when you are already (most likely) isolated and without other distractions and are maybe trying to extend the time spent there.
- And of course… be consistent.
Gratitude
This is a great one to end with.
It
is absolutely true that an attitude of gratitude can greatly improve quality of
life. But how do we get there? Do we just need to be born a blissfully
happy person and hope for a perfect life?
What about trauma? What if we don’t feel grateful?
What if we can barely get out of bed? Should we just “try harder” to be grateful?
And grateful for what exactly when it feels like our world is falling
apart? There’s probably nothing worse than the well-meaning friend who tells us
to “look on the bright side” or that it “could be worse” in those moments.
One of the things I want to say about gratitude is that it
is TOTALLY OKAY NOT TO BE GRATEFUL ALL THE TIME. It is actually healthy
to experience, sit with, and express a vast array of emotions throughout our
lives as humans. And frankly, crap happens, and there are moments that it legit
feels like there is nothing to be grateful for.
AND THAT IS OKAY. Did I mention?
If gratitude was so easy all the time, no one would question
it or grapple with it. Rather than the useless advice of “just do it,” let’s
talk about some lesser known actionable techniques that naturally inspire
gratitude, which in turn, can indeed vastly improve quality of life. And let’s
keep the list short so we can feel grateful it’s not a drawn out novel
of information:
Volunteer: I know this seems like a weird thing to
say right out of the gate with regards to gratitude, but the fact of the matter
is, human beings feel good when serving others, period. It is that simple. It
feeds so many of our natural instincts of fostering community, feeling valuable
and necessary, nurturing others, etc. It also gives us additional perspective
on the world, seeing and experiencing other people’s (or animals!) situations, i.e.,
getting out of our own heads. My first piece of advice (IF ASKED!) for a friend
who is struggling is to give of themselves. I KNOW this sounds
counterintuitive. I guess the easiest thing to say here is…
Just try it. Then you’ll see what I mean.
Make a list: Write things down that you are grateful
for. No, not when you are having a terrible day, although if you feel like
doing that, great! Go for it! But when something wonderful happens, or better
yet, someone sends you a “you rock!” over text or email, screen shot it, log it
in your phone, write it in a journal, whatever works. Then go back regularly
and visit with this info.
Be nice: No… not to others, although please do
that also. BE NICE TO YOURSELF. In a world filled with self-love
memes, we sure haven’t figured this out yet. Again, this is an actionable
thing, not staring in the mirror trying to muster self-love out of nowhere. Do
one nice thing for yourself EVERY DAY. The most effective way to accomplish this
is probably (hate to say it) GET OFF SOCIAL MEDIA for 5 minutes and instead:
- Dance
- Bake
- Color
- Doodle
- Take a bath
- Wander aimlessly outdoors
- Watch the sunset, or better yet, get up at 5am and watch the sun rise
- Smell something wonderful
- Re-watch your favorite movie
- Rearrange your furniture/knick-knacks
- Pet an animal
- Do any of the other things we have talked about above
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