Hobbies and our Health

I remember talking to a man in his thirties with a successful dry wall business, he asked me a strange question as I was complaining about the stress I was under, his question was, "what are your hobbies?"

I had to admit he was very happy and seemed well balanced in that healthy path we are all searching for. And it wasn't the question as much as the way he asked the question, in a very serious searching way. My response at the time was, I was too busy for any hobbies.

He shook his head, and in an almost preacher like conviction stated, "you got to have hobbies or your job and family will suffer."

Escaping the real world seems to be critical to our mental health. The brain needs down time. But if you sit in an empty room and try to relax, a million issues will invade your thoughts.

 

The brain is designed to operate and deal with the input it is given. If there is  no input, it will go to the last problem it was addressing, the very problem we are probably trying to escape from.

 

So a hobby does become critical, as a focus for your brain to deal with, that does not have the stress your everyday life is producing.

 

For men this seems to be going out and doing something physical, such as taking a Jeep through a rugged country road. Women often like a warm love story that has a happy ending. This input works different parts of the brain.

 

As described in more detail in this link. Worry or work stress, works one part of the brain. When we change the input to a different situation, such as trying to see the best way to get through a difficult road environment or trigger the emotional aspect in a love story, we are letting the part of the brain that was working so hard rest, while another part of the brain is being used.

 

What do each of these lobes do?

• Frontal Lobe- associated with reasoning, planning, parts of speech, movement, emotions, and problem solving
• Parietal Lobe- associated with movement, orientation, recognition, perception of stimuli
• Occipital Lobe- associated with visual processing
• Temporal Lobe- associated with perception and recognition of auditory stimuli, memory, and speech

So a Hobby becomes a very important aspect of our brain and emotional well beings healthy path.

Sleep Help

Sleep is one of the most important health parts of our lives, yet all of us struggle with it from time to time. Studies show that health is directly related to not only how much sleep you get but the quality of that sleep (see Link).

Without adequate REM sleep we can not get on a healthy path.

Children can fall asleep with such a peaceful relaxation that adults often can not achieve.

The reason is obvious in that their stress environment can easily be forgotten whereas adults minds will often take that "down" time and run through every issue addressed during the day.
So how do we sleep like a child again?

There is no silver bullet answer for everyone in solving the "how to get to sleep" problem. But a few Sleep tricks you might try may be your answer.

The mind is a muscle designed to solve problems. The subconscious is always working trying to solve those problems. It plays in the background of the conscious mind getting through everyday tasks. As soon as we stop the everyday input the subconscious leaps out in the forefront of our thoughts.

Down time: you have taught your mind that it get's to bring that information forward when your head hits the pillow. That is going to have to change. Turn off the television and shut down the lap top. Stop and create a down time for your brain to process the day while sitting in a chair at the end of the day. Let the subconscious go through all the issues it has been dealing with in the background. Take a writing tablet, and as you relax, write down the issues and address them with what you will do with them later in the week. This helps the mind do what it is designed to do and complete the process and removes the stress of the day.

Ritual: The brain loves programming which means a ritual that ends the program with sleep will trigger the elements the brain recognizes and full fills. Brushing your teeth, showering, all should be the same routine whether you are home or traveling.

Distraction: Reading a chapter in a book just before you go to bed helps the brain with new input that it can digest while the rest of your body shuts down. Sound machines re-creating waves or even static on the radio also is a trigger that distracts the mind and can help it shut down.

REM starter: If you have a good imagination, a very good trick is to create a story in your own mind. It can be about yourself traveling, hunting, fishing, something you enjoy. Imagine yourself in the story to the point that you are seeing those elements (like a dream state). This triggers the REM element of your mind and if you can do it will put you to sleep within minutes and you will enter into true REM very quickly.

Uninterrupted: It is vital that once you are starting to fall asleep there is no element to wake you such as a spouse coming to bed later. If that may be the case, stay awake until they are in bed or the interruption time is passed.

Links to sleep help for children

Links to sleep help for adults

is a sick child a healthy child?

It is a topic that is becoming a bigger debate every year. Are we protecting our children from the natural environment to the point their immune system is never adequately developed?

Articles such as this one (link) point out "According to the hygiene hypothesis, asthma, eczema, hay fever and childhood diabetes are all being fuelled by childhoods in which youngsters rarely roll in the mud, splash in puddles or play with animals"*
Does this mean we need to stop cleaning our homes and washing our children's clothes? The missing element in the thinking of building our children's immune system is environment. Our bodies are designed to adapt to their environment (Link on how the biological adaptation takes place). But as pointed out in the article, this adaptation takes time. And during that time period, we may suffer from the bacterial attack or virus, or lack of oxygen, as one example is given. In the higher altitude example, a climber can get so sick that they get pulmonary edema and can die. So how do we help our children's immune systems adapt without endangering them?

There is no substitute for patience and time. Each individuals body is going to adapt at a different rate; some will never adapt. This leaves a parent in a very difficult dilemma of wanting the child to be healthy, while trying to guess how much exposure to dirt, pet dander, bacteria and even other sick children to expose them to.

A mother's instinct is to protect her child, so even the thought, of allowing their child to get sick, goes against everything in their thinking process. A way to do both is to start with the child's diet and sleep habits. The immune system needs to be strong in the first place, to survive during the adaptation time. A balanced diet (including important fats and proteins) is feeding all aspects of the child's immune system. This seems to be a missing element in many of the articles on childhood diseases. Food that is processed, or GMO crops raised in soil where important minerals are missing, certainly are a part of the equation to the immune systems ability to adapt. This is the area a mother can focus on for her child's health.

The next step is adequate sleep. Learning to be able to go to sleep is very important to our overall health, and we will go over sleep tricks in another post. How much sleep is covered in this link.

With a focus on food that is nutrient and mineral rich, combined with adequate sleep, is our job focus to help a child be able to adapt in their environment.

Now we need to increase their environmental exposure. This is pretty simple, getting out in the outdoors, playgrounds, parks, take pound pets for a walk; basically getting out of the house and away from the video games is the goal.

What overall environment your child will be exposed to over their life time, is what you are looking for. With that will be exposure that will make a child sick from time to time. But a healthy child will quickly overcome (adapt) to that bacteria or virus, and in the process, you are helping build health for life.

*Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2118871/How-keeping-children-clean-wreck-immune-systems.html#ixzz3KZJqwnTM

Where are our fruits coming from in the middle of winter?

As we watch the snow falling, we munch away on a orange that obviously could not be coming from our side of the equator. So where is it coming from, and is it grown under the same guidelines as food grown in the U.S.?

Let's look at some of the foreign country standards.

Since 2011 there has been a push to create a global standard but the question is enforcement.

Third world countries struggle with pay offs and basic enforcement of regulations. Who is in the field enforcing the standards that are set? When organic labeled foods are demanding higher prices, we create an environment where even if there is an inspector present, were they enforcing the rules?

So does that mean we do not eat foods in-ported from other countries? It would severely limit our diets in the winter if we did. But we need to be wise in which foods we choose. The safest way to handle the issue is to treat fruits and vegetables as if they have been sprayed with pesticides, cleaning them thoroughly, and choosing foods that have skins such as apples, oranges that are less porous.

What is Organic

Organic is so overused, I'm not sure how to even separate the sale pitches from the real world.

A guideline has been set with FDA regulations.

However, the focus is not on whether the food is grown to promote our health, but to limit the use of pesticides. Organic is often confused with Natural. We want food grown in it's natural state presuming that will make the food healthier. Certainly it helps to not introduce man made chemicals that are under suspicion of inducing a carcinogen. But we should never presume that organic means it is good for us.

This label does not automatically mean it is grown in an environment that will magically make us healthier.

I have spent the last two years talking to "Organic Certified Growers", asking them what fertilizers they are using? Where their water source is coming from? What packaging do they use to store the products? Where their seed source came from? What other crops are grown in the same environment?

Unfortunately they did not make the grade. Less than ten percent had any interest in raising healthier food other than they had eliminated the use of pesticides. Most believed they had a seed source that was not from a GMO source but none had investigated the source.

So the first lesson to getting on a healthier path is to realize organic is not an automatic sign for healthy.