New Heights Wellness Centre

Huntingdon Brampton Cambridgeshire Chiropractor

New Heights Wellness Team

How Can You Redirect Stress?

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Who hasn’t been struggling with stress over the last few weeks?
When your body perceives a stress, whether it be EMOTIONAL, PHYSICAL or CHEMICAL stress — your body goes into what is called the “fight-or-flight response,” as it prepares you for fighting or fleeing.
When the fight or flight response is invoked, your body directs resources AWAY from functions that aren’t crucial in life-threatening situations (such as healing, digestion, sleep, immune system) and re-directs them to large muscles, heart and lungs. If you are not able to counteract these stresses in any way, and they become chronic, it creates continued production of stress hormones (cortisol, adrenaline) and inflammation in the body. This tires out the systems that are being overworked but also reduces how well our other systems are working.

 

The KEY is to reduce that the fight or flight response so that it is not triggered continuously.
How can you redirect your Stress?
So, what can you do?
An excellent way to slowly reduce the strain your body is dealing with, in a healthy way, is to find an outlet for your stress that puts you in a more relaxed state. This outlet will be completely different for everyone but shouldn’t be considered a chore! For example:
  • A hobby you enjoy ?‍♂️ (maybe something you haven’t had time to do for a while)
  • Exercise you enjoy ?‍♀️
  • Reading ?
  • Listening to music ?
  • Having a bath ?
  • Meditation or mindfulness techniques ?‍♀️
  • Connecting or speaking with a friend or family member
These things will help relax you and reduce the level of stress hormones in your body.
This therefore helps reactivate those life essential functions such as digestion, ability to rest and sleep effectively and your immune system!
Try and set some time aside every day for YOURSELF! 20 – 30 minutes a day is all it takes!

Our Top Tips to get Through the Christmas Period

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The Christmas season is upon us and this usually means– over-indulging in holiday treats and alcohol, holiday parties, work parties, time spent shopping, extra time spent baking and cooking, taking children to their activities and parties and whatever else is added to your already full plate. We know how busy Christmas time can be and it adds extra stress to our lives, so we wanted to share our 6 steps to help you cope with the Christmas madness and stay healthier this Holiday Season. 

Small Changes to Better Health

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Committing to live a healthier lifestyle is often very daunting. We are overwhelmed every day with so much information that it is often difficult to decide what changes are worth pursuing and what is just a new fad.

We have found that the best way to make changes that last to improve your health, is to take small steps consistently!

Doing a small thing on a regular basis becomes a habit.  Slowly adding in a new change and doing it consistently, is an easy way to make it a part of your regular daily routine.

There is a Japanese strategy called “Kaisen” which means “Constant and Never Ending Improvement”.  Rather than making sudden drastic changes, which you know will only last a few days, choose a small manageable change in each area of your health and practice it consistently.

Our health is an accumulation of our habits over time. Small changes that we do on a consistent basis are more valuable than a random week of intense exercise and “eating well”, if the next week you go back to eating junk food and do no exercise.

There are 3 areas of our health to consider when making changes:

  • Physical (movement)
  • Chemical (nutrition)
  • Emotional (relaxation, relationships)

“How long will it take to make changes?”

If we want to create a healthy future that lasts, it does take time. It is not an event but a process. Every cell in the body has a different regeneration period and it takes about 18 months for our organs to regenerate, so to make a change at the cellular level, which is required to change your health status, could take around 18 months.

If you make one small change in each of these areas and commit to them for long enough, then your health will improve.

We will go over changes you can do in each area over the next few posts!