Eat Well, Move Well, Think Well

The term “Wellness” is a term that has become very identifiable in American culture as a term to relate a desirable aspect of ones health, “healthy balance of the mind-body and spirit that results in an overall feeling of well being” or to use more scientific terminology, “an organism’s ability to efficiently respond to challenges (stressors) and effectively restore and sustain a "state of balance," known as homeostasis”.  Both of these definitions are fine, however what do they mean to us, we are exposed to the term wellness everywhere we turn, signs for health care facilities, labels on our food, ads for hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.   The above mentioned definitions are accurate, however they are entirely too vague, and the first definition refers to wellness as a “feeling”, we all know we can feel great and never know our arteries to our brain are 80% clogged.  The second definition uses the word “homeostasis” which refers to a sense of balance for a cell, group of cells, organism or for our purposes here, a person. 

When we are pushed out of “homeostasis” by a stressor, we use our innate abilities to respond by adapting to the stressor and changing our environment to allow for survival of the acute stress and the return of balance or homeostasis.  For example, imagine walking in the woods enjoying a beautiful hike in the wilderness and all of a sudden a grizzly bear begins to charge you.  This obvious stressor results in a cascade of events that occur without you having to think about them, your heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate all elevate, you release hormones like cortisol, you release “sticky factors” in to your circulation to help with the immediate clotting should you be injured, your immune system shuts down, blood is shunted to your limb muscles and away from organs not necessary for the current situation like digestion, you down regulate the production of insulin receptors because you need glucose readily available, the list goes on.  If you were to remain in this state for a longer period of time than was necessary to survive the acute stressor, the bear, you would die from the effects of that type of “adaptive physiology”.  The purpose of that response is to survive and change your environment in order to go back to “homeostasis”.

Now imagine the stressors in our lives today, they are not bears, but NYC, 21^st century stressors, like bills to pay, family problems, work troubles, lack of exercise, poor diet, etc..  We have the same type of stress response mentioned above because we are pushed out of homeostasis by our stressors, but at a much lower level than the bear and it is not momentary, it may last for months, years or decades.  The effect of increased cortisol, blood pressure, “sticky factors” in our circulation, down regulated immune system and insulin resistance, etc. results in 75% of the diseases that are killing Americans today, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke, and obesity.  We are told we have bad genes, do we? Or are we just responding to stress with an adaptive physiology and never reaching our genetic potential for “wellness” and spending more time in balance or “homeostasis”.

To truly be well we must Eat Well (Nutrition), Move Well (exercise and all forms of motion), and Think well (mental attitude), for this will allow you to reduce the physical, chemical, and mental stresses we are all exposed to on a daily basis.