Lifestyle Medicine to Nourish & Self Heal the Whole You: Body, Mind, Spirit
Whole Foods are essential to nourish, prevent, heal, and restore health. Drastically reduce, better yet eliminate, processed / packaged / factory made food. This includes fast food restaurants and frankly, most food at area restaurants. If not made from “fresh, whole” ingredients..... back away from the table & politely excuse yourself! This simple act will rid your body of refined white flour, refined white sugar, artificial sweeteners, cheap vegetable oils, corn syrup/corn sugar, and synthetic ingredients of all types.
The below actions will help to restore your body’s health and whole food eating balance your body’s weight.
Make your meal times a space of calm and peacefulness: Healthy digestion for proper nutrient breakdown, to nourish your body cells for vibrant & healing replication, takes slow and thoughtful chewing. When we are stressed and/or hurrying when eating, our digestive tract is tense like a clenched fist. When we slow down, chew long & well, we create optimal digestive function. Our body cells are as healthy as the actual foods we eat AND how well we digest them. Relax after eating, even if you have to go back to work, go back in a peaceful mode and mood. Peaceful eating makes for healthy gut lining and healthy gut microbes. The benefits of both of these reverberate throughout your whole body’s health balancing mood hormones, all hormones, healing mechanisms, and every thing your body does every day to balance you out keeping you in optimal homeostasis: healthy and flourishing.
Whole Supplements: supplements you take to enhance your nutrition should also be whole substances. Whole food supplements help to address nutritional deficiencies. Highly processed and synthetic vitamins/minerals are not whole health substances. Synergy Brand Vitamins, 4 per day, is my recommended multi-vitamin & mineral supplement. NO, I do not get kickbacks form the company. I should!
Increase your intake of water, clean, pure water! If your water supply is chlorinated, filter it. Use a chlorine shower filter so you are not absorbing and breathing in chlorine as you shower.
Making Herbal Infusions as part of your Cell Nourishing Lifestyle: https://www.paulayoumellrn.com/making-herbal-infusions-teas and as part of your hydrating, body detoxing, fluid intake.
Daily physical activity, start now and continue for life. Get outside and move. Fresh air and natural light are imperative to good health, endorphin, hormone, and neurotransmitter production. Try Yoga: it will support your body moving, reducing stress, keeping posture aligned in a healthy manner, and so many other body, mind, spirit healing benefits. Join my Sacred Circle Mentorship and get Functional Medicine / Herbal / Energy Medicine Health Coaching with the wisdom of Yoga’s healing capacity. I cannot stress daily physical movement, preferably outside in natural light, enough to create calm, joy, and a balanced being in body-mind-spirit.
Clean up your gut health for optimal digestion & healthy gut microbial populations: Your body cells can only use the whole foods you are feeding them if your digestive tract is optimally health and digesting food well. Gut microbes are an intense part of this process and contribute to immune health, vitamin manufacturing, mood health, and so much more. A healthy digestive tract, your gut, is key to vibrant health.
Healthy Spinal Alignment, AKA Posture: Modern living stooping over computers and hand-held devices leaves much to be desired for spinal health and poor posture consequences. Healthy Spinal Alignment creates free flowing nervous system transmissions, natural fluid movement, and freedom in the flow of your life force energy (chi, qi, etc.). Need a Quicky Session to learn some Movement Magic & Yoga poses to promote healthy spinal alignment and counter the effects of modern living and forward bending to technology? Give me a shout. I love to support your health needs.
Stress is part of life, stress makes things happen. Interpret stress as a Eustress, not distress. Eustress - this is good stress, positive stress, that which motivates us to get shit done. Distress is what immobilizes us, because we let it trigger us into inaction. Learn stress neutralizing techniques (inner conscious connection) and use them daily: yoga, meditation, breath techniques, exercise and time outside, art, music and dancing, singing, hot baths, massages....embrace life, it is the only one you have right now. These techniques help to tone the vagal nerve. I recommend healthy vagal tone as an aspect of your lifestyle medicine to support awareness around stress, triggers, and taking positive action NOT reacting emotionally from a space of being out of control.
Maintain your social and intellectual integrity. Surround yourself with people who are positive thinkers and will enhance your positivity! Social connections keep us alive from the inside out. Keep learning new things throughout life to keep your neural pathways stimulated and healthy. Learn a new language, learn to play an instrument, maybe take up an art form. Read and learn for lifetime mental, intellectual, and the brain's neural pathway health.
Get plenty of sleep! Skimping on sleep to “get things done” is not a whole health habit. Getting to sleep before 10 PM maximizes production of melatonin and works with the earth's circadian rhythms for great sleep and health. Stay away from bright lights and screens (computers, etc.) for 3 hours before sleep. Bright lights make your body think it is daytime and impair the sleep cycles. Get all lights out of the sleep area, even LED lights disturb good sleep hormone production. The moon and stars are fine!
Sleep Better Naturally Educational Handout
Daily exposure to natural sun light and fresh air. Exercise, work, play, read, and relax outside as much as possible. Natural light during the day stimulates better sleep at night.
Decrease use of chemical medicines, both prescription and over the counter drugs. The side effects are toxic and hard on the body. Living a Whole Health, Whole Food lifestyle will create radiant health naturally. A healthy body does not need factory made, laboratory created, chemical medicines. The body knows nature, is nature and responds best to natural substances.
Increase your use of organically grown and raised foods. This simple act helps to remove more chemical toxins from your life (and the earth!). If you buy from local farmers, you can ask them directly how they raise their produce and animals. This is the best you can get for your body and health!
Use chemical free body care on skin, hair, arm pits. If you would not eat it, you should avoid it topically.
Use Chemical free, all natural, household cleaners, sanitizers, etc. Avoid all products that have antibiotics and anti-microbials in them. They kill your gut microbes AND contribute to super bug micro-organisms. Read labels like you do for food products: read ingredients! If the front label says the product is all natural, the ingredients need to reflect this claim. Avoid any that are not all natural. This includes avoiding chemicals on your lawn, garden, etc. If you are putting chemicals on plants and the soil those chemicals are coming into your home and into your cellular health (or not so healthy cells). If it is on your lawn, it is in the soil, it is in your well and drinking water. If you have town water... all those chemicals all over people's lawns create chemical run off that is in the ground water and therefore your town water supply. Every household who stops using chemicals cuts down on this environmental mess.
Avoid drinking, cooking with, and showering / bathing in water with chlorine and flouride. Both are toxic to your body cells, to your glandular health (your thyroid), and to your whole body's health and healing. This includes the pools we swim in. Bromine pools are as hard on the glands. Chlorine, fluoride, and bromine take up the receptor sits on your thyroid cells where iodine is supposed to be attaching for a well functioning thyroid. This has down stream effects on your whole glandular system and body.
All your thoughts and actions feed your body, heart, mind, and soul. Keep them whole and pure like your food. Decrease your exposure to negative media: TV, radio, newspapers, and internet news is all negative mind, heart, and soul food.
Looking for more information? Grab a copy of my books and get reading, get healthy.
Live WHOLE, eat WHOLE, love yourself and others WHOLE!! Be a happy, Whole Health Being! Paula