Toxic Environments

The body is a marvelous machine. Every interaction you make with your environment has an immediate reaction within your body. Everything that you touch, see, smell, taste, and hear will elicit a chemical reaction within your body that ultimately will impact your overall health. We often only think of germs as being the reason we get sick. We feel that if we limit our exposure to germs we could possibly never get sick. The reality of this is that we can never eliminate our exposure. This became ever apparent over the last 2 years with the pandemic. We were exposed to a virus that spread despite our best efforts to stop it. The lockdowns, the masks, the vaccines… we could debate on the efficacy on all of this but one thing that is true is that the virus still spread throughout the world several times over and we couldn’t stop it.

We now need to go back to the first sentence. The body is a marvelous machine. Every interaction you make with your environment has an immediate reaction within your body. What we all need to realize is that health isn’t about avoiding germs. Health is about being smart about what our body interacts with. Every sense that we have (taste, smell, sound, touch, sight) has the ability to either enhance our health or diminish it. This might seem hard to imagine, how can listening to music affect our health? How can watching a movie affect our health? How can tasting a chocolate bar affect our health? When we start to realize that hormones are released within the body the second our senses have an interaction with the environment. When you see something scary, your body will release stress hormones. Those stress hormones will decrease your ability to digest and heal and repair. When you see something that makes you smile, your body will release chemicals that will relax you and allow for improved function of the immune system. We’ve heard it before…. “laughter is the best medicine”. To carry on this idea, the words that we hear can have the same affect. This is why we should always be slow to lash out verbally against someone. Those words have the ability to have a profound effect on their health. I’ve had patients that have come into my office and they exercised regularly and they ate well and yet they were finding themselves chronically ill and in pain. They always get frustrated and will say things like “I do all the right things” or “I don’t get it, what did I do wrong?” Health does rely on a good diet and exercise but it also depends on immersing yourself in a positive healing environment. Find the activities that will help reduce your stress levels. Listen to uplifting music, watch your kids play, occasionally eat something that you crave, hug the person that you love the most, buy flowers so you can smell them as you pass by. When we immerse our bodies into healing environments we start to become stronger than we ever knew was possible. Our immune systems will work better, our energy levels increase, our aches and pains diminish and injuries heal quicker.

What are some of the toxic environments that you’re exposing yourself to lately? If you ever want to have a chat about what may constitute toxic and how to eliminate that then please come in and have a chat with us. We are happy to help.