Most people set goals towards improved health with lots of enthusiasm at the start and often either forget the initial goals or get tired or fed up or stressed and stop. This leads to a failed purpose with regards to your health.
Recently myself and a colleague went to a company and gave a talk on exercise and ergonomics to thirty employees. We put very useful data on their seats to take with them after the talk. Sixty percent left the data sheets behind on their seats. This told me that many of these employees had failed purposes on the idea of exercise and ergonomics. So it is important at the outset to look back and work out for yourself the last failed goals you had on your health. Maybe you went for a run each morning, a swim or the gym and then stopped. Something got in your way and you stopped. What you need to do is look at the reason you set those goals in the first place, what was your drive your basic purpose in getting healthy. Was it to have a fitter body, a healthier body, to improve your focus in life.
OK! now that you have that purpose in your mind you are now ready to get some basic data about the body and how it works. This is important and helpful when you are doing your health goal as it gives you reasons to stay with the program you started on.
There are two systems in the body which receive stimuli or external actions, and co-ordinate the necessary response actions. These are the endocrine system and the nervous system. I am going to give you some data on the nervous system.
The brain is an organ which is the center of the nervous system. It contains over 30 billion cells.
This centralized control allows for rapid and coordinated responses to the environment. The pathway is two fold, one set of nerves called afferent nerves pick up stimuli and via the spinal cord travel to the brain where the data is analysed and the response is returned to the area such as a muscle or central organ, again via nerves called efferent nerves. The speed is 268 miles per hour. And there are thousands of these messages travelling through your body all the time. It slows down at night when you sleep. When you sleep the brain processes lots of data it received during the day and the individual cells rejuvinates and the body repairs itself. So if you eat a big starchy meal after 6.00 pm, have a few drinks of alcohol and stay out a bit late three nights a week for fifteen years, do you agree you are probably not sleeping well and your nervous system is shot to hell the next day until you take a strong coffee, so you can get the adrenal going and then you are off again.
Or you or sit all day in an office chair that you know is doing your back in and then you go home and sit in a soft arm chair that you think will sort out y0ur back. All of the normal things that we do every day are negatively affecting the efficient workings of our nervous systems. It stands to reason that if we put undue pressure or sit in an awkard way at work or lounge on the sofa at home these points of stiffness and pain lead to the malfunction of our nervous system.
So please start with sit up and take regular breaks during the day from sitting. And when you go home each day go for a walk and walk off the exhaustion of the body from the days work. Then no big meals late at night and really if you want your body to work well for you the next day, no alcohol either just try these simple things for 2 weeks and see what happens.