Optimal Health and Your Brain - [Two Tips]

What Optimal Health Truly is

In this video series about optimal health, I plan to go a little deeper into what optimal health truly is.  Optimal health comes from you, not to you.

This video explains how optimal health and your brain are connected – and tips for you on how to optimize your brain’s function.

Health is about making sure that your body is functioning at a hundred percent or close to that as possible.  It’s very easy to feel really good yet there could be a disease developing in your body.  You can look like a million bucks, and you could be sick on the inside.

Therefore, although how you look and how you feel can play into health, I think we’re making a drastic mistake if we only base our health on how you look or how you feel.

When I step back and I ask myself these questions and when I formulate what I want to do for myself, and also how I can best help patients I have to go through a line of questioning.  That questioning ultimately leads me to ask what part of the body controls all functions –  every cellular activity, every hormone activity, every movement, everything in your body?

It’s the brain.

Optimal Health and Your Brain as Orchestrator

Your brain literally is controlling and regulating every function of your body.  The brain is like the maestro in front of the orchestra making sure that every tune is hit at the exact right time.

In this online video series, I’ll discuss ways that we can improve our nerve or neurologic functioning, and also how we can improve how well our brain can communicate to our body.

One of the first things I’ll share with you is that even with running a wonderful practice and having a busy life and trying to stay active and fit, I get I get burned out.  I get fatigued.  I get stressed. These are keys and signs that I know that I’m stressing out my brain and my spinal chord –  otherwise know as your nervous system.

So I have to have things that I do and things I can share with others as well to literally decrease nervous system stress;  decrease brain stress; decrease nerve stress because when you do that you will improve how well your body can work. When you improve how well your body works, you improve how healthy you are and your ability to handle stress. I’ve written about optimal health and the impact on your overall performance on this blog.

So coming up I have two tips for you on how to improve brain functioning and emotional responses.

Tip One – Improving Your Brain Function

On a daily basis to help decrease the effects of emotional stress, the effects of physical stress on my body and to allow me to recuperate faster from each day is to take a supplement called Magnesium Glycinate.

Recently, I had a chance to study under one of the leading functional neurologists in our country. I remember during the seminar he highlighted how important magnesium is for brain functioning, for cellular activity in the brain,  for detoxification for all our cellular health.  Therefore,  I really hone in on that.

In addition,  my good great friend and colleague Dr. Olivia Joseph, co-owner of our clinic, has been stating for years how important magnesium is.  She includes it as a critical part of her “Thyroid Support System“. One of the things we talk about is how essential magnesium is for our patients.

Detoxification for cellular health

I take the form Magnesium Glycinate. There’s a lot of research out there that talks about the different forms and what one is better than the other.

From the people who know more than I about this product, including Dr. Olivia, whom I trust implicitly, the product that I use and feel great with is Magnesium Glycinate.  It has to be Mag-Glycinate.  It helps to decrease nervous system stress.

I take it before bed and it allows my nervous system to calm down; it decreases nerve stress; decreases hormonal activity that goes on the brain and spinal cord, and it also helps to decrease muscle discomfort aches and pains.  It helps my body to relax into a deeper state of sleep.  That’s what I do from a supplement standpoint.  I also take one morning, one at lunch.  I take it three times a day.

Tip Two – Routines to De-stress and Improve Your Emotional Responses

The second thing I do as an emotional trigger or emotional technique is every morning and every night, I prepare my body and prepare my mind to de-stress.  Here’s how I do that.

I start my day off with a very intentional routine. I want to set my body up in the state of lowered stress.   I want to allow my brain and all the hormones in my brain and my brain activity to work the way they should.

Instead of getting up first thing in the morning and hit the ground running with alarm clocks going off and zipping down six cups of coffee,  the news and music going on in  the background –  all of that creating a lot of stress in the brain and nervous system – what I want instead is to ease into my day.

I use the analogy when talking to patients about how a plane gets up to speed.  A plane doesn’t just go onto the runway and take off.  There are some out there that do that, but in general, most planes don’t just take off from base.  They work their engines along the runway, they get to speed up,  they lift off and slowly get up to their maximum elevation and that’s their cruise altitude.

Time to Come up to Speed

Think of you, your brain and your body in the same way.  In the morning getting up and having some quiet time. It could be five minutes, and, in my case, I try to get thirty to forty minutes –  to sit in stillness and quietness. I’ll go through some prayer and reflection, some gratitude, some journaling I have calm music playing in my earbuds and I’m just relaxing.

I’m setting the tone for my nervous system for the course of the day. I’m allowing myself to ease into my day allowing certain hormones and certain neurologic activity to slowly begin.

Then, like everyone else’s life at a certain point, the kids are all up, we’re getting the house ready and we’re just getting out the door, and it becomes a little chaotic.  But before that, I’ve had time to calm down and slowly ease into the day.

Time to Come down to Relax

Just take that plane analogy, at the end of their flight, planes at cruising altitude don’t just drop straight down to the tarmac.  They have to slow down and slowly descend back down to the runway.

Your body should be the exact same way and so should your mind.  At the end of the day, you experience the exact same thing where you literally slowly ease out of your day. After a busy day in the craziness and all that can come with that,  I slip back into that same routine that I started the day with.  I might just reflect on the day.  I remember some things write down some thoughts in my mind my heart.

I’ll take that magnesium that I alluded to before bed, and I’ll have some calm music or just some inspirational reading in front of me and this way slowly ease myself to desensitize myself or slowly the process the day so I can get to my bed and get to sleep in a very relaxed place.

When I do these things, I not only help to prepare my body in my mind and my nervous system to function at higher levels, but also help them better handle the stressors and unexpectedness that comes from living a busy and hopefully productive life.