Monday, January 13, 2014

Holistic Health-- the 4 Compass Points: Physical



The Physical compass point concerns our bodies. Physical health promotes a sense of well-being. Develop life-long habits to take care of your health. Learn to eat moderately but wisely and avoid harmful substances. Get enough sleep. Be active and get some exercise on a daily basis— take walks, play a sport, or work out on machines at the gym. No time? You can build in exercise by taking the stairs rather than elevators or getting a parking place that gives you a little hike. Just as your body can be a target organ for stress, producing physical symptoms without a medical basis, it can also help you to relieve stress through exercise.

Get regular medical checkups and pay attention to symptoms that may need medical attention. If you are unsure if a symptom is serious or not, it will not hurt to have it checked out. It may save your life, as occurred with the following young man, in whose life I happened to intervene:

At the age of 25, John started having unusual headaches that he had never had before. He had a high pressure job and thought the headaches were related to stress, but when exercise and relaxation did not relieve them, his girlfriend mentioned the problem to me. I suggested that he see his regular doctor and arrange to get a CT scan to rule out a serious condition I feared, a type of ballooning of an artery in his brain. He did, and the scan confirmed this condition, which is so rare that is often not diagnosed before it suddenly ruptures and results in death. This young man was lucky. Paying attention to his headaches rather than ignoring them led to an evaluation, diagnosis, and an uncomplicated surgery that saved his life.

In future blogs, we will discuss more ways to approach our whole health picture holistically. For now, however, take care of this important part of life, your body, by providing what it needs as well as heeding any warning signals.For more information, see my first book, Keep Your Eye on the Prize! (www.keepyoureyeontheprize.org).

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