BODY HEALTH FOR MENTAL WELLBEING.
Your physical health is important to your mental health. You can’t operate as well mentally when you are sick or tired or in distress. But just as important are exercise, cleanliness, proper breathing, eating correctly, clear blood flow and freedom from mind numbing drugs.
You have one of the greatest inventions ever in your bathroom – soap. Simply washing your hands after being in contact with anything that may harm your body internally should be as routine as balance when walking. I shared a house once with a cook who didn’t wash his hands after sitting on the toilet. He is dead now; not surprisingly after all the problems he had.
Wash hands after gardening. You wouldn’t eat potting mix so get it off your hands before touching anything that may go into your mouth.
Changing diapers requires the same thing; so does handling poisons like insecticides or herbicides, petrol or cleaning fluids. Use sense.
Use your own towel after washing or, after touching dangerous material and washing, use a disposable rag. Have your own bathroom satchel with hair brush, razor, toothbrush etc. Bad bacteria can be greatly reduced simply by washing with common soap. It is the front line attack.
Bacteria build in your body and the bad ones cause illness that is often treated with antibiotics. But bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics. One reason is that people don’t take the full course prescribed. So the bacteria become immunized instead of eradicated and they can pass this on (via DNA bundles called ‘plasmids’) to other bacteria and viruses, helping them to become stronger. We get ‘Super bugs’.
If you have been prescribed antibiotics; take the full course.
Getting sick in the first place is largely your fault. Wait a minute – I said “largely” not “always”. Taking pills for every ailment that you think may be happening to you can cause illness. Start getting away from pills and into a healthier lifestyle.
You don’t have to join a gym to exercise. Do a few pushups at home. Leg raising or sit-ups, squats and stretches are the same. Lift a couple of bricks ten times sideways away from the body, then in front once or twice a day. Walk up and down stairs more often. Old people have trouble with their legs. Prevent it. Go fast walking and later jogging once a day. It all builds till you notice a difference and then you feel encouraged to keep going. That’s the point to get to. From there it takes on a life of its own. You’ve broken that “start barrier”.
Most people don’t know how to eat – seriously. Shoveling food into a mouth and swallowing it is NOT eating. Chew the stuff. Chew it over and over so that saliva fills your mouth and the food is reduced to almost nothing. Savor the flavors. You’ll discover different tastes you didn’t know were there. The saliva is essential for digestion and you’ll need less food because you won’t be overloading the stomach. Less food properly digested means more nutrition and less fat.
In general, water and fruit clean the body; vegetables build the body. But you also need protein which is available from various plants but we mainly get it from animal meat. I won’t go into the vegetarian debate here. Suffice to say eat much more fruit and vegetables; better still grow some of your own. It’s easy, they don’t have poisons and they taste better. Anybody can grow tomatoes, capsicum, beans etc. All you need is a sunny window or small plot of ground. A dwarf Orange tree is a great decorator idea.
Fasting is going without food to clean the body. “Break-fast” is the morning meal after not eating overnight. When you fast longer than overnight your body eventually starts using the poisons in your body for fuel. That’s why you can feel week or not in top form. You may develop bad breath or feel headachy. It’s because the rubbish is being put into your blood stream to flush out.
After fasting about three days your body starts using the fat reserves for fuel and generally you feel better. Water or diluted fruit juice helps the process. Do not drink alcohol.
Consult your doctor about fasting. A seven day fast every three or four months usually does a great deal of good for the body. Avoid heavy exercise but do not just sit. The idea is to get rid of baggage so do light exercise to turn fat into body toning.
When finishing a fast, start with a light meal of vegetables. Gradually increase this to eating a proper meal but not the type that gave you a reason to fast in the first place. From here start to eat with regard to what you eat.
Breathing fresh air and breathing it to full benefit is a lost ability for many. The bigger the city you live in and the closer to the ground you are have a great deal to do with the quality of air. Carbon monoxide kills. So do other pollutants that your body has to live with.
Breathe through your nose! Keep your mouth shut is often good advice and particularly when it comes to breathing. Sit and walk upright. Slouching diminishes the amount of oxygen getting to your lungs and causes stale air to stay. This opens the gate for infection. Every so often lift your chest up and breathe in deeply (nose), hold it and quickly blow (mouth) as much air out of your lungs as possible. Do this about five times. Try it right now.
Go to the beach or mountains or countryside every so often. It’s not only good for your physical health; it’s good for your mental outlook.
How many people live in a state of permanent sedation? Popping mild sedatives can become a lifestyle habit. It dulls your mind, preventing your dealing with problems. It enables others to take advantage of you.
Do not use drugs that diminish your thinking capacity. Be wary of all drugs including medications. Type their name into a search engine and learn about them. It’s your one and only body you’re playing with so know what you are doing.
Escapism is not the way to cope. Party drugs supplied by strangers can contain substances that kill brain cells or induce psychological states that are not easy to cope with. These can tip the balance in a person who is already unstable or having problems. You need only look at what people have done on alcohol to see lives destroyed.
I think it was an American president who said, “I tried whiskey once and liked it so much I never had it again.” There is wisdom.
All of our close social contacts can be adversely affected by bad breath. In intimate encounters it can be disastrous.
Mucus from your nose can run down the back of your throat and settle on the back of the tongue. It can stay there for days. So keep your nose clear. This is just one factor in the world wide concern that confronts us every so often. Other causes are dental problems, tonsils, food scraps in the mouth and various medical conditions. But bad oral hygiene can create medical conditions that affect the rest of the body.
What happens? Bacteria munch away on dead cells like mucus and food scraps and at the end of the feast they have sulphur and nitrogen gases that stink. Unlike body odor which can appeal or disgust, bad breath always turns people off. It is the odor of faeces or decayed meat.
What can we do about it? Use your toothbrush often and have dental problems fixed. (Dentists don’t use a pair of pliers and a foot on your chest any more.) Use a mouthwash before going to bed to be effective overnight. When using a mouthwash stick your tongue out and gargle so you get to the back of the mouth where the main problem lies. By the way; those mouthwashes that sting do not mean they are more effective. It’s just that people think they are. A disinfectant does not have to smell like ammonia to kill germs.
Don’t use mouthwash after toothpaste because you’ll diminish the effect.
We’ll have a quick rundown of other matters another time.
Comments are welcome and you can contact me at iqadult@gmail.com
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Jay Ross.
Tags. Health, Wellbeing.
