Best Health And Wellness Info

You may be thinking that the title of this blog post is intended to be a humorous exaggeration, but it is far from it.  The information I’m about to present is extremely serious and you may find it more than a little disturbing.

There is increasing evidence from research in neurobiology that many things we just accept as normal life in the 21st century are quite literally damaging our brains and predisposing us to a wide variety of health problems as a consequence. 

The actual processes that are occurring are somewhat complicated, and for the purposes of clarity, I will be discussing things in extremely simplified terms. 

The first thing you need to know is that the front part of the brain (called the prefrontal cortex - or PFC for short) is responsible for reasoning and determining our responses to our environment.  As information is processed by the brain, the PFC interprets what’s going on around us and then directs how we respond to it. 

Stress, lack of sleep, lack of exercise, poor nutrition, chronic pain, and poor posture/musculoskeletal function all can cause damage to the PFC over time.  The amount of damage is small, but accumulates over time and leads to many health problems, both mental and physical. 

What types of problems are we talking about?  Well, in chidren and younger adults, some of the most common effects are depression, ADD/ADHD, high blood pressure, hormone imbalances, digestive problems, and fibromyalgia, just to name the “biggies”. 

If you think that’s bad, that was the problems in younger people, in older people, this cummulative damage to the PFC is thought to be involved in the development of Parkinsons, Alzheimer’s and dementia. 

Now, most of the things that damage the PFC are preventable, and to a large extent, the damage they cause is reversible.  The key is to start now to reduce the number of PFC-damaging lifestyle issues in your life. 

If you’ve been putting up with a lot of stress, consider ways to reduce your stress through exercise, meditation, simplifying your life, etc.. 

If you know your diet could use improvement, improve it.

If you aren’t getting enough sleep, think about ways to re-arrange your schedule so you get more sleep.

 If you have chronic pain, investigate the alternatives for controlling pain.  Often, chiropractic, acupunture, and/or massage will do far more for pain than any medication or shot.  By the way, a year of chronic back pain has been shown to reduce the size of the prefrontal cortex by an amount equivalent to 10 to 20 years of normal aging!  If you have chronic pain, this is a very important thing to get handled as well as possible ASAP. 

In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more specifics on things you can do to improve the health of your brain.

Share This