There are three big ‘everyday’ factors that determine whether your body will be able to respond to treatment and heal. I call them . . .
. . . The Big 3.
When studying chronic pain the science has demonstrated that there are three huge factors that determine whether the body can heal or not. They are:
- An adequate vitamin and mineral intake
- Solid restorative (unbroken) sleep
- Regular movement, cardiovascular fitness
Let’s now look at them a little closer.
1. Vitamin and mineral intake.
For more understanding on nutrition and pain and practical instruction on what vitamins to take, check out ‘How do vitamins heal my pain?’
2. Solid restorative (unbroken) sleep.
The second thing that hinders your body’s ability to heal is poor sleep. Broken sleep in particular.
When you sleep you have multiple phases of sleep and in each phase your body is really busy, your brain is humming, activating all sorts of healing processes. I have had many patients who have sought measures to improve their sleep quality and as a result been able to get lasting results from their treatment, but that’s another article.
3. Regular movement, cardiovascular fitness.
This sounds like a no-brainer, and well … it is and it isn’t.
IT IS a no-brainer in that the healthier your cardiovascular fitness is, the healthier your body’s innate repair systems are.
IT ISN’T a no-brainer in this respect: Often when we have pain, we stop moving. Now occasionally this is the right thing to do, but in most cases movement is critical to your body being able to repair. In some cases this is counterintuitive, in that the movement is painful, yet without that ‘stretching’ or ‘walking’ or increased heart rate your body will simply not heal.
In my profession, half of my job is getting people moving. Helping patients to understand the inefficient movement patterns they have adopted and giving them a process by which they can recover that movement and get well.
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– Tim
