Men, It’s Time to Take Care of You!

It’s that month again, time to focus on the Men!

Yes, you gentlemen reading, don’t shy away now, this one is for you. And ladies, please read and pass this on to any fellas you know who could benefit.

So why is health so important for men? Simply because we are the least likely of the sexes to do anything about our health, we are very good at putting our heads in the sand. And the longer you leave an issue, we all know, the harder it is to sort. And sometimes, unfortunately, it is too late.

I heard a saying this weekend just gone in relation to someone getting back pain; “it’s not that you just ‘over did it’ in the garden, it’s because you spent years ‘underdoing it’”.

This is so true, take the number one killer for men in the UK, heart disease. You don’t simply wake up with it one morning. It took years of effort and dedication to get it. Now that may sound harsh, but it is fact.

Every day you chose not to exercise, every time you went for the biscuit, every time you didn’t talk about the stress and ploughed on regardless. Quite simply, we behave our way into these illnesses.

BUT, the good news is, we can behave our way out of them and prevent them from happening. It just takes a little effort and dedication.

With the number one cause of death being heart disease, let’s look at the risk factors and reasons for getting it.

It is an inflammatory driven condition with three main causes.

1. Poor diet

2. Lack of exercise

3. Chronic stress

So, what can you do to boost your long-term health, to increase your chances of sticking around for the grand kids, to enjoy your retirement? Or even avoid early sudden heart complications?

1. Eat well:
This is NOT a low-fat diet. This is a low sugar, high good fat diet. There are so many myths around diet. But take the Inuit’s for example, those people who live in igloos on the north pole. There were no incidences of heart disease until the introduction of sugar in their diet. And what do they eat all day? Blubber and fat…
For more information I would encourage you all to read this book, ‘The Paleo Cardiologist’ By Jack Wolfson.

2. Move your body:
This one is simple, and you don’t need a step counter! Just move, make sure you walk every day for at least 20 minutes. Ideally more intensive exercises, but in essence, all you need to do is move. Your heart is a muscle, like any other, it needs exercising. Increasing our heart rate will allow it that exercise. So, move, move until you start to sweat a little or breathe a little heavier. Move 20 minutes a day, you have time.

3. Help your body cope with Stress:

Stress is the biggest cause of heart issues, not only can it cause poor control over the heart, but long-term stress leads to hormonal changes and increased inflammation within the body.

It is difficult to stress less or reduce it, so what we can do is make our body more adaptable to it. There are two ways to do this.

One is box breathing, or simply slowing your breath. Do it now, stop reading, focus on your breathing and deliberately slow it down. This will cause your body to move into a more relaxed state, this reducing the stress signals.

The other thing you can do is see your chiropractor. Movement in the spine is essential, especially at the very top. Poor movement in the top of your neck, that we call subluxation, will cause the body to register stress and reduce the body’s physiological ability to cope with it. Make sure you are adjusted on a regular basis.

Your health is simple really, it doesn’t take a lot of effort, in fact I would contend that it takes more effort to ignore the guilt and bad feeling when you don’t look after your body than the effort it takes to do the things you know are good.

So how can you start today?

You’ve got this men, and I am here to help you.

With love

Tom