A Simple Remedy To Chronic Health Issues

Anxiety and depression, diabetes, stroke, cardiovascular disease, systemic inflammation, chronic PAIN.

Have you or someone you know been affected by one of these?

What if I told you there might be a simple way to minimize these chronic diseases?

These diseases can often be a lonely, scary place, but it can get better. I said there might be a simple solution, I did not say it would be easy.

Let’s start with some general information on the prevalence of chronic diseases in our world.

Chronic Disease Statistics

• Anxiety and depression

  • Not often talked about openly, but 40 million Americans experience an anxiety disorder in any given year

  • 1 in 13 people globally suffer from anxiety (1)

• Diabetes

  • 30.3 million Americans have diabetes (2)

• Stroke

  • 800,000 occur in the United States each year (3)

• Cardiovascular Disease

  • 610,000 Americans die each year from this disease (4)

• Systemic Inflammation (general body inflammation)

  • Associated with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, osteoarthritis, and others

• Chronic pain

  • 100 million Americans have chronic pain (5)

  • It affects more Americans than diabetes, heart disease, and cancer combined.

These diseases make us feel terrible and can have a profound effect on our ability to move, which in turn limits our ability to truly LIVE.

We all hear about how great exercise is for us, so often that we become fatigued just hearing about it. What we need to spread more of are the specific benefits that exercise has on the body and mind and also the benefits mental training can have on the body and mind for each and every one of us.

Movement = Life

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was something in this world that could help prevent these diseases and reverse the course of these diseases?

Luckily there is, but it takes effort and time just like all other good things in this life and it’s name is EXERCISE.

Following are some of the primary benefits of exercise for each disease. Recognize how some of the benefits are related to improvement of mental health and functioning as well.

Benefits of Exercise for Chronic Disease

• Anxiety and Depression

  • Both may promote heightened pain responses in the body

  • Exercise creates changes in the body that acts as a natural anti-depressant, improves focus, reduces stress, reduces fatigue, enhances cognitive function, improve sleep, and improve self-esteem (1)

• Cardiovascular Disease

  • Exercise will improve blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, etc. You name it and exercise will improve it in regards to the cardiovascular system

  • PSA: If you do have any form of cardiovascular disease it is important to get clearance from your doctor and to consult a healthcare professional to determine the intensity that is most beneficial for you to train.

• Systemic Inflammation (general body inflammation)

  • Exercise decreases general inflammation in the body and therefore has positive effects on multiple diseases including cardiovascular disease and blood pressure, osteoarthritis, dementia, and diabetes

• Diabetes

  • Exercise gives alternate ways for the cells in the body to utilize blood sugar without insulin. This allows for lower blood sugar levels and therefore decreased negative effects of diabetes.

  • High BMI (increased body fat) is linked to diabetes. Exercise decreases BMI. Decreased body fat leads to improved insulin sensitivity.

  • The more muscle a person has causes lowered blood sugar levels and increases insulin sensitivity.

But What About Pain?!

We often have the warped idea that PAIN is natural as we age and is just something that we have to deal with. QUIT ACCEPTING THIS IDEA BECAUSE IT IS FALSE!

Pain is extremely complex, but let’s get a basic understanding of how it works before we go into the ways we can decrease it using the best natural medicine out there, a combination of exercise and cognitive strengthening.

How Pain Works

A signal is sent to the brain regarding a stimulus felt by the body. It is then processed and the brain decides if the stimulus is painful. Simultaneously, the signal is sent to another part of the brain that deals with emotional responses.

For some people, all this works well and helps them stay away from things that will harm their bodies. For others the system gets thrown off and this can cause heightened painful responses to stimuli that typically would not be painful or cause persistent pain.

Therefore, it is important HOW people process their pain due to the link pain has with emotions.

Simplified down, your mental perception, aka emotions, regarding a painful stimulus can have lasting effects on how severely and how long you feel the pain.

What is Chronic Pain?

Chronic pain is pain that lasts for an extended period of time when there are no longer any damaged tissues or injuries that should be causing a person discomfort. There are many ways it can manifest, including pain being felt by stimuli that would not normally be painful.

Due to tissue damage not being the cause of pain, the main cause is considered affective.

·       Affective pain: Related to perception of stimuli and your emotional response to those stimuli.

Basically, if you have negative emotions regarding the pain you are feeling it can increase the actual pain that is felt and help cause it to be felt for an extended period of time.

So based on this initial information, what should be included in our initial treatment for arguably all disease?

Yep, BOTH exercise and mental training.

Treatment of Chronic Pain

To help get rid of or reduce chronic pain, a combination of natural physical and mental techniques can be utilized including, but not limited to, the following:

• Meditation

• Mental imagery

• Positivity and encouragement

• Education in understanding how pain works

• Education to understand that movement may cause some pain currently but it will not actually harm the body

• Setting goals

• Gradually increasing activity and exercise will help your body and mind realize you CAN complete physical activity. Rest may momentarily give pain relief, but with movement, pain will gradually increase.

Conclusion

We need to make the training of our bodies and minds a priority. Science has specifically linked the two in the ways they affect each other and how a combination of the two causes direct changes in our physiology.

We now realize more than ever before that we can train both our bodies and minds to be optimized if we put in the work. And if we put in that work, the result is having the most profound and widespread positive effects regarding the prevention of chronic diseases and severe pathologies. More profound than any drug or surgery out there.

Put In The Work

Let me reiterate that. YOU are IN CONTROL of training both YOUR body and YOUR mind. This can be awesome and it can also be scary. We get it. Working out and change can be scary! Check out this article by our friends at Mobility Physical Therapy and Wellness on just that (click here).

It can also be scary because you are the one that is in control and it causes you to TAKE OWNERSHIP to improve.

Maybe the most difficult part of this is accepting that maintaining and improving the health of your mind and body is a long term commitment and must become part of your daily life. Deep down we know that all things worthwhile take time, effort, and sacrifice. Your mind and body are no different.

Once we EMBRACE that WE ARE IN CONTROL of strengthening our bodies and minds, we no longer leave our health up to chance and we begin to take profound steps towards living a more active, mobile, fulfilling and stimulating life than we could have ever dreamed of.

If you don’t know much about physical fitness or are beginning to have difficulty moving around go see a local physical therapist who specializes in orthopedic and sports medicine to get some advice and ask your questions or to get treatment. If you don’t know how to go about implementing strategies to optimize your mental game? Contact my colleague Tyler Pazik here.

Jacob Evanich is a physical therapist specializing in orthopedic and sports medicine in Jacksonville, Florida. He works with a wide scope of patients ranging from athletes to geriatrics.

Email: jevanich2119@gmail.com

Sources:

1.     Anxiety and Depression Association of America. ADAA. Web. 26 Nov. 2018. https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/depression

2.     Ameriacn Diabetes Association. Web. 26 Nov. 2018. http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/statistics/

3.     American Heart Association American Stroke Association. Web. 26 Nov. 2018. http://www.strokeassociation.org/STROKEORG/AboutStroke/Impact-of-Stroke-Stroke-statistics_UCM_310728_Article.jsp#

4.     Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC. Web. 26 Nov. 2018. https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm

5.     Institute of Medine: Relieving Pain in America A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention, Care, Education, and Research. Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Web. 27 Nov. 2018. https://iprcc.nih.gov/sites/default/files/IOM_Pain_Report_508comp_0.pdf