To say an athlete only does for sport is an understatement. The road he or she goes through is full of thorns and difficult steps.
Australian boxer Harry Garside who claimed bronze medal in the men’s lightweight cateogry (57-63kg) over the champion Cuban boxer Andy Cruz in 2021 Tokyo Olympics
Every athlete or who has been one knows, how extreme their life is.
The efforts and dedication we have to put into something we love so much that many believe it’s a waste of time and not living up with the reality are unbelievably extraordinary.
Some did it. Some live with it. Some have lived past it.
Sport in Chinese means something runs and moves at each meaning of their separated character( 運動 ). Similar to the definition of Sport in English that usually it involved any physical activity. Though I believe sports is more than just physical activity, it’s always a combination of our whole body alignment at work. Looking at our daily life, we’re all doing sport in a sense because we’re constantly traveling, mentally and physically. Finding the balance in between is a lifetime worth of habit we can have.
All in all, it always comes down to how much we love that sport or interest, like those sports athletes in Olympics.
We might not be in their insane amounts of physical training as a sports athlete since we aren’t the representatives of the national team (maybe for now), but we must adapt their mentality and the fit, ready-to-go body undoubtedly.
By trying to be the best version our body is capable of through the sport we enthuse about, we start to learn from others. We start to appreciate the physical knowledge that has been passing down from our ancestors as basic as how to hunt.
To share a better way to hunt for food, it’s probably one of the best blessings our forefathers can have in terms of wildlife survival back in the caveman time. Tips on traps and tactics, also the telling and showing of using their powerful weapon, the body, for the efficiency and longevity, such simple sharings had not only helped to sustain their lives, as well as the generations came after. Through their evolutionary traits, we continue to infuse our potentialities with their genes for an interesting future to come.
For me, dancing has me reclaim my body, and music is a necessary element for its sport. Can you believe that? Two dream elements in the same category!? You can listen to music every time you dance. As long as you’re a dancer, you’re entitled to listen to music while feeling and moving your body however and whenever you want!
What I realised the most is that the definition of music and dancing has been refining with every new wave of generations. For example when you see 80’s people dance style to today the after-transformation dance style in Hiphop battle, body control has been transformed to a whole new level.
The same with music when the samples of jazz were influentially used in the 50s songs with strong trumpet or saxophone as lead till now songs that can combine jazz-funk-trap together.
The changes in music and dancing, which are arts, are shaping by the outcry from the extremists and passionated to detail engineering enthusiasts.
To not stray too far away from our sporty body topic today, we are back to living an athlete’s life for the strengths they honed, in which we can pick up on.
The old thinking about athletic life in general goes the older you get, the more injuries you are likely to bear with. This prevents many to continue to pursue what truly makes them happy in the first place.
To change its fixated, inflexible thinking, here is where sports science comes in.
Sports science is a large subject that subsets with many smaller categories. These categories are what life excitements lie in terms of knowledge-wise. Human anatomy, biology, physiology, psychology, biomechanics, and kinesiology, for example, they’re demonstrations of what a human body can do, and what cannot, through any form of 2D plane. Soon when we advance our VR technology, 3D interaction on human body study will change us tremendously, whether it’s for the educator or student.
(Whoever has this idea to reality please contact me. investment should be in the discussion! This is a quick door to open many possible doors like robotic developments and medical treatments, by the large amounts of students who can access this technology when they grow up for instance, due to the instant, visual, and interactable contents live in hologram mode.)
Sports science and subcategories set up the principles and instructions for every athlete in their field regarding how ruthless they can be out of the limitless spirit they have but under the limitation of physicality.
Sports science is significant and a game-changer for all of the top athletes in the world. They spend large amounts of time healing and resting so their mind and body are at the optimal levels and ready to practice and perform across the race with time.
So what’s it for you?
Your studies will trade off with abundant health first and foremost.
For example: What defines a warm-up? This sounds silly and simple at first, but thinking it deeper, if we know the defined line in the warm-up, then we can access that point every time so we don’t hurt our body accidentally. Many people are afraid of getting injured. I get it, me too!
Some say it’s the warmth of the body, while others think light stretching is the definition.
Therefore, knowing the details in biomechanics will equip us with safety and reinforcement in knowledge.
Okay, the answer to the question is very universal.
Raising our heart rate to 90~110 or above. So an easy slow run is good before stretching.
Then the question is, how long for a warm-up?
I’ll leave that for you to find out.
These definitions and conditions around humans and nature itself will help our thinking and strategise our moves in the sport we’re participating.
Weather, gear, emotion, and body changes are all important factors to determine if the training session is successfully maximised the most satisfaction.
Many of us work very hard indeed. Living an athlete lifestyle isn’t easy. First, you’ll be cutting off many bad habits, like playing video games. Secondly, you’ll be very focusing on your body development, like what to eat, as well as the energy you have during the day and night.
Then it comes to third, you need to maintain social relationships, like your loved ones, friends, and communities. And then there is your job and payment. Many challenges occur just like a normal person would have. What about keeping your skill sharpen like a sword? You’ll need practicing and resting times throughout the weeks equally in energetic level to maximise the improvement. And study?
So, not knowing there are better ways and easier routes to pass challenges with shorter amounts of time is a shame. Talking about sport, we know the time frame is limited. For a diver in Olympics, passing 36 is an older age to compete with the opponents who are younger than him, in which they are in the prime of their young body to execute the most gracious postures they can do. And of course, there are exceptions, and the variables depend on the type of sports.
As I have mentioned in my “A Better View On Aging” that the functional cells decrease in different parts of the body is noticeable with age. The recovery rate also declines, comparing to a 14-year-old body for instance.
The question is, how can we outrun people who have better physical conditions beating with age? Well, experience is the most valuable thing there is. And by having the right knowledge and training strategically, keeping our bodies in good conditions while overcoming the psychological obstacles with good faith and attitude, then the favors will be on our side.
Studying sports science is not only limited to those who are older, a four years old kid learns faster than adults when the right knowledge is being passed down.
Deciding to study the body is a really fantastic way to start with. By knowing the limitation in physicality we can then measure our strength and accuracy in action towards the potentials. For example, we just cannot turn our heads 360 degrees. (At least the human evolution hasn’t caught up that talent yet. For now, it’s still pretty useless for our survival.)
But the point is, within the range that our head can turn, how much effort we can put in to reach the limit of our potential? And is it worth it? Learning the subjects that are deeply related to our body will only help us to improve many aspects of our lives altogether. We protect ourselves while aiming for the furthest range of motion.
By the way, for those who have a fire but are afraid of getting injured again, possibly the old pain hasn’t gone away, and for those who deeply think they aren’t the sporty material for their whole life, I can tell you that studying human body will be the best rewarding thing you can bestow yourself to.
It’s because you’re studying yourself through the process essentially. You’ll examine yourself why works and why doesn’t work for you. Why you didn’t do and why you did do. What changes you can make and then you’ll open a world that is full of wonders and potentials.
The future is merely potentials, which means it’s the unknown. Who knows, you can turn yourself into a sports enthusiast if you dare to take up what health means to you.
No one borns with athlete’s mentality or having its title to hang around their necks. All athletes develop their mental and physical strength and endurance through years of difficulties, sacrifices, and choices they made.
But having athletes’ mental thinking, and their dedication in attaining the fiddled level of their body, these concepts will help every single person to achieve whatever they want in life. Because these advantages a sporty person has is what every society desires; passion, motivation, knowledge, discipline, mental and physical strength, flexibility, creativity, and many more. They are self-evident through every athlete you see in the present and the history book. They might not be wearing the title of an athlete when they get older, but they surely live an athlete lifestyle for all their lives and they love it.
I suggest everyone should study sports science or any sub-category as they help you understand yourself. It doesn’t have to start with sports science first. If biology is more interesting then go for that. Anything that is in your interest.
Sports science is a big name for other fields of studies gathering for sports basically. And dare to step into the unknown and you’ll find the abundance within. You’re naturally smart.
Thanks for reading this article. I hope it helps you grow your interest in human body study. I love learning these, and I realise people around me don’t know what these cool subjects can do to them upset me. The safety and stability a society provides does wear our guards down and allows pleasure and entertainment to overtake our lives. We sometimes pay too much attention to the outside and forget to look and feel our inside. These phenomena are unacceptable for me so I write this article and hope that people can find ways to discover their physical potentials.
The benefits last for a lifetime and knowing how to use their body helps them gear self-defense too.
It’s not about age. It’s about having the willingness to do sports and find aims that can propel you for the significant achievements that fulfill you as a result. Sports science helps preserve, improve, develop, and enhance biologically. So regardless of age, the benefits are always there like fluids inside our veins. We breathe with them.
The joy is being able to exercise our body in the sport that we do in the comfortable pace against the uncomfortable nature of reality at the same time.
Pictures by 9news, Drew Graham, Jeffrey F Lin, John Jackson, Arun Sharma, Chuttersnap, Carl Barcelo from Unsplash
Growing old, is one of the scariest concepts that can inflate as vine inside our mind when we grow older. Trapping our mind at a fixed knot and creating invisible chains around our wrists and ankles, the longer we let the fears expand the bigger these chains can dictate our lives. Stepping out from our own perspective, aging is only a natural process that any organism will have to go through its cycle of birth, growth, and death.
So aging is more of a phenomenon like the water cycle; rains drop from the sky and stay on the ground. Till the sun comes out and they evaporate back to the sky, forming clouds again. But unlike rain, aging is something we can control with ourselves more or less. Through our conscious decisions making, consistent efforts, and a good understanding, we can keep our mind, body and heart young in one alignment.
Let’s look at the psychological aspect of aging first. If aging is indifferent to any kind, why do we fear it then?
Many of us fear what comes with aging, not aging itself. For example, from the mental and physical decline, to the increased vulnerability to disease and chronic pain or memory loss as an adult, and getting wrinkle with loose skin, or not being competitive in the dating/job market as they used to, it’s what comes with the term “aging” makes people scared of getting old.
While aging is inevitable among all of us, as well as all of the living beings on earth, we can slow down or even reverse the process by our positive mindset and taking decisive actions. We don’t want to wait till we’re finally reaching the age of 75 and then start looking for ways to reverse our beauty and youth.
FIRST OF ALL, HOW AGING WORKS?
Simply put, we’re just the collections of cells, albeit magnificent and really complicated collections that exist as animated thick blobs for a while in a hope of living long enough to reproduce. And when it gets too tough for ourselves to keep these masses together, we die.
After decades of researching on aging, scientists believe that inside our cell divisions, there is something at the end of each chromosome getting shorten each time when dividing, which is associated with our aging.
TELOMERES
The end of each chromosome that stores our genetic information inside our body has a protective cap around it, known as a telomere; A specific DNA sequence that is repeated thousands of times.
A telomere serves two purposes in its lifetime. The first purpose is to protect the coding region of the chromosomes and preventing them from being damaged, as if a protective and sacrificial watcher.
As each telomere forming a cap at the ends of our chromosomes, much like the plastic tip on shoelaces, they protect chromosomes from sticking with one another and sacrifice their sequences during each DNA replication. The shortening telomere phenomenon is termed “End Replication Problem” and it basically suggests that the ends of linear DNA, like ours, cannot be replicated completely because a short stretch of DNA doesn’t get covered by a new strand when the copying process reaching the end of the chromosome.
The RNA primer, like a printing machine, would fall beyond the chromosome end due to its linear structure, leaving a single-stranded overhang. Imagine over multiple rounds of cell divisions, the shortening will be very significant and potentially damage our DNA. So here is where telomeres come in. They are being at the end of the chromosome to sacrifice their repeated sequences each time to complete the DNA replication cycle. So a new DNA gets copied thoroughly. This also explains why telomeres are repeated sequences in nature as they are born ready to be cut away for the completion of DNA replication.
As telomeres consist simply of repeated code, they are easy to lengthen after being shortened by cell division through an enzyme called Telomerase. ***This video explains “End Replication Problem” and uses Telomerase at the end to fix that problem. However, this only happens in eggs, sperm, and most stem cells; regular cells, such as nerve cells, or skin cells do not get extended for what was lost or having limited capacity for regeneration. DNA repair mechanism can be triggered but not always. This means that in normal cells, the telomeres become shorter and shorter with each subsequent cell division.
***Notice that telomerase’s job will lengthen telomere for some additions, meanwhile, RNA primer can come in and complete the replication process.
Once telomeres reach a critically short length, the cell ceases to divide and enters what we called cellular senescence or apoptosis, so it can either remain metabolically active and be eliminated by the immune system later or cell suicide.
Whereas DNA damaged can vary, from environmental toxins to radiation, to viruses and reactive oxygen species (ROS). There are more to come, but once a chromosome is damaged, discontinuity often results in death.
The second purpose of telomeres is to act as the limitation in controlling the number of replications a cell can make. This limit on the human cell is known as the Hayflick limit and is named after its discoverer Dr. Leonard Hayflick. The reason why cancer cells are so powerful is that they can lengthen telomeres indefinitely with telomerase; under the hooray of forever dividing with no loss, leaving the suffering to humans.
The limitation of replication is the direct result of aging. Though all of us are born with a certain number of telomeres as based pairs, they dwindle as we age. Since many of them in the type of cells don’t get the lengthening treatment from telomerase, they die with no coming back. Naturally, the overall cell numbers will decline with time. At this point, we haven’t included the influences from the outside, such as excessive drinking.
I know. We probably don’t consider aging can be zoomed down to this very cellular level and yet, their livings are seriously impacting us tremendously.
Now, let’s take a look at how aging can impact our body before we talk about the cause of aging and in what ways we can slow down or reverse the aging process.
=====Part II: The Impacts Aging Could Bring=====
Aging Organs
How well organs function depends on how well the cells within them function. Eventually, older cells function less well and some cells die with no replacement so the overall number of cells decreases with time. This explains why older people tend to have abnormal problems with their organs, kidney failure for example.
Notice that not all organs lose a large number of cells. Our brain for example, healthy older people don’t lose many brain cells. Substantial losses occur mainly in people who have had a stroke or disorder that causes the progressive loss of nerve cells, like neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease.
Aging Skin
Being the largest body organ, our skin changes with age. Drier skin and having less supple, our skin becomes thinner and loses fat. The healing process in our skin from scratches and cuts also takes longer to complete. Not to mention the wrinkles that appear on the surface, that our skin transforms into less elastic due to the ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun, while gravity can cause the skin to sag and wrinkle too. Certain habits, like smoking, are also a part of the contribution to skin wrinkling.
Muscles
The amount of muscle tissue, known as muscle mass, and muscle strength tend to decrease in the early 30 and continuing throughout life. Although reasons are varied regarding the decrease, some are caused by physical inactivity and decreasing levels of growth hormone and testosterone, which stimulate muscle development. Besides that, when muscles can’t contract as quickly because more fast-contracting muscle fibers are lost than slow-contracting muscle fibers, muscle contraction also gets affected.
While we begin to lose muscle mass in a small percentage per decade when we enter the middle-age ground, we can rebuild the muscle mass by a plan, work, and dedication. In the absence of disease, loss in muscle mass is preventable with regular exercise to a higher extent. Usually, more severe muscle loss, like sarcopenia, results from disease or extreme inactivity, not from aging alone.
When it comes to excuses in preventing one from doing exercising, there are many. From environmental limitations to being too protective of themselves, afraid of getting hurt again physically, these are the mental blocks they being the protagonists in their lives have to go through. But after taking the initial action to start improving their physicality, they will as well develop the mental strength to endure bad excuses and many external negative circumstances.
4. Body Fat
Our total body weight fluctuates according to the calories we consume relative to how many we burn. For example, if we take in more than we burn off, we’ll gain weight over time. Our body can identify what is calories but it doesn’t just dispose of them. It stores extra calories as fat, rather than using it to fuel muscle. It’s a natural energy conversion in our body.
When this happens, the proportion of body weight we carry that is fat increases. One of the big misconceptions for many is that doing aerobic exercise, such as swimming, dancing, walking or cycling, doesn’t primarily have a major effect on our muscle mass, at least not compared to weight lifting. However, it’s very effective at burning calories. What scares people is too much fat stored in the cells and there isn’t a way for them to burn the fat off.
When we age, our loss of muscle mass shifts the dynamic of storing the intake of calories from muscle cells to now the fat cells. It’s because we now understand that our muscle cells will decrease with time, and our body still needs to handle the incoming calories. To prevent that? Keep yourself active!
*******A side note on: Fat Loss or Weight Loss?*******
Although it strays from our aging topic a bit, I would like to cover it here quickly with a paragraph to explain this commonly asked question.
If you simply reduce your calorie intake to lose weight, without exercising, you will probably lose muscle as well as fat. It’s because when we cut back on calories, our body is forced to find other sources of fuel. What else can be the idealistic fuel for our body to burn? Muscle protein. Even if you don’t see it that way, our body sees it that way, and that matters. So what is the solution? Cut down the calories as you would like but don’t skip meals, unless you’re really low at appetite, then there is something else to work on. Meanwhile, Do your favorite sport or exercise for improving muscle mass and strength. The bottom line is: think about fat loss, not weight loss.
Aging Bone and Joints
Bone is densely packed with flexible fibers, known as collagen fibers, hardened by calcium and phosphorous. They are built to withstand great stress from activities like walking, running, and jumping. Since bone is a living tissue that constantly renews itself, our skeleton is completely new every 7~10 years.
Bones constantly change through a process of resorption and formation called “remodeling” throughout our lifetime; removing the mature bone tissue and allowing new bone tissue to form. Any following injuries like fractures can be resolved by reshaping or replacement thanks to this remodeling process. However, as we age the balance between bone resorption and bone formation changes, due to the cells lost, resulting in a loss of bone tissue.
For example, the mineral content of bones decreases, making the bones less dense and more fragile. If this continues without proper care, likely osteoporosis develops. This symptom is marked by progressive bone loss. Osteoporosis is also responsible for almost all hip fractures in older men and women. But the good news is, osteoporotic bones are structurally different than healthy bone. That means we can all avoid this phenomenon by exercising regularly.
*Osteoporosis can also be interpreted as “porous bone” in the simplest term for easy imagination.
The chemistry of cartilage, which provides cushioning between bones, changes. With less water content, the cartilage becomes more susceptible to stress. As the cartilage degenerates, arthritis can develop. Ligaments, connective tissues between bones, become less elastic, reducing flexibility.
And what about our joints?
Joint motion becomes more restricted and declines in flexibility with age because of changes in tendons and ligaments. Some people might experience inflaming joints during the aging process if they didn’t take care of them when they were younger.
To improve our bone strength and flexibility overall, stretching is a must-to-go exercise we need to integrate into our modern busy schedules. Not only it will benefit you in physicality that lasts for a lifetime but also the freedom in mentality that can be obtained through practicing stretching.
So you see, although aging and exercising, stretching and everything else in between is sort of important and they kinda exist independently like options that we can choose where to focus on, their interconnections are deeply rooted to our health at cellular levels and without taking some times to look back into ourselves and process what we learnt, we might still ponder why certain health problems happen to us, especially when we age.
It could be very depressed at times for some, because most of the money they earn they spend on medical care for healing. Their worries keep them in loops and they knew it was a rabbit hole, but they just didn’t know how to get out of it.
Although there are more phenomenal body changes we can talk about, the above examples are good enough to give you insights on how aging can change our body and why precaution and prevention should be taken more seriously, in a light-hearted manner of course!
==== Part III: How To Slow Down, Prevent, Or Reverse Aging?====
As we now know our cells’ armies will decrease when we grow older. To keep us in check, our mentality of believing we are always young is first and foremost. Playfulness and lightheartedness should always be inside our hearts and be ready to take the wheel in our life. And then, we can explore the best ways to keep our cells living in prospect and longevity.
The toxicities we know of, such as tobacco and air pollution, all commonly have free radicals within and realising this is one of the main sources that can cause us aging, we should better know what a free radical is.
Free Radical
Think of it like a hat-less kid who likes to steal other children’s hats. Whenever a kid doesn’t have a hat on his head, he is a free radical that exists on a molecular level. Other kids nearby who have hats will be taken by this kid. Any kid who’s lost their hat will now be another free radical. So the stealing process continues until everybody has a hat.
Free radicals are highly reactive and unstable atoms or molecules. They can be oxygen molecules but not always. The unstable nature is derived from an unpaired electron. As a result of this imbalance, free radicals seek out and take electron(s) from other molecules to put themselves back stability, which oftentimes causes damage to the second molecule.
When a free radical does this, it’s called “oxidation.” A molecule that has had its electron “stolen” from a free radical, has been “oxidized.” Oxidized molecules are now transformed into free radicals themselves and seek to steal from another healthy molecule. This creates a vicious chain reaction of electron stealing in the body. When the body has undergone excessive oxidation, or more oxidation that can be combated, It’s said to be undergoing “oxidative stress.”
DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD; Free Radicals
There isn’t a need for putting a bad image on free radicals though. As free radicals chain reaction is significantly helpful in converting foods to energy in our body, they also lead the contractions of heart cells to become stronger and beats with greater force, paving the way to a better understanding of various types of heart deficiency among older people.
Like many things that occur in nature, free radicals are not only impossible to avoid but necessary for life. Free radicals help us fight infection, begin the inflammation process that helps repair tissue injury, and short-term oxidative stress may inhibit aging. At the same time, excessive amounts are harmful to humans.
Free radicals can be formed in the body in a number of ways:
Stress – Chemicals, cortisone and catecholamines released by mental stress can create free radicals.
Environmental exposure – The radiation from the sun, cigarette smoke, air and water pollution, pesticides, and herbicides in the food we eat for example can cause free radical formation in our bodies.
Exercise – While consistent moderate exercise has many positive benefits and can reduce the risk of catching cancer or diseases, excessive exercise or inconsistent but vigorous exercise uses a high amount of the body’s oxygen store and as a result, generates excessive free radicals.
Alcohol – Any kind of amount in consuming alcohol produces free radicals in the body.
Eat – Polyunsaturated fat, which exists in vegetable oils, is easily oxidized in the body and can create free radicals. To learn more about it here.
Our bodies – free radicals are the natural byproducts of metabolic processes. While cells use oxygen to generate energy, free radicals are created as a consequence of ATP ( adenosine triphosphate) production by mitochondria. Overtimes, accumulated and being leftover free radicals will try to fulfill their only purpose, which to find unpaired electrons to make them stable. This often causes damage to cells, proteins, and DNA.
Essentially, the only job for free radicals is to cause large chain reactions in any process, and these reactions are called oxidation. Excessive free radicals will fulfill their only purpose – take on other electron(s) from another atom or molecule – by causing chain reactions and such result is directly oxidized other molecules.
In order to witness the power of free radicals that takes part in the aging process in real time, let’s visualise the impact of oxidation first.
The Oxidized Apple
Have you seen how an apple being oxidized? When an apple is cut into pieces, the plant tissue is exposed to oxygen. The free radicals and all of the damage we have mentioned earlier in this article are demonstrating on this apple right now, with its color turning brown. This apple will naturally age, yes. But by exposing the tissue to the air, oxidation accelerates the aging process. That means oxidation can be the cause for speeding up aging. And imagine the same to our body. But rest assured, our body is stronger than an apple and through our practical approach, we can combat aging according to our wills.
The Oxidative Damage During Replicating Process
Here is a closed-up mind-blowing video on how oxidative damage on telomeres can eventually kill the daughter cells during the replicating process.
Is there any way to smoothen free radicals then?
Nature has its way. There is a counteract molecule called “Antioxidant.” An antioxidant provides extra electrons to neutralise the aggressive behavior of free radicals, bringing balance to our body. So if we have an excessive amount of free radicals in our body, we need a counteract measure. Going to a supermarket and spending some time to read drink labels, you will notice some drinks would contain antioxidants, green tea for instance. But keep in mind that too many of antioxidants also isn’t a good thing.
life is meant to be daring and endearing for whatever we have to experience. So take a deep breath by opening your lung and nostrils at the same time. Take a break, drink some water and come back! I know this article is quite heavy, but also liberating.
Since aging is a natural process, it means anything can influence it.
Let’s link everything together for a complete picture, shall we?
We’ve learnt about telomere, aging changes in our body, free radicals, and oxidation. With almost countless possible scenarios that can be taken place, I would pick the easy-to-follow, logical, both inside and outside situations for us to approach and contemplate. Keep in mind that we are excluded disease and other factors, so find your way to unlatch your health situation.
Internally speaking, as we can see there are several ways to trigger free radicals inside the body and the exceeded amounts will become oxidative stress. Uncontrolled oxidative stress tends to damage lipids, proteins, and DNA, eroding our vital tissues. Once oxidation has been made to the innocents, it takes time and more internal efforts to fix and repair. If it’s too severe, elimination of cells will be taken place. Over time, we might incidentally accelerate the natural aging process through our “Growth Path”.
And our self-created stress can also be a big contribution to aging too. Therefore, we need to maintain ourselves in better moods. If you don’t know how, please read others of my self-help articles or book a consultation with me.
Multiple external triggers induce oxidative stress that can negatively impact our body if we don’t take a better measure of balance. Air pollutants, tobacco smoke, or certain types of foods for example, all we need is to raise our awareness on these little details and develop ways to combat, avoid or replace the situations.
Honestly, it isn’t easy for many of us, due to the preconditions we have with our surroundings, and the circumstances we are facing. The difficulties lay under the maintenance on our health, while some of us are still trying to make an end meet, funding money for their kids to education, and many more. Whatever the hardships you have to go through, understand that step one to deal with all of the outside matters, is to recharge ourselves. Give yourself space and time to rest.
So, what are the solutions for aging?
Overall there are a few steps we can tackle aging:
Learn the knowledge
Develop a good healthy diet specifically for yourself
Doing physical hobbies or exercising
Rest up
Share your health view with others
When you reach to step 5, and continuously going on your health path, it’s an indication that you fundamentally change yourself within and help spreading this health element to the rest of the world too. Congrats! And keep up the good work. We need to reduce human sufferings because they are just too painful to so many.
*The term “reversing aging” in this article means identifying our old habits or patterns that can harm telomeres or cells. Replace them with new interests, hobbies, or new patterns of thinking even. That’s how we break the karmic cycle and ensure we don’t repeat the old. Without some sophisticated tools like Crispr to alter our genes, which somehow unnatural, through our basic changes in our lives we can still reverse the once pessimistic outlook on aging and ally with our trillions of cells in fighting any harmful substances or cells.
Our health is really the only ticket that allows us to be on this earth and being able to experience whatever we can experience right here right now; like taking a hot shower, having a chat with your loved one, resting on the couch. We want to be happy, healthy individuals and don’t want to get any sickness or disease just because we did’t pay attention to our body earlier in life, as we might just be too busy to focus on the external things in the meantime. So take rest and reserve our energy and strength.
Take your time to think, reflect, plan and act. Life is short, and because it’s so short, you don’t want to rush anything and then messed up later like what it used to be. As long as you do your best, there is no regret.
Be Strong you’ve got this. Be prepared and flexible mentally and physically as always, so you can deal with the external problems with ease.
This article is a bit longer than my usual, but I wanted to cover several points in one go so that it can display a complete picture by the end of it. Thanks for sticking around and I hope it’s helpful for you and letting you gaining another perspective on aging! :)
Living a life certainly isn’t easy! But also it’s worthwhile. It’s somehow all of the tastes, sweet and bitter, sour and hot, sometimes with no taste, like every little moments in between the collections of our life album, that making us feeling alive. So trust your intuition and dive into it for the life that you’ve always been dreaming about!
I’m hoping to share more health-related concepts, information, opinion and so on. Anything you want me to cover? Please let me know what you think in the comments down below or private message me. And as always, have a good day!
Photos by Heather Ford, Ian Schneider, Olia Nayda, Marian Kroell, Ben White, Caleb Jones, Ella Olsson from Unsplash
Simply put, self-belief synergises our thought and action towards the achievement we want in life.
It’s a fundamental source of self-consciousness to dictate our life direction. How to navigate our life direction? Change our belief. For example, we’ve got to believe we can get a straight A+ in school before it can really happen. Our belief is the direction for our efforts putting into.
Belief doesn’t cost us anything other than mental effort and complete trust. While belief is usually referring to religion, which is another great topic we can explore in the future, this article focuses on harnessing this belief power and apply it to any aspect of our life for the manifestation of whatever thing we wish to achieve.
For many, to believe that is possible is the most difficult thing in their lives.
“To believe I can make it through hardships, even I was being adopted, broke, bullied, and labeled as useless. Being treated like one of those low-lives. To believe I am the one who can make changes and overcome the difficult steps. To believe the dream and vision I set on my sight is right and that is the path towards my desired destination.”
What if LeBron James didn’t believe he could make it to State Champion, then National Champion and then playing his way to NBA? And What if Serena Williams didn’t believe the tennis skill could take her onto the tennis world stage and continue thriving even at the very top?
Everyone has different dreams and desires in this world. Some might realise them sooner and some others might realise their purposes a bit later but that’s not a complete disadvantage. Every experience is meant to grow us.
The truth is, there are a lot of distractions to wear our energy down, to make us forget what we truly want to accomplish, or the things we once set our vision at. Especially we now live in the modern age where technology is rapidly transforming our lives, making us forget our physical ability to achieve something far greater than the little screen in front of us, and the societies value more on economic interests rather than arts and humanities.
But so what? We come to earth with nothing but a ticket. If life is meant to be an experienced journey for us, what’s left we’re afraid to lose?
Imagine a lot of people have to sit at their work daily for salary. We’ve been running a lot, which makes us easily forget where we come from and our passions for something. Too many things going on in ones’ lives, so how can we expect people to mute the noises from the outside world and look into themselves, and find their true purpose, what they passionate about, and believe they can achieve their greatest potential.
We are easy to talk ourselves out of the impossible, and then we fixed the impossible to unreachable.
“There isn’t any opportunity you know….” “Sorry… I don’t have time for that.” “I’m too busy now.” “Phew! I’m tired.” “ Oh god, that’s too much of work…”
Where and when these occur? To re-experience this kind of voices again, simply take a look back at our new year resolution again in the past three years.
Some might want to lose weight, some others look for true love. Some crave traveling around the world, and some people wish to have abundant wealth. Some want a painless state of being, while some others want happiness.
Regardless of how abstract the wishes might be, we can all achieve the end goal because there are steps in-between every wish. (*Note that kids imagination wishes, like magics and sci-fi fastasy, can be translated into artworks like writing and such. So in a sense it’s still possible.)
Let’s take the abstract element ‘happiness’, as an illustration. Step 1) Find a piece of paper and pen to write 5 things down that would make you truly happy Step 2) How to get/achieve them? Ask yourself this and write down solution(s) Step 3) Connect the dots Step 4) Believe it, take action, enjoy the process and embrace the success Step 5) You’ll be happier than ever before, because that’s what you truly want.
It’s that simple. Our action is the driving force to take us closer to the end goal, but it’s our belief to give the direction along the way.
Reviewing our new year resolution from time to time, and visualising the progress bar again, and be appreciated just how far we have accomplished so far, our made-up mind evolves us to become the person we wanted to be. Every step counts, no matter how small.
Not to mention opportunities are everywhere, it’s the same as happiness. They are infinite. Although we have been planted with the idea that things are finite. For example, from finite seats in a theatre to finite positions in a company, to finite billionaires in the world.
We can’t blame them, because life does appear this way like everything can be numbered. But in truth, things are infinite; as life is an endless cycle of the present. So they will repeat with variety, ultimately the same. Therefore, if you dare to demand the universe to give you a seat, regardless of the outcome or where it ends up, there will be a seat for you. The same as the opportunity, happiness or abundance, they are always infinite, though it requires one’s efforts and the awareness of infinite amounts in the existence.
Do you believe in yourself you can do it? Like absolute belief? How much do you believe in it?
Now, here is the solution when we don’t believe in ourselves we can actually accomplish. It’s very simple:
The action reaffirms our belief.
The reason why somebody achieves what they have today is their actions are aligned with their belief every single day.
LeBron James plays basketball resolutely. In the eyes of many, he is practicing. But without a doubt, he is reaffirming his belief that he is the greatest player of all time. He moves and sharpening his skill every day to make himself believe he is capable. He doesn’t just let the fantasy goes over his head, he puts it into work, and now we see the result from his hard work.
By going through the process of taking action to our passionated area(s) every time, we can strengthen our belief and reaffirming ourselves that, yes we can do it too. We’re capable. How simple is that?
We’re unstoppable. Remember our energy is abundant even after we leave this world (Our Legacy). There is nothing too late and nothing we cannot do it. it’s just about redistributing our energy and focus again. No regret, have faith, let’s make a new beginning.
So, what do you want to achieve this year? What is your dream? Tell me once again how to reaffirm your belief?
Thanks for reading this article. I hope it helps you in any way. What are your thoughts? I would love to hear them, so let me know in the comments :) And as always, Stay safe stay healthy.
Photos by Katrina Wright, Shane, Alysha Rosly, Lorenzo Lamonica, Marvin Meyer, Emma Matthews from Unsplash
Look at today To-Do list, and monthly To-Do list, and then yearly To-Do list, we always want more but pay very little attention to our capacity to complete the task we set out to.
To figure out why we’re often unmotivated in the first place, we need to look deeper into ourselves.
The biggest of all is our motive isn’t desperate and/or the task is too large for completion.
We all have been there. Very often, we feel overwhelmed by how big the project is or, our initial motive assigned to its task doesn’t make us tail the completion. So what we did instead?
We turn to something that requires far less our mental efforts, such as scrolling our phone mindlessly. While relaxation is needed for our brain and body to recharge, too much of its short-term gains lose our vision that set in the long term. This game of life isn’t just the next few hours, but a lifetime of one combination of all little moments. Therefore, we cannot ignore all of these little moments and letting them go by, as they are far impactful then we originally thought of.
As my blog is an advocate of being healthy and fit, I will use health as my example throughout this article. It’s such an essential element one shouldn’t overlook. Nonetheless, you can apply the concepts and the method below to every task or project you do.
First off, what is your motive in completing the task?
Motivation often comes down to what our motive is and how much we want that to happen. Laying down a solid fundamental block of our motive is the best way to build our significance. Notice that our purpose in life and our motive for one specific thing, are different, though they are overlapped and should be interconnected in some forms.
Usually, our motive needs to be bigger than ourselves, but not excluding ourselves. For example, I want to be able to do 20 pull-ups. This is a very personal development of course. But if we change our motive to “ I’m achieving 20 pull-ups because I can show to the people who I love that they can achieve something significant too.” Or ” If I improve my overall well-being, then I will have better energy for myself to focus on the work, that brings a bigger impact of the contribution to the society.”
The reasons for your motive are endless, so find one that suits you best. And through achieving its course, your daily transformation is noticeable. Once we make our motive more desperate and bigger than ourselves, we can easily tune ourselves into working on its task.
Now, health isn’t something we complete, and then we forget. Same as many things, health is continuous and transformative. But it’s the tangible relationship we have with our body that reminds us don’t forget our center self in this fast pacing world we live in. It’s such a blessing that we can always come back to our mind and body.
After figuring out what the motive is, we move on to what to do when a task is too large for completion.
Method for completing a task:
Since health is a continuous movement of transforming the current us to a better version of ourselves, we can then find the specific task to improve and complete under this health element. (Now, I’ll use a tennis player as an example to show how it’s done.)
Step 1) Make A Decision
Just decide (Preferably within one sentence or less.)
“ I will create my healthy training routine this year and follow-through, for my best performance in tennis, so I can win the championship.”
**People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things. **
Step 2) Be Specific
I’m focusing on improving my agility and counter-movements this year. Specifically, I’ll be in my fittest and run across the side < 1 second.
^ I will train my mind and heart to be calmed. I will train my speed in responding to the incoming ball. I will specifically train my mobility, my back muscles in handling my racket and countering the incoming ball. I develop strategies and I will stretch more in the tight areas of my body so I can move faster, and smoother.
Step 3) Planning and Learning
I plan out specific movements that I can train myself to become better, such as “Leg day”, ” energy control”, “reflective approach”, “power boost”, “partner day of work out” and so on.
I learn biology, anatomy, and sport science. With all of this knowledge, I can apply them to my body and skills. Letting my body be in the best condition possible.
Step 4) Take Action
Go to the training spot. Start training, no excuses.
In love with the process
Be conscious of every set I’ve done, take note if necessary.
Constantly feeling the body in action, and thrive to be my better self.
Listen to the body talking. When it needs to stop, stops.
Stay hydrated
Reflect the session, and then repeat (with variation perhaps)
Step 5) Stretch, Rest, Connect, and Remind
Stretching is the essential practice for every sport. Daily stretching is a must at this point. it’s also a great way to reconnect with my body in a softer sense.
Goodnights of sleep and allowing my body to achieve a complete resting stage whenever possible. In regard to mental health for example: walking, and letting the train of thoughts going pass by…. All of these can help my brain get into relaxed mode, which in turn, I’m more recharged. (No specific rules however. Any form of resting that allows my mind and body recover, that if I want to get back to “business” I can get my body to do so, is great.)
Connect. From communities – connecting with others who have the same or similar interests – to the ones who are doing tennis in videos. Any form of connection is fine, as long as it’s the element that helps me to stay on track.
Remind myself how to improve better, by taking notes of my training thoughts, is a great way to improve my skill and help me develop deeper in its subject academically.
Step 6) Give, Give and Give
Learn one, teach one
It’s the best feeling that what I learn can give back to others. Some might be just struggling like myself before.
Help the communities whenever I can. Even it’s not tennis-related.
Understand your true motive, and follow the steps from 1 to 6, you will complete the task you’ve set out to.
During the process of completing, we need two extra inputs to make the progress bar forward.
1) Be aware of Consistency and Discipline
These two important factors are the driving forces to complete any task. So, be consistent and outrageously disciplined.
As Eric Thomas puts it,
” The grind is not when the sun comes out and everybody sees you. The grind is when you’re in the dark and nobody sees you. “
2) Find ways to stay motivated
Whether it’s the talk you have with yourself, or friends, or listening to the podcast, or youtube motivational videos, anything that helps you stay grounded. Nevertheless, self-generated motivation is superlative.
The reason why motivational speech is so powerful is that they usually offer new insight into the problem you’re facing or encouragement for you not to give up. But they all come down to one aspect, stay hungry.
Now, let’s tackle some of the common unmotivated factors people usually experience:
1. pessimistic view on the task completion
It’s easy to get consumed by the enormous amount of works we will be putting in. we need a better mindset and aim for dicing down the task into smaller manageable amounts of pieces so we can complete them.
2. Setting unrealistic goals
Look into our calendar, and visualise the timeline of completion. Just how long will it take for us? it’s completely okay to have a longer time. That’s being realistic. The second part is to develop methods to tackle the in-between, so we can finish the task timely.
3. Forgetting the benefits and rewards
When we turn our back from the project or goal, it’s because of the short-term gain our brain loves to have. We need another perspective, like what about 3 years from now, when the project is succeeded? What about 5,8, 10 years from now? What are the impacts?
Looking at long-term gain helps us to see a bigger picture, and allowing ourselves to set the eyes on our map better.
4. Not realising the importance of mini habits
Habits shape who we are in the physical realm. It’s important to know that our initial thoughts are the determination, but our habits, especially the smaller ones, like the patterns of thinking, the patterns of walking, the patterns of brushing the teeth, to the patterns of what we put the foods to our body, are shaping the future us every single day. We need to identify what works, what doesn’t, and replace them with a healthier habit.
5. Doubting our talents and potentials
It’s a very common case among us because we simply don’t trust ourselves. To achieve a goal, one must fully believe in their potential and talent within them. If we have a desire for something, it means we already have the gene within us. All we need is to unlock their full potentials.
6. Not seizing opportunities or don’t know how to identify one
The opportunities can be referred to as connections of the outside, of course. But the opportunity that within our controllable frame, like how we use our times wisely, also matters. Slotting and rearranging the times we have in a day to prioritise what we want to achieve on that day helps us to complete the tasks we always wanted. Time passes regardless of what we do, so knowing how to get on the time train and be productive about it can make us feel less guilty and boost our confidence to achieve more.
7. Not connecting within ourselves
Whatever the project is, there’re always a few of us on the table. Our energy, brain, body, soul, and spirit. If we don’t align them all in one place, it’s difficult to complete a task.
And that’s it! Thank you for reading this article, I hope it helps you understand how motivation works and what approach you can take to stay driven. After all, we only have one goal, which is to complete the task in this case. So whatever works for you, take that and use it.
If you like this article, please gives it a like or share it with your friends. Sharing is caring. And subscribe if you haven’t. :) until then, work hard, stay safe, stay healthy.
Photos by Cristofer Jeshke, Manasivta, Johannes Plenio, Sven Hornburg, Ian Dooley from Unsplash
People tend to think of stress as a balloon filling or a formidable enemy, like a cause from the outside factor, they don’t know when it will explode. However, “stress is just a mechanical human response to challenging or dangerous situations.” Have you ever heard the term,” fight or flight?” That’s the stress response and they both are the same.
Let’s imagine when your brain senses a threat, either it’s a falling down piano toward you or inches away from a project deadline, it signals your sympathetic nervous system to release chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol into the bloodstream. We call them stress hormones, and once they are at work, they fire up our muscles, raise our heart rate, breathing speed, and replenish our energy for quick reaction to the situation. This helps us dodging a falling piano or working faster to meet the deadline of a project.
So, let’s remove the bad image of stress first. As our body perceives stress, our adrenal glands make and release the hormone “cortisol” into our bloodstream. Often called the “stress hormone,” cortisol causes an increase in our heart rate and blood pressure. It’s our natural “flight or fight” response that has kept humans alive since our very very first ancestors.
Normal levels of cortisol also are released when we wake up in the morning or exercise. These levels can help regulate our blood pressure and blood sugar levels and even strengthen our heart muscles. In small doses, the hormone can heighten memory, increase our immune system, and lower pain sensitivity. Simply put, we can’t survive without this mechanism inside our body.
What happens when we have adapted fast-paced culture and living in a large global network thanks to our existing technology, however, is that many of us are constantly in high-stress mode due to various reasons.
To understand the impact of stress, we need to know that there are two types of stress: Acute stress and chronic stress.
Acute stress is short-term stress. It refers to any stress you suffer from for a short time; like a traffic jam, an argument with your spouse, a high volume of workload, criticism from your boss, etc.
But if you’re a truck driver and get stuck in numerous traffic congestions every day, or you’re in a bad relationship and you argue with your spouse constantly, or the work environment you’re in is demanding and you work for a toxic boss, all of these examples of acute stress can turn into chronic stress.
With acute stress, our body is designed to recover quickly, as long as our body is young and/or healthy and in good shape. Because during this period, our eyes will dilate, blood pressure, heart, and breathing rate, levels of muscle tensions increase for a short while. Afterwards, such uneasy stress will return back to normal level.
Whereas chronic stress, the body isn’t good at handling it. Chronic stress gradually increases our resting heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, and levels of muscle tensions for example, so the body now has to work even harder when it’s at rest to keep us functioning normally.
The longer it happens, the sooner this “new normal” will eventually lead to a pool of health problems, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, chronic pain and depression.
So although stress is a normal bodily response, if we don’t try to reduce it, stress will become problematic and turn into long-term suffering. Notice that how chronic stress can creep behind our back when we don’t pay attention to it.
Chronic stress can cause a high number of enzymes release inside our brain, and they act like scissors, to cut the cell proteins in the hippocampus region that are responsible for adhering between two neurons. Overall, they are there to ensure the synaptic function properly, which associate with sociability, memory and understanding.
II)Lead to burn out.
When we experience stress for an extended period of time without being able to alter, change, or ameliorate it, we can begin to feel empty, numb, devoid of motivation, hopeless, and beyond caring. Burnout is a state of emotional and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress.
III) Damage our DNA.
Stress can be linked to shorter telomeres, a chromosome component that’s been associated with cellular aging and risk for heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Telomeres are a protective case casing at the end of our DNA strands. Naturally, each time a cell divides, it loses a small percentage of telomeres. Fortunately, we have an enzyme called telomerase that can restore it. However, chronic stress and cortisol exposure can decrease our supply of telomerase. The loss of the ability to replenish our telomeres can set the aging process into motion, as well as associated health risks. As a result, individuals who experience chronic stress have telomeres that look significantly older than their stated age.
IV) Exacerbate physical illness
The most obvious ones are heart disease, obesity, and sleep dysfunction.
Heart disease
Stress can affect behaviors and factors that increase heart disease risk; high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, smoking, physical inactivity, and overeating. For example, some people may choose to drink too much alcohol or smoke cigarettes to “manage” their chronic stress, but these habits can increase blood pressure which can damage artery walls.
To look it closely, the high levels of cortisol (stress hormones) from long-term stress can increase blood cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar, and blood pressure. These are common risk factors for heart disease. chronic stress can also cause changes that promote the buildup of plaque deposits in the arteries.
Obesity
This one is interesting because, while it seems evident that stress is a cause of obesity, whether stress is also a consequence of obesity is still debatable in scientific fields.
Obesity is generally caused by eating too much and moving too little.
If you consume high amounts of energy, particularly fat and sugars, but do not burn off the energy through exercise and physical activity, much of the surplus energy will be stored by the body as fat.
But to note that obesity does not happen overnight. It develops gradually over time, as a result of poor diet and lifestyle choices, such as excessive alcohol consumption, too many sugary drinks, eating high large amounts of processed or fast food which are high in fat and sugar, or lack of physical activity due to their demanding work sitting at a desk for most of the day or the reliance of cars instead of walking or cycling.
For relaxation, many people tend to watch TV, browse the internet or play computer games, and rarely take regular exercise. All of these could be the triggers of stress in the first place, as it becomes obsessive. Therefore, it’s important to identify what causes the stress.
While obesity results may come from a combination of inherited factors, with the environment and personal diet and exercise choices, a simple modest weight loss can improve or prevent the health problems associated with obesity.
Sleep dysfunction
Continuously being in a heightened state of alertness can delay the onset of sleep and cause rapid, anxious thoughts to occur at night. As a result, insufficient sleep can then cause further stress. That’s how normally stress affects our sleeping patterns and cause us more health problems.
If someone already has sleep disorders, then stress and anxiety can exacerbate the existing problems. So although they’re two separate problems, they usually come hand in hand, and that’s what confuses many people about sleep disorder is stress and anxiety caused. A disrupted sleeping pattern can be the cause first.
One common sleep disorder is insomnia, which can be short-term or long-term on a person. Usually, people who have its condition experiencing difficulty falling asleep, hard to stay asleep, or causing the person to wake up too early and not be able to get back to sleep. Insomnia can sap not only our energy level and mood but also our health, work performance and quality of life. The last thing we want to have is sleeping deprivation, as it’s the main issue that induces many other health problems to come.
With all of these being said, we have our solutions to this trickster.
Whether it’s acute or chronic stress, we have our “built-in” tool to balance it.
Just as our sympathetic nervous system signals hormones to help us stay away from a potential threat, our parasympathetic nervous system can activate “rest and digest” mode to help us relax. Here are 4 steps to achieve it.
1) Identify what you’re feeling
Stress is often misunderstood with other emotional problems – anxiety or depression for example, while some other people are stressed without even knowing they’re stressed. It’s because stress elicits physical symptoms like an upset stomach, so people may misattribute the symptoms to something else (For instance: I must’ve eaten something bad.) Therefore, the first step in decreasing the stress level is to recognise it’s there.
Get a pen and piece of paper, and write down your feeling(s):
For your reference, here are examples:
Rapid heartbeat
Dizziness
Sweating
Muscle tension
Headache
Upset stomach
Sleep disturbances
difficulty breathing
Okay, but how to differentiate between stress and anxiety?
Generally speaking, stress is a response to external factors, such as delivering an important gift or completing the task that you’ve started, while anxiety causes internally due to the person’s preferred reaction to stress. But since both overlap a lot, either mentally or physiologically, so people may get confused. For more information.
2) Locate the source
After we know our discomfort feeling(s), we need to identify the stressors, as stress is always an external source.
Common examples are:
– Noisy environment
– Being underpaid
– Toxic people
– Disagreement with other(s)
– Taking on more responsibilities than you can handle
To pinpoint your stressor, be aware of the moments when you experience the physical symptoms of stress mentioned above, “ muscle tension, sweatiness, shortness of breath, etc”. When you realise those feelings, pause what you’re doing and conduct a quick scan of your surroundings.
3) Address the stressor
Once the source has been located, take a look at the possibility of eliminating or reducing this stressor.
For instance, if this is a communicating issue at work, consider looking for an alternative tool to direct the message, such as setting up a face to face meeting, video call, or email.
Regardless of what stressor is, you have some degrees of control over it. You might be able to eliminate the stressor or at least reduce it.
Though, workplace stressors sometimes cannot be modified easily. For example, a new fashion designer may feel stressed out by coming up with ideas for the next season’s clothing line, before the company meeting starts in one-week time. Since it’s an essential part of his job, there’s no way to eliminate the stressor, unless he quits.
In such cases, he needs to switch his stress response to the relaxation response.
4) Activate our relaxation response
The below five methods are for your reference to activate the relaxation response.
4.1) Deep breathing
It’s the same breathing technique from meditation, active deep breathing with eyes shut helps you quickly calm your mind and body down to a lower level, as it switches back to relaxation mode inside the brain. The important part of doing this though is to not thinking about any stressful event or, simply let it go for the time being.
There is a popular breathing technique you can try out, it’s called 4-7-8 breathing.
Inhale a breath for four seconds, hold the breath for seven seconds, and then exhale for eight seconds. A good thing about breathing technique is we can do it anywhere!
4.2) Physical Exercise
To understand why we need to do physical exercise to reduce stress, we need to look at the adrenaline. The stress response pumps adrenaline into the body for “fight or flight”. As workplace stressors typically don’t require us to physically fight off danger or run from a pursuing predator, this stress hormone builds up in our system with nowhere to go, leaving us shaky and irritable. This is also known as an adrenaline rush.
A good way to blow off the steam over our head after a surge of stress? Exercise! Our brain produces endorphins during exercise, which can make us feel good and help us fend off feelings of stress.
4.3) Meditation
This word is super trending in our modern age because many have turned themselves to this practice to find their inner peace or other reasons. The meditating practice is helpful because it helps bring one back to the present moment, for there to erase “what if”.
4.4) Progressive muscle relaxation
To counteract the tensed muscles, we need muscle relaxation. Here is a simple clip to help you kick start. It’s simple as you lie down on the floor with a mat and try to relax with some easy exercises.
4.5) Direct stress and anxiety elsewhere
Lend a hand to a relative or neighbor, or volunteer in our community. Helping others will take our minds off of our own anxiety and fears.
After all, it’s advised to seek professional help if you’re unsure about your stress level, or don’t know how to cope with these matters. Remember, stress is only the reaction of us reacting to the external world, so therefore, we can always take control of it.
Thank you for reading this article, is this article helpful? How do you deal with stress? Please let me know in the comments, I would love to hear yours! :)
photos by Victor Garcia, Max Böhme, Paweł Czerwiński, Bruno Aguirre, Omid Armin, Anders Jildén on Unsplash
Finally, we’ve landed here after two months. Time does fly, doesn’t it?
First and foremost, I would like to THANK YOU all for sticking around and witness this MASTERPIECE unfolds!
……. ….. … .. . hmm.. well, whatever your comment is, your support is highly appreciated. :D
The takeaway of the system is straight forward and I hope it doesn’t confuse some of the readers. Health is always within our grasp no matter how harsh the environment seems to be. We have an excellent self-regulating system for us to activate, it only requires the right method(s) and one’s energy.
Looking at the SRS symbol again, it feels like there are now a lot of messages hidden within. The rotation will not end until the player is done with the game. Ha, what a crazy game it is.
As we now understand that all sicknesses occur due to the imbalance of the bodies, regardless of how strong or deadly a disease from the outside for example, so long as we can balance and regulate, we shall all live a healthy life continuously. But do note that being happy is as equal as keeping the body fit, in terms of their impacts on us.
The whole self-regulating system is about to end it here, therefore, it is up to you to integrate the concepts, develop them and make them beneficial for yourself. And if you like to share this wonderful system with your friends or loved ones, you’re more than welcome to do so!
Although I like writing this kind of articles, I’d like to give it a pause for now and redirect my focus on other areas of writing, of which I’ve been away for sometimes, and I miss them a lot!
This is not the end, but rather, a new chapter for each one of us to go on a newer, better direction. I’m a firm believer in “every change is a little better than before and it’s going to a good direction.”
Think of our body is a complex, elastic vessel that contains a flow of colorless, transparent qi circulating within all the time. The outside forces, from nature (weather, temperature, etc) to material possession, to emotional influence, can affect the flowing stream. Once the qi is disrupted, it affects the regulation of organ systems, so health problems may arise. This is the basic understanding of TCM.
But when one force exists, there will be another force lives to balance. Our body has an intricate, fascinating point system as activation within for balancing the disruptive changes when necessary. This point system is acupuncture points and the exact reason why this system existed in the first place remains unknown.
Bits of history
Acupuncture is now a well-known medical treatment in both eastern and western cultures. But an alternate method of acupuncture needs more attention because of its convenient and effective characteristics. Ear acupuncture is an economical and extremely self-help healing tool in our lifetime.
As early as the Spring and Autumn Period in ancient China, doctors had already advocated, “The ear, is the gathering place of all meridian.” in their original texts: 「耳者，宗脈之所聚也」. The earliest text that established the connection between the ear and organs via the meridian system came from Huangdi Neijing.
Although it had been adopted by Chinese doctors, this method was not a dominant practice despite its usefulness.
It wasn’t until the mid-20 century, Ear acupuncture was finally gained recognition through a French doctor, Paul Nogier. Nogier’s work was significant because it formalised auricular medicine with a system based on his lifetime of research. He pushed auricular acupuncture forward globally, in which the old days would otherwise be impossible. Thanks to him, more researches are being conducted and more clinics perform this alternate healing treatment to their patients.
Ear acupuncture simulates the specific points on the ear to promote healing in other areas of the body and revitalise qi that experiencing a blockage.
Although hair-thin needles are used for treatment, ear acupuncture can also be performed with lasers, magnetic pen, seeds, or finger pressure.
This article will be focusing on magnetic pen use and how it affects our body when we perform a treatment on ourselves. It’s because getting a magnetic pen, although it’s cheap, is the most economical way to regulate and maintain our body’s health in a long run, along with consistent efforts and good determination.
So How Magnetic Pen Works:
First, we need to understand that our cells are specialised to conduct electrical currents. The nervous system needs electricity to send signals throughout the brain and body, making it possible for us to move, think, and feel.
To make the electricity happen, our bodies need the specific electrical charge of minerals (like calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, etc) to conduct and produce billions of tiny electrical impulses. The electrical charge happens when minerals dissolve in water, they separate into positive and negative ions. The ions are the force for our cells to generate electricity.
A cell membrane serves as a protective layer, like a castle wall, for the contents of the cell and only allow certain substances access and reach the cell interior. While acting as a barrier to molecules, it is also a way for the cell to generate electrical currents.
The slight imbalance of ions between inside the cell and the outside environment makes it possible for the cell membrane to open the gate and allow charged ions flowing in and out. The flow of charges across the cell membrane is what generates electrical current (Meaning it’s like tiny particles drifting in a single direction).
The ion channels, also known as proteins, sit across the cell surface acting as the doors to accept certain ions to pass through. Since resting cells are negatively charged on the inside, the ion channels open for more positive charges to enter the cell. As the inside of the cell becomes more positively charged, the electrical currents can turn into electrical impulses, also known as “action potentials”.
*For those of you who don’t know the differences between electrical current and electrical impulses, here is the explanation. – Think of electrical current is like a group of tiny particles drifting in a single direction, it’s a present of movements we’re talking about. Whilst electrical impulses are the potential that reaches enough “power level” and ready to go from one point to another.
The electrical impulses travel very fast. They allow for a nearly instantaneous response through the nervous system. We basically rely on these tiny impulses to survive. Take being chased by a lion, for example, if we have relied on the movements of chemicals, we’d be the delicious meal by the time the signal reached to our heart. And by the way, think of how our synapses “firing” and the nervous system sending “signals” to the brain and the rest of the body, without them we can’t even think.
So the mechanism of our body is sophisticated and yet, quite straightforward.
What’s more, these electrical impulses can also affect the meridian system, as the result of ion conduction. For more information.
The newer alternate needle-free acupuncture is to use a magnetic pen to create some sort of impulses to simulate certain regions around the meridians for specific purposes.
Since electrical impulses can be generated through multiple sources either it’s from a natural cause or man-made, the magnetic pen can release an electrical impulse to stimulate meridian and acupuncture points by pressing the pen to the correct areas on the ear.
To put it simply, the impulses are to restructure the ion proportions, simulate our meridian to run smoother. To eliminate the blockage that exists on a particular acupuncture point or within its organ system.
So now, let’s take a look at the ear acupuncture points.
Acupuncture Points In The Ear:
** ^This is a super simplified version.
With the achievement of Paul Nogier, the TCM experts across the globe had remarked more than 220 acupuncture points for treatment, in which the list is being updated with times when more and more researches are being conducted and published. These points are all related to certain organs, hormones, and systems inside of us.
An easy way to look at the ear acupuncture points picture is to think of an inverted fetus, like resting in the womb; where the head towards the lobe, feet towards the upper rim of the ear, and body in the middle.
Now, the ear is divided by 12 parts for their corresponding inner bodies. If you can read in Chinese, here is the rhyming words for you: 「 一 垂 二 輪 三 凹 ， 一 舟 二 屏 三 跡 」.
The rhyming words captured the characteristics of the ear parts unique appearances. For example, the earlobe looks falling, so it labels as one falls, whilst the concha cavum, cymba and fossa triangularis look like they curve inward, so they’ve got the name as three concaves. These 12 parts are to specify regions for TCM doctors to locate the problems and corresponding organs when performing an acupuncture session. If you look closely, some parts are focused more on the shoulders and arms, while others are targeting the stomach and intestines.
Here is the table for your reference:
The parts divided location:
Corresponding to our bodies when penned down:
Symptoms can be treated:
1 is Earlobe
Head area: including teeth, tongue, mouth, eyes etc
*This is just a general reference. Situations can be varied with the symptoms and corresponding organs, as well as the patient’s nature. **Generally speaking, it requires more than one acupuncture point to target the specific case and it needs to take Chinese Medicine to enhance the desire outcome.
*The last three parts aren’t as important as the first nine parts so they are omitted in this article.
**This picture serves as location map for you to recognise the names and where they are, the numbers are incorrect from mine.
Now, with the magnetic pen, and knowing where to find the right organs to target, you can heal yourself too.
Initiation:
So How to implement?
1) Have a magnetic pen 2) find a comfortable place 3) Know which acupuncture points are going to help you 4) Do them
*But please! Do your research or study acupuncture, and/or consult TCM doctor(s) before taking any action! :)
When to implement?
It’s not restricted to a certain phrase of the day. Whenever you feel it needed to be done. But if it fits the meridian clocks, it might be helpful. I usually do it before I sleep nevertheless. One thing to note is that too many ear acupuncture sessions in a day will only make you wearier as the body needs time to “heal” itself.
For how long?
5 ~ 10 ~20 minutes usually. If there is more free time, a full session of 45 minutes or even an hour is also good.
Tip(s) for during it:
Although there are no rules about not doing other things while receiving an ear acupuncture session, it’s better to be relaxed and feel the healing process with nothing going on with your mind and hands.
Try to target certain organs rather than initiate the session with spared spots. Like if you’re going to focus on the heart and stomach, then target their points to enhance the effect instead of doing a shoulder point and then switch to another body part, if possible.
Normally, you can only do so many points before the session ends, as doing one point takes sometimes. So it’s better to do about 2~ 3 sets and be specific about your choice.
The goals?
To be painless, and have a good, vital body.
Outro
The ear is our health mirror. It’s the proof of health, and the best part about ear is that any damage we’ve ever made to our body reflects on the ear surface. A pair of record history books sit on our both side, listening to every thought floats and serving as the health prime minister. How awesome is that?
Besides the acupuncture points, the health of the ears needs to pay attention too, as it is a reflection of our organs’ health situation, every day. For example, when ears grow long hairs, it might be the heart that has been overworking a little.
So taking care of our body means every part of our body. Though it might sound a long road ahead with hard work, it isn’t. By simplifying one’s life and reducing the noises from the outside, he or she will find their healthy road that is constant but uncomplicated. It’s tranquil and spirited within.
Photo by Sarah Gualtieri, Sébastien Goldberg on Unsplash
Our body is a natural mechanism existing in nature, so as diseases we’re dealing with. What do we do with the natural occurred problems? We need natural solutions.
Back in the days, the ancient Chinese had already started to treat foods as natural healing substances that include grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds, algae, and minerals, for one’s body needs to stay healthy.
Additionally, they believed that foods should be consumed in their natural forms ( like wholefood, without adding sophisticated substances, etc), as nature provides the best nutrition and most balanced diet, in contrast to our popular vitamin-and-mineral-supplements culture.
Nowadays, proteins, calories, carbohydrates, vitamins, and other nutritional contents are examined in our head before we make a purchase on food. Similarly, the ancient Chinese also acknowledged such valuable nutritions although they couldn’t have the precision of what we now know about them. However, they took a further different step that would change Chinese medicine forever.
In addition to these nutritional contents, TCM suggested that the energetic properties of food, such as nature(temperature), flavour, movement, and their functions are also factors for consideration.
*In this article, we’ll be focusing on nature and flavour only.
Natures of food
In Chinese Medicine, food can be classified into “four Qi” and “Five Flavours”. The main functions of food are to replenish nutrients, benefit qi, supplement blood, maintain and regulate the balance between yin and yang as well as the internal organs.
Wow, it sounds like even kale is a big deal. And Yes, it is. All food is important!
The four Qi:
“The four qi” refers to four natures, hot, warm, cool, and cold. And then there is a milder nature in food that is known as “neutral”. So in addition to it, there are five natures in total.
Now, the word “nature” here refers to temperature, but not the food temperature itself. It’s the effects they have on a person’s body after consumption. For example, a person drinks a cup of warm mint tea can experience a cooled-down effect, while iced cayenne pepper can make the person feels hot and sweaty. Therefore, the food natures are summarised based on the effects of different reactions from the human body, rather than the food’s temperature.
But what all of this really mean in practice?
When a person consumes one type of food continually, it creates an imbalance in their body (the temperature). The imbalance will affect the bodies’ system, such as the immune system, digestive system.
It’s because the body simply cannot handle “that type”, so it explains why Chinese medicine emphasizes on “keeping the body neutral”.
Other than the natures of food, TCM recognises five flavours within foods and herbs to reinforce their medicinal theories. It does sound a little crazy on paper but please bear with me.
In TCM, food can be classified into “Five Flavours”, namely sourness, bitterness, sweetness, pungency, and saltiness, according to their tastes and functions. And then, there is foods light in taste that are those with unapparent flavour, but usually, they don’t categorise in “Five Flvaours”. Foods of different flavour properties have specific functions on different organs of the human body. Therefore, these flavour categorisations are to help the TCM doctors to understand the patient’s problems as well as prescribing the right medicines.
The Five Flavours:
Sour food can calm the body and keep things in, such as constraining sweating, arresting cough, or stopping diarrhea. For example, smoked plum and pomegranate have the effect of quenching thirst or relieving diarrhea symptoms due to deficiency and coldness in the spleen and stomach.
Bitter food can help drying and dampness, and induce purgation; such as aiding the body to clear excess heat. Take bitter cucumber for example, which is bitter in flavour and cold in nature, can clear away heat and eliminate dampness.
Meanwhile, pungent food, such as ginger, can expel Wind and Cold and is able to recuperate qi and blood. But the nature of spicy foods can also create excess Heat in the body.
Salty food can nourish and supplement the kidney due to the characteristics of dissolving stagnation and softening masses( such as constipation).
Sweet food can supplement qi and benefits blood, like honey or dates, strengthening the body’s needs but too much of sweets can create Dampness ( ex: excess weight etc.)
Light taste food can promote diuresis and eliminate dampness, like kidney bean. For more information.
As we can see here, it’s very similar to our logo of the self-regulating system that, it’s a never-end cycle of food integration within our body. One affects another, so it needs another other to affect the original one etc.
Okay, if you’re not too dizzy we can take a look at the corresponding internal organs to the Five Flavours.
The flavours correspond to the internal organs:
In TCM, everything corresponds to the human organs one way or the other, not even the flavours can escape from this. In fact, after trials the ancient people had tried, they recorded then explained which flavour would enter to which organ first in Huangdi Neijing.
Sour food enters the liver & gallbladder
Bitter food enters the heart & small Intestine
Sweet food enters the spleen & stomach
Pungent food enters the lung & large Intestine
Salty food enters the kidney(s) & bladder
*Some of you might notice that the foods entering patterns to the organs are similar to what we’ve discussed – Yin Yang organs. Yes, isn’t it now easier to understand when one type of flavoured food enters one organ, it’ll also affect the corresponding organ too.
This is merely a super simple guide as there are more complications in each food affects the organ(s), for more information about how flavours have effects on organs, please consult a TCM doctor or do extra research on your own.
Okay cool, but what are all these can do to me?
Understand the food natures and their flavour effects have on us, we can be smarter in selecting and avoiding the foods to eat, according to our body health. For example, there are seasonal foods, which means they’re favored to be consumed due to the seasonal natures. It’s about healthy diet, but it’s more than just healthy diet.
Though, with everything that we’re about to eat, we need to think and understand what our body reacts to after consuming it, as everybody’s health is different. So this is scenario one.
Scenario two, when we unfortunately get sick, instead of merely relying on the doctor’s directions and prescriptions, we can learn what foods can boost our immune system, look for other ways to speed up our recovery. And more importantly, what other foods we should avoid eating them.
There are many more scenarios, but I’ll stop here. This article, as well as the Self-Regulating System, is an opening chapter for you going down to a healthier path. There might be more research needed to be done on your end but the obsession of health, and a determination of living a healthful life, will overcome the current obstacles and that, you’ll be at the place where you’re thinking now in no time. Keep in mind that, all sicknesses can be prevented.
Photos by Marion Botella, Andy HYD, Neven Krcmarek on Unsplash
Thanks for reading and what is your healthy diet? Let me know in the comments! : )
It might sound a strange concept to you right now that we need to roll our body, but it’s an easy way to “warm and wake” our body up.
We need to rotate our body parts often to revitalise the areas, and the “rolling” method is for that.
Rolling is a way to isolate body parts and move around them. Have you seen some of the popping dancers who can isolate their head and you think they might be breaking it for a second? Well, we’re using the fundamental aspect of that technique and apply it to our “Rolling”.
As we isolate the parts of our body, we can feel the part individually if they need improvement or help.
The benefits of Rolling are noteworthy. Besides the immediate relief of stiffness in parts as we roll, Rolling helps us move our internal organs around, as well as the Qi. As we’ve discussed a few articles back about Qi and organs, actively regulate our internal organs helps their inner intricate networks to do the jobs faster and better. Surely enough, stay hydrated is also important.
Here is a youtube video that suggests moving the organs by a similar rolling method. The concept is similar, so if you’re looking for a reference, this clip might give you an idea. However, instead of imagining the organs, I tend to feel the parts of muscles and roll them as if doing exercise.
The primary rotation is either vertically or horizontally circular. Here is the example:
As you can see here, I was rolling vertically on the back of the left side of the shoulder, then switching it to the right. When I moved onto the back of my chest, it was then horizontally circular rolling.
You can also roll the wrist, and basically any other parts of the body you can think of. Waist, hips, pelvis, ankles and so on.
If applying “Rolling” to the warm-up routine; before the sport starts, it can avoid unnecessary injury from negligence, as you’re more connected with the body.
So the example above is Small Rolling. For Big Rolling, the .gif below, is more about limb rotation.
Other than rolling the arms, you can lay down and open the legs, as the toes pointing to the air, to roll the lower limbs.
It’s good for joints rotation and maintaining internal breathing while we do. Think about it, the sprinting day to day basis seems to forbidden such exercise to even come across our mind. But we do need to rotate ourselves.
Good rotations on our joints and muscles make differences in the long run. We revitalise the parts that are otherwise be sitting on.
So when to implement:
Be part of your pre-training routine, or anytime you feel like somewhere is stiff.
For how long:
Seconds to minutes
Tip(s) for during it:
Speed control. Be sure to go over the edge of the rolling area slowly, to feel the range and power.
Think of using your back muscles while you do.
feeling it is important.
if you can roll with the rhythm where music is provided, it is more fun! And who knows? You might be the next dancer. :)
Goal:
To rotate your muscles and bones, and of course, to feel better as a whole.
Photo by Luca Bravo, Markus Winkler, Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash
We have many things to do every day and to some of us they’ll constantly feel a sense of uncomfortable feeling coming from their body, but they just can’t describe it well. It’s the stiffness that constrains the person and it grows the impact gradually to affect his/her mood, health, and even their decision making.
The stiff areas of a body become less responsive when the routine develops into the usual routes. For example, there is a chef and certain positions he has to pose from the moment he punches in till his work is finished, like hours of standing to cook or arms have got to be to the front for placing dish or handling stocks. For the most part, these positions repeat daily will soon form this person the way he walks, sits, and other simple movements.
But don’t underestimate the changing in little details though. If we just pay attention to how people walk, we’ll be surprised that everybody walks differently. The walking movements are shaped by their daily basis doing, and they directly affect the body developing structures, from joint bones to muscles. The time will reveal and enlarge the changes.
Back to the chef scenario, he might think, as long as the body is capable of dealing with his work demands, things are fine right? For health?.. He thinks he can postpone a bit.
Constantly he feels his body somewhat heavy and even rigid, but going back home, the chef is tired and how can we expect him to do more energy-spending workloads, knowing that he has to work early in the morning again?
The worst thing about this is that the chef might be free of his mind, meaning that he has many things wanted to do inside his head, but the body simply can’t adapt. The spirit is weary due to the prolonged physical, physiological, and mental issues.
To get out of this loop and realise which parts of the body require his attention to work on, he needs to shake them up constantly to be able to reconnect his body better. With the commitment to getting better health, he’ll soon be able to fix his health. And more importantly, he can re-concentrate his energy so his spirit will come back stronger than ever was.
Shaking takes tiny bits of energy but it feels good to shake up our body. The more we shake, the sooner our body will tell us which parts we need to relieve, while loosening up the stiffening parts.
Here is an example of shaking with the lower part of the body.
It’s a self-explanatory method. you shake your body.
You can divide parts to shake. For example: a torso, an arm, both arms, or the lower body, one leg, it’s entirely up to you.
Now, let’s come back to the power level chart again. Although the above-given example is going for about 6 power level for an apparent demonstration, normally you can go for 1~3 (light shake), it’ll still help you to feel and reconnect. But do increase if you feel like it’s not doing anything.
So when to implement? Whenever a part of the body tightens for a long time, which is needed to loosen up, for better agile, you should shake.
For how long? – It can be seconds to minute(s). ^ I do it with minutes sometimes as I apply it to be a part of my dancing training with the rhythm. ;)
Tip(s) for during it: – Notice that the trick about shaking is that you have to be in a relaxed state. Therefore, it’s a great way to test if you’re relaxed or tense at that moment in time.
– Think of shaking your back muscles. Use the back muscles as the starting power point to locate, shake it, and then move along within the designated areas you wish to shake. For example: You start from the back of your chest, and then you suddenly feel around the back of the hips needs some work, so you move the power to shake the hips.
The goal: – To make it loosen, so it’s easy to reconnect with your body for later stretching, or “regular moving”.
Cjwrites 