The world is in a state of disarray. A pandemic has swept through the world leaving many people worried for their financial and physical health. The world’s elite such as Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates have profited from the plight of our damaged society, and now protests and riots have broken out throughout the United States due to the high prevalence of social injustices. People are hurting and solutions from elected officials are absent.
One of the solutions to heal the wounds of our community is to heal ourselves. Health is often overlooked because health is misunderstood. The world has accepted this definition of health as lack of sickness or disease. When asked to picture health most likely a picture of someone with a sculpted body appears in your mind, but that is not health.
Health is a continuum and everything an individual does is either building or taking away health. Health is broken down into three different categories, and one cannot express health if any of these categories is lacking. These categories include physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Physical health lies within the body, emotional health lies within the mind, and spiritual health lies within the connection between all living things on earth.
Our innate state of being expresses love, acceptance, and empathy for all that encompass the earth. If we are expressing anything less than love, acceptance, and empathy for another human then we are acting out of accordance to our natural state. Since our natural state is also health then we are also expressing sickness.
The prefrontal cortex is an aspect of our physiology that makes us inherently human, and differentiates us from all other life forms on the planet. This area of the brain is in charge of conscious thought, judgement, behavior, and foresight. We can only function at full capacity if our brain is functioning at full capacity. Innately we should recognize an action that physically or emotionally hurts an individual as wrong, and then take action to help that fellow human. If we ignore the wrongdoing, or even worse justify the action causing hurt then we are expressing a malfunctioning in our prefrontal cortex.
The brain is our most important piece of real estate in the body, and a cumulation of poor health choices will first affect the brain since it is the control center that unifies the physical, emotional, and spiritual bodies. Anything that takes health away is termed as trauma, and traumas come in emotional, physical, and toxic forms.
A physical trauma includes accidents and injuries. An impact to the head can cause a collision between the soft brain and the hard inner surface of the skull. This brain injury alters the brain’s blood flow dynamics, When blood flow is altered the brain actually begins to shrink and all the actions of the prefrontal cortex diminish. This has caused much attention in football players who have experienced multiple concussions. Another less talked about trauma to the brain is a vertebral subluxation. When our spine shifts from ideal alignment the communication between the body and brain is altered. This lack of communication places the body into a sympathetic or “fight-or-flight” state. In this state your brain perceives that it is running from a threat all day. When the body is in a sympathetic state, actions of the prefrontal cortex are deemed nonessential and the blood supply is also diminished.
The brain is a fuel hungry processing center and 25% of all calories consumed a day are needed for brain activity. Foods that increase inflammation like sugar and alcohol, cause the brain to negatively perform. The brain is also protected by something called the blood brain barrier, and toxins such as heavy metals are able to pass this barrier and wreak havoc on normal brain functioning.
In order to heal our society we must first heal ourselves. A person who does harm to another or the planet is a sick individual. Health is our natural state and in this state we express love, happiness, and joy. In order to build health we must live in congruence to the 5 essentials of MaxLiving. If we as a collective make health a priority we can begin healing the world together.
Love and chi,
Dr. Andrew Baranski