Today I am taking the time to urge everyone to be a little more physically active this year. We now live in a time of “man-made” diseases and conditions, which are often self-induced issues made from the result of sedentary lifestyle choices and decisions based on convenience rather than well-being. I am not going to go into depth about which conditions fall into these categories, but if you feel that you can make a change to improve your situation and health, I recommend you do so.
In health, movement is my favorite place to begin with change. It can be as simple and free as just getting up out of your chair and finding something that makes you happy and keeps you in motion. As a bonus, the whole body including your brain, heart, muscles, ligaments, tendons, and joints crave movement. Not only do they crave it, but they need it to function at their prime. I know that sometimes it may feel as though the body and mind must be pressured, but once moving for a few minutes you will feel energized and ready to keep it up.
One suggestion would be to find something you enjoy doing for 60 minutes a day. (The bare minimum is 20 minutes a day if you feel like an hour is too much as recommended by the American Heart Association). No activity should be continued if you feel like it “truly” hurts. If any movement causes a sharp, shooting pain, the activity should either be modified or you should find something else that you can do. Something is better than nothing. Find an athletic endeavor that is able to keep the body in motion, get the heart pumping, and gives you some level of enjoyment in the form of pride or community with others. Some ideas that I can suggest are: yoga, walking, tai chi, golf, yard work, high intensity workouts, biking, kettlebells, pickle ball, tennis, housework/cleaning, hiking, surfing, and stand up paddle boarding.
Like I stated above, something is always better than nothing. This goes for every day. Everyone is allotted to have one off day, but it should never be two in a row. Please make an attempt for 60 minutes a day, which doesn’t all have to be done all at once, you can split it up through out the day. To us at the Chiropractic Family Center of Brick, this is much more fun than a resolution because this is a life style change that you should stick with for the rest of your life. Good luck and have fun!
