Priming the body to heal

Poor Jeff, our border terrier, he had the snip last week. I felt very guilty about it all indeed. Anyway, 2 days later he’s bounding around again as if nothing had happened. He is healing at such an incredible rate, it’s really blown my mind and it’s made me think about what we can do to optimise our healing potential. 

The body has an innate ability to heal.

When you cut your finger, you see it heal, you expect it to heal, right? In fact the body is constantly repairing itself, inside and out, renewing cells, fighting pathogens, fighting cancer cells and clearing debris. A lot of us have lost the belief in our body’s power to heal because we are just so used to going to the doctor and them giving you medicine that will sort it out.

But what if we placed more emphasis on providing the body with the right environment to deal with things on its own. What if we focussed on supporting the body’s innate ability to heal so that it’s ready, primed, for any onslaught? What if we spent as much time wondering how we can maximise our body’s ability to zap the cancer cells rather than trying to find a cure.

We know that it’s the body not the pathogen that determines the outcome, we saw this clearly with Covid-19 where age, weight and other underlying conditions greatly affected the result for the patient. I never really understood why, even though we knew this from very early on, there was no big push for us to focus on improving the general health of the population in order to minimise the suffering caused by the virus.

For me it’s all about future-proofing and how we can create the best environment in order for our bodies to be able to deal with problems if and when they arise. But if you’re already dealing with an issue, whether it is a long term chronic illness or a new diagnosis, then getting your body into the best shape possible in order to deal with it is key to better outcomes and something which is often overlooked in modern medicine, where the focus is indeed on the ‘medicine’. 

We can optimise the body for maximum protection and the best healing potential, here’s how:

1. Good nutrition

Food is medicine, what you put into your body directly affects how your body responds to pathogens, toxins, how prepared it is to fight off cancer and whether it develops diabetes or cardiovascular disease. What we eat is really important for activating our healing systems as well as turning them off in a timely fashion.

Five simple steps to a healthy diet:

• Eliminate processed, refined and manufactured foods.

• Eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables daily, with the emphasis on vegetables and a variety of colour.

• Eat whole grains, beans and legumes daily.

• Eat the right fats, oily fish, olive oil and avocados are great sources, limit if not eliminate animal sources of fat. 

• Eat lean meat, dairy and eggs sparingly, if at all.

2. Rest and sleep

Not getting enough rest and sleep is a false economy when it comes to your day to day productivity but also long term health. People have always used rest and sleep as part of recuperation from illness, but why wait until you’re sick to reap the benefits? Sleep is crucial for regeneration of the immune system as well as the nervous and every other system for that matter. Neglecting our sleep leaves us open to more frequent infections and more serious malignancy.

3. Mind body connection

We know that the mind has the power to heal. The placebo effect shows us this. Groups who take the sugar pill believing it is the latest medical breakthrough, have a 30-60% chance of recovery, dependent on the trial. Until recently we’ve seen the placebo effect as merely a failure of the clinical trial, but what it shows us is that belief changes disease outcome. Being told by a doctor that you have a serious illness or chronic condition with a poor prognosis can have the opposite effect. So many patient go on to deteriorate quickly after a serious diagnosis. One of the best things that can happen to a patient with a new diagnosis is to meet someone who has the same condition and is doing well. Having confidence in your body to heal itself is crucial. We’ve become very detached from our bodies, I think in part because of our reliance on medicine and doctors and having someone else deal with it. We’ve lost a sense of agency over our health.

4. Stress management

Learning how to control your autonomic nervous system is one of the most powerful things you can do to influence your health. If you are stressed, anxious or are fearful your immune system get’s ready for attack and part of this includes turning on inflammation. There’s a lot of talk about toxic this and that nowadays but we now know that your immune system is literally listening to your thoughts and responding.

In her book “Molecules of Emotion”, neuroscientist, Dr. Candace Pert’s shows fascinating and decisive evidence about the bio-molecular mechanisms between mind and body. It's something we’ve known for centuries, but can now track scientifically. The breath is the quickest way to tap into and influence your autonomic nervous system, breath-work, meditation or yoga can help immensely.

5. Remove any clear obstacles 

A no brainer obviously, it’s worth spending some time and perhaps money investigating any specific obstacles you have to effective healing and good health.

Obstacles could include things like: 

• Food intolerances, which your body will keep reacting to, creating inflammation and compromising gut integrity 

• Ongoing pathogens, e.g. low level viral or bacterial burdens 

• Toxic overload, including heavy metals, xenoestrogens, mould, over the counter medications 

• Smoking 

• Heavy alcohol consumption

• Poor diet

• Stress

6. Human connection and laughter

Don’t forget to have fun! It’s so important to enjoy life and laugh. Positive emotions, human connections and laughter have all been shown to have positive effects on immunity in studies, so much so that laughter has been used formally in treating cancer. On the flip side, social isolation has been shown to be a predictor of morbidity in cancer, cardiovascular disease and other illnesses because of its negative impact on the immune system amongst other things.

Social connection is thought to be one of the most important determiners of longevity in the Blue Zones, the areas of the world where people live the longest.

7. Movement

Physical activity strengthens the immune system, reduces stress and is good for our mental health. It stimulates the lymphatic system which is responsible for clearing all of the debris made by our body as it fights pathogens, and clears dead cells. Exercise doesn’t need to be too strenuous, in fact over training is in itself a stressor and inflammatory, but consistency is key. Movement will also keep us trim which is conducive to inflammation regulation and good health.

It all seems pretty simple. This is all stuff we know, there’s no health hack here. But most of us have dropped the ball on a few of these. Modern life really does get in the way. We’ve become used to there being a pill, a hack, quick fix but actually it seems that we can’t outsmart nature. Do these things consistently and you’ll be reaping the benefits for years to come. 

If you have been living with a chronic condition or have an auto-immune disease you may need to give your body a bit more help to push it back in the right direction. This might require some functional testing to find out what the underlying cause is, or very specifically targeted supplementation in order to bring the body back into balance. That’s where a natural health practitioner (that’s me) can help.

If you’d like to chat about what’s going on, I’m very happy to have a free 15min call to talk about how I could help.