How to learn to boost health by taking control of your life

When talking about health, it is common to do it as if it depended fundamentally on luck. Hence, it is normal to ask for health as a wish, something that only providence can grant us, because it does not depend on us.

This is partly true; After all, there is no one who can be in a position to rule out all the diseases to which he is exposed throughout his life. However, like all half-truths, it can lead us to forget that things are more complex than they seem.

And it is that in many aspects, we have control over many situations on which our state of health is more or less vulnerable. And this is not something that we can learn spontaneously over the years. Here we will see several examples of this.

• Related article: "Health Psychology: history, definition and fields of application"

How to learn to take control of our health?

As scientific knowledge has advanced, a series of factors have emerged from which we can actively participate in the proper functioning of the body.

1. cognitive stimulation

The brain's reason for being is none other than constantly adapting to everything new that brings us every day. That is why one of its main characteristics is that it never remains the same, it is constantly in transformation, responding to the stimuli of the environment and the strategies we adopt to interact with what around us.

This capacity by which the brain changes in real time is known as brain plasticity, and it takes place both at the micro and macro levels, that is, on a scale of neural connections and relationships between cellular and molecular structures, and at the level of nervous system tissues, which become visible to the naked eye human.

If our brain is what we associate with the "I", that means that we are constantly and literally transforming ourselves, and this even allows us to be capable of recovering from a wide variety of brain injuries: when one part is damaged, another is responsible for carrying out the functions of those neurons that have dead.

That is why cognitive stimulation, expose ourselves to situations that make us think and feel in complex waysIt is a way to take the initiative and increase our degree of health and well-being; doing that helps us connect parts of our brain that did not interact much before and that from that moment on you will have the ability to act as a "bridge" between regions of the nervous system that in certain situations need each other for us to function good.

• You may be interested in: "Brain plasticity (or neuroplasticity): what is it?"

2. Do not trust everything to genetics

Having a genetic configuration that makes it easy for us when it comes to being in good health is a very important factor, everything helps, taking into account that there are some diseases that are very easy to inherit. However, we should not assume that the genetic factor is something that affects us unilaterally and without us being able to do anything to avoid it: our actions, in many cases, can greatly influence our well-being, and in certain cases even completely nullify most of the harmful aspects of a pathology. The trick is to intervene in the way in which the genes are expressed.

In this sense, it has been seen that certain very simple habits contribute to these latent diseases appearing in their less severe versions or even never manifesting themselves. Among these actions that protect our health we find, for example, adopting sleep hygiene habits: getting enough sleep and at regular times, without interruptions.

Similarly, regular exercise helps many people restore the biochemical balance in the brain that has been disrupted by genetically influenced disorders, such as depression. And there are many more activities and routines than allow us to get the most out of what our DNA gives us as individuals.

3. Assess the importance of attentional focus

Knowing how to manage the focus of attention well is also essential to modulate the way in which everything that wears out our well-being affects us. This not only has to do with our way of relating to the symptoms of diseases that we already have; In addition, it affects its development and its ability to become chronic.

Be able to not letting certain sources of discomfort become the center of our lives it is liberating and makes it possible for us to gain an autonomy that we would not otherwise have. Plus, it opens the door for "healing" to come sooner.

Coaching, wellness and neuroscience: biology of observer change

If you want to continue learning about this topic, you may be interested in the online course Coaching, wellness and neuroscience: biology of observer change, organized by the European School of Coaching. It is a training program carried out live, on 5 consecutive Fridays from February 14 to March 13, 2020, and lasts a total of 15 hours.

In it, he talks about diverse but interconnected topics, such as suggestion, the placebo effect and regulation attention, epigenetic influences and their implications for health, the relationship between the heart and stress, and much more. Due to its contents and the way it combines topics to offer a degree of global knowledge on major health issues, this This course may be of interest both to individuals who want to enhance their well-being and to professionals in the sector sanitary.

To find out more about the course Coaching, wellness and neuroscience: biology of observer change, access the contact details of the European School of Coaching by clicking here.

Bibliographic references:

• Garcia-Gimenez, J.L. (2012). Epigenetics. The grammar of the genetic code: Journal of Feelsynapsis, ISSN 2254-3651.
• Geutjes, E.; Bajpe, P.; Bernards, R. (2012). Targeting the epigenome for treatment of cancer. Oncogene, 31(34): pp. 3827 - 3844.
• Guiney, H.; Machado, L. (2013). Benefits of regular aerobic exercise for executive functioning in healthy populations. Psychon Bull Rev. 20(1): p. 73 - 86.
• Pascual-Leone, A.; Freitas, C.; Oberman, L.; Horvath, J.C.; Halko, M.; Eldaief, M.; et al. (2011). Characterizing brain cortical plasticity and network dynamics across the age-span in health and disease with TMS-EEG and TMS-fMRI. Brain Topography. 24 (3–4): p. 302 - 315.