There is nothing more important than our health. Yet, so often, we take it for granted. We act invincible. We push our limits. We go and go and go. Until we are thrown into the territory of a major health scare or illness, at which point we are alerted to just how fragile, precious and crucial having a great level of health is.
While we proceed to go and go and go, giving 110% to all our daily tasks and duties, we become so narrow-eyed about things that we fail to hear our body communicating the smaller, seemingly less significant messages to us that something in our bodies is not right. Our body is possibly quietly suggesting that we need to pay more attention to the wide-spanning puzzle that creates optimum health.
We are meant to be well. We are meant to be symptom-free, alive with zest, and resonating boundless energy every single day. Symptoms, of any sort or severity, are our body communicating to us that a function, process, or system in our body is working at less than it’s optimal level. And when something works at a less than optimum level for too long, it doesn’t just continue to weaken, but it begins to have a cascade of effects on other systems and functions too.
So often these days we’re far from symptom free. In fact, it’s become ‘normal’ to be just the opposite. Poor health, endless ailments, and bodies that are stricken with chronic pain and illness has become the new normal. Chronic sinus or ear infections, recurring migraines, irregular menstrual cycles, bloating, constipation, poor sleep quality, unexplained joint pain, repeated bouts of strep throat, heart palpitations, or unusual weight gain – just to name a few – are all symptoms that something in your body is failing to thrive.
Symptoms are the messengers sent to us requesting we take note, and begin to unravel, uncover, and understand why they might be there. They’re our bodies subtle requests to take action now before something bigger and badder happens.
There is always a why. Always. There is always a reason for a symptom to rear it’s head. Like I said earlier, symptoms aren’t normal. They’re there for a legitimate reason. They’re there suggesting we investigate their origin and implement changes so that the very function or process that is under stress is able to remedy itself and function at 100% again.
But here is where we need to change the ‘how’ of the process. How we deal with the symptom needs to not be a quick fix approach – which is so often what we’ve turned to in the past. The medical world is so established and has billions of dollars behind their everyday treatments and applications, and they certainly have a crucial job in keeping us alive. We head to our friendly GP and get medicated to band-aid the symptom, and to keep us in a world of safety and security, but more often than not we still come away without the answers as to how it became an issue in the first place.
And this is where the new way of thinking comes in – the way of the functional, holistic world. The functional world dares to keep us as healthy as we can, in the most natural way possible. The functional world dares to unravel and understand the critical why. The functional world can change lives. And with a collaboration between the necessary life-saving elements from the medical world, and the investigative and inquiring nature of the newly emerging functional world, we may finally be able to make some inroads into not just band-aiding ailments and illnesses, but in actually discovering the intricacies and complexities of the origin of some of these ugly and energy-destroying symptoms of today, many of which are multi-faceted in their make-up.
There is now more science, research and studies than ever before, but also more poor health, ailments, and disease than ever before. It’s time to make a significant change to our approach. Human intuition, coupled with natural and sensible approaches to implementing health changes is the way we must go.
Let’s not just succumb to the quick fixes to get by. Let’s go back to good old common sense. Let’s approach health with proactive and investigative practices that tie in the mercies of the medical world, with the fundamentals of the functional world. And let’s not just suffer a lifetime of symptoms, let’s be amped to get rid of them, and to seek a life that is full of zest and vitality.
Because health is our most valuable asset.
- Corinne Austin
- Movement Motivator
- corinne@fitfixnz.co.nz
