How to Bring Balance Back into Your Demanding Life

Hippocrates, the ancient Greek ‘Father of medicine’, famously pronounced ‘Let food be thy medicine and medicine be they food’. Several millennia later (some things are worth the wait) the world began to fully grasp the concept that what you put into your body holds the key to your wellbeing. Nutritional and gut health know-how has boomed over the last 20 years, with bestselling experts making streams of YouTube videos and podcasts on the importance of the ‘second brain’ in our gut. Hippocrates also said, “If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health,”simply yet poignantly pointing out that any kind of excess can only lead to imbalance.

So how do you make sure you’re getting the ideal balance of food, exercise and other things to experience the right results for you, personally? With every one of us having an organism, body, DNA, mind, and lifestyle that is unique to us, the right balance can only be achieved by understanding the basic rules for health as well as looking into what is really appropriate for you.

Let’s start by looking at the key factors and habits that contribute to a healthy, balanced existence:

Diet
You are what you eat, as the types of foods and their nutrients (or lack of) directly affect the functionality and quality of most of your functions, such as your blood, cells, organs, muscles, brain function, metabolism, mental capacity and mood. Today, many of us live a stressful and demanding lifestyle, inundated by the fear and anxiety caused by global events like the Covid pandemic, challenging financial situations, work and parental pressures, and the overuse of technology. Getting the right vitamins, minerals and macronutrients is essential for a fully well-functioning system. Discovering a diet that offers you the appropriate components to suit your individual needs can literally make an incredible difference in your overall resilience, stamina, performance and outlook.

Sleep
We spend a third of our life sleeping, and for good reason. When we get a good night’s sleep  (between 7-9 hours for adults) our body and mind can properly regenerate and detoxify so that we can sustain a healthy immune system, necessary energy levels to get through the day, and a clear and focused mindframe. Diet contributes significantly to sleep quality and quantity, as do daily habits such as exercise, avoiding artificial light in the hours before bedtime, stick to a sleep schedule, enjoying rituals such as having a bath or hot shower, using red light therapy, or even burning essential oils like lavender, sweet orange or clary sage to create bedtime calm.

Exercise
Exercising regularly (at least three times per week, and ideally a brisk walk daily) immediately boosts your strength, stamina, agility and mood. The endorphins our brain releases when we work out especially aerobically help us feel more positive and centred, while our enhanced physical power leads to easier movement, higher endurance and better self-confidence. If you’ve fallen off the exercise wagon, there are several ways to return to your peak performance .

Daily Habits
Many wellness experts talk about how when we wake up in the morning, about to experience a new day, our cellular structure having regenerated overnight, we nonetheless subconsciously put a lot of effort into being exactly as we were the day before. Break out of the familiar by changing our daily habits and make a concerted effort to create positive, new and healthy actions and thought processes. This will help your brain to create new neural connections, transforming everything from your way of seeing life and experiencing yourself and the world. Practice mindfulness, meditation and exercise like yoga, which facilitate your connection with your inner self and help you better tap into what you want and need deep down. Try different things like learning something new, carrying out a familiar action in an unfamiliar way (even brushing your teeth with the other hand) and use a journal to consciously list what your dreams, fears, desires and goals are, what you’re grateful for and what you want less – or no more – of, then follow suit.

The above are guidelines that can help everyone better deal with a demanding lifestyle and reclaim a true sense of balance. But when it comes to you personally, how can you discover what’s really best for you and become your own health hero? As Hippocrates wisely taught, everything comes down to the fuel or “medicine” that we put into our body. Without the right nutritional blueprint, you can’t build on your improvement on any level. Find out now what your body needs to reach its peak performance by ordering our biomarker test kit. The experts at our lab will thoroughly assess your results and send them to you with customized advice, tips and information on how to reach the right nutritional balance.