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

Adopting certain routines and habits can help boost our health.

When talking about health, it is common to talk about it as if it depends mainly 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, no one can be in a position to rule out all the diseases to which he or she is exposed in the course of a lifetime. However, like all half-truths, it can lead us to forget that things are more complex than they appear.

And the fact is that in many respects, 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 with the simple passage of time. Here we will see several examples of this.

How to learn to take control of our health?

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

1. Cognitive stimulation

The brain's raison d'être is none other than to constantly adapt itself to everything new that the day to day brings us. That is why one of its main characteristics is that it never remains the same, it is constantly changing, responding to the stimuli of the environment and the strategies we adopt to interact with our surroundings.

This capacity by which the brain is changing in real time is known as brain plasticity, and it takes place at both the micro and macro levels, i.e. at the scale of neuronal connections and the relationships between cellular and molecular structures, and at the scale of the tissues of the nervous system, which become visible to the human eye.

If our brain is what we associate with the "I", this means that we are constantly and literally transforming ourselves, and this even allows us to recover from a wide variety of brain injuries: when one part is damaged, another part takes over the functions of those neurons that have died.

That is why cognitive stimulation, exposing us to situations that make us think and feel in complex ways, can help us recover from a variety of brain injuries.It is a way to take the initiative and increase our degree of health and well-being; doing so helps us to connect parts of our brain that previously did not interact much and that from that moment on will have the ability to act as a "bridge" between regions of the nervous system that in certain situations need each other to function well.

2. Do not trust everything to genetics

Having a genetic make-up that makes it easy for us to have good health is a very important factor, especially considering 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 have a great influence on our well-being.In some cases, and in certain cases, even completely cancel most of the harmful aspects of a pathology. The trick is to intervene in the way 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 appearing at all. Among these actions that protect our health we find, for example, the adoption of sleep hygiene habits: sleeping enough and at regular times, without interruptions.

Similarly, regular exercise helps many people to re-establish the biochemical balance of the brain altered by genetic disorders, such as depression. And there are many more activities and routines that allow us to make the most of what our DNA brings to us as individuals..

3. Value the importance of attentional focus.

Knowing how to manage the focus of attention well is also fundamental to modulate the way in which we are affected by everything that depletes our wellbeing. This not only has to do with the way we relate to the symptoms of illnesses we already have; it also affects their development and their ability to become chronic.

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

Coaching, wellness and neuroscience: biology of observer change

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

It deals with diverse but interconnected topics, such as suggestion, the placebo effect and attentional regulation, epigenetic influences and their implications for health, the relationship between the Heart and stress, and much more. Because of its contents and the way it brings together topics to offer a global level of knowledge on the major health issues, this course may be of interest both to individuals who want to enhance their wellbeing and to professionals in the health sector.

To learn more about the course Coaching, wellness and neuroscience: biology of observer change, access the contact details of the Escuela Europea de Coaching by clicking here.

Bibliographic references:

• García-Giménez, J.L.. (2012). Epigenetics. La gramática del código genético: 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): pp. 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): pp. 302 - 315.