Natural ways to reduce anxiety – Part 4

Like most people I am interested in body language.  Like most people I noticed awkward social interactions in day to day life.  Until recently I considered that body language is about

• what you are communicating others
• what they are communicating to you

I always viewed body language as a tool people use to help them understand how other people think & feel.  What I never considered is the impact my body language had on me.  The influence my body language hand on my thoughts, feelings and physiology. We all have situations in our life when we would like to feel more optimistic and confident basically more powerful.  Social science has show that powerful leaders have low levels of cortisol (i.e. low levels of the stress hormone) and high levels of testosterone (i.e. high levels of the dominance hormone).  So what if we could use our body language to make ourselves feel more powerful in challenging situations, it turns out we can by adopting the wonder woman pose. By adopting the Wonder Woman pose for 2 minutes, social scientists have proven that it will increase your confidence, assertiveness and help you feel more comfortable in a situation.  This is due to the impact holding this "high power" pose for two minutes has on your body, its reduces your cortisol levels and increases your testosterone levels.  Meaning you are less reactive to stressful situations. So can you apply this in real life.  Last weekend I was on my sports massage course and each weekend we have a written test we need to pass.  For some reason I had misunderstood what the test was on and forgot to review the whole subject.  I discovered this about 30 minutes before the test.  So I was in a highly stressful situation.  So I decided to give this power pose a try and did it during the next 30 minutes while revising.  The science says 2 minutes but I felt I needed all the help I could get.  It turns out that I passed.  While this isn't irrevocable proof, I would recommend people try it. As Amy Cuddy says "our body's change our minds, our minds change our behavior and our behavior changes our outcomes."  For a more detailed understanding of power poses, the science behind them, watch Amy Cuddy's Your body language shapes who you are.  

Following on from my bowel health checklist.  I want to focus on the large intestine whose job is to take all the remaining water and nutrients our any any food that comes its way and turn whats left into compact stools.  When things start going wrong with your large intestine, you usually get inflamation and this can lead to a range of symptoms including:

• Stomach pain
• Cramps
• Bloating
• Flatulence
• frequent diarrhoea or constipation

So here are my tips to improve your large intestine: Drink more water and eat more fibre Increasing the amount of water your drink and upping your fibre intake with foods like well cooked brown rice, oatmeal, prunes, kiwi fruit or flaxseeds.  This should produce at least one bowel movment a day and will avoid undigested waste sitting around in your gut. Get Moving A sedetary lifestyle can slow down your bowels. Take slippery elm capsules. A natural way to ease constipation. Minimise stress levels Stress upsets your digestion and reduced your bacteriodetes levels. Eat more vegetables Bacteriodetes love fruits, beans, pulses and fibre so east lots of them.  Where as firmicutes thrive on fat and sugar so eat less sugar! Up your selenium High levels of selenium are linked to low colon cancer risk.  So increase your intake of brazil nuts, slamon, onions, oats and brown rice as they are high in selenium. Eat a wide variety of foods Diversity of foods equals a diversity of gut bacteria. References https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4421088/  

What we see in clinic all the time, is people coming in with running or training injuries that have blindsided them, they have no idea how it happened.  Its like the injury came out of nowhere. Injuries don't come out of nowhere.  Most running injuries produce signals

• aches
• soreness
• persistent pain

Its up to you not to ignore the signal and to take appropriate action.  That doesn't mean keep on running as you set yourself a goal and want to achieve it.  I consider it crazy to run through pain - all you are doing in injuring yourself further.  If you do push on regardless you will invariably end up with with more enforced rest needing more rehab than if you took immediate action.  Any problems are just amplified the more miles you run. One of they key factors that determines an athletes success is there ability to avoid injuries.  If you look at Kenyan distance runners they are experts at listening to their bodies and knowing when to skip training if they are tired and how to nip injuries in the bud. So if you get any of the above signals book a sports massage.