As an old friend of mine was fond of saying SEASONS BEATINGS!
Friends, I know I have posted about change in the past. Good change vs. not so good change. [you can read about this here. Just copy and paste into the search bar: http://www.swaimchiropractic.com/sustainability/] I think I need to chime in again, based on what I see patients doing to themselves this time of year.
Has anyone noticed that Christmas is coming faster than expected? We all seem surprised by how fast things are moving and how short time is to do it all. The thing that surprises me every year is that Christmas falls on the 25! Ok, ok, really no surprise at all. We get keyed up, ampted out, we over eat, over drink, over spend. We are sometimes our own worst enemy. Really, most of the time we are.
Don’t think for a second that your nervous system has not noticed all the excitement. Your nervous system runs your show and thank goodness it does. We could never control and coordinate all the balancing acts required to live on plant earth. We have a built in intelligence that comes to our rescue even when we don’t ask it to. One of the functions it performs is to fire into your adrenal glands. Our adrenal glands sit on top of our kidneys and produce several key hormones that help regulate and usually activate our fight or flight response.
Christmas can certainly feel like a fight or flight response extravaganza! When these hormones are fired and no one or no thing is chasing us, we can put undo stress on our immune systems. The immune system gets down regulated when our adrenals are working overtime; i.e., it is pretty easy to get ill. Shocking.
So Dr. Oz, where is this going? You have not said anything we don’t know!
To the point.
Attempting change this time of year puts way to much stress on our bodies and we break down pretty easily under it. Our adrenal glands are not made to secrete those hormones endlessly. Yes, we like to blame “the bug that is going around” or those sneezy kids in Sunday school. But really, we do it to ourselves. And change, good or bad, can be an unnecessary stressor. A patient the other day said she was tired and did not want to exercise. Great! Don’t! This is not the time of year to “get into shape”. (Although this particular lady takes great care of herself, HT EW) I had to give her permission to back off and honor what she already sensed about her well being. If you have already developed the habit of going to the gym, then by all means don’t change that either. If you haven’t, then take it easy on yourself. What you might try is to reduce the amount of calories you consume. Skip a meal here and there. Skip a workout here and there. Back off.
But don’t try to make a major change this time of year. You will get sick or injured.
Hold steady. Take a nap. Skip a meal or a workout. Let your adrenals rest. When January comes you will not be recovering from sickness or injury. Then would be a good time good time to make a change.
Be well
ks