10 Easy Ways To Activate Your Healing System Everyday

It's NEVER too late.

You don't have to be a smoothie-slurping, green machine to beat cancer. Plenty of people who are pillars of health and wellness also get cancer.

Even the experts are scratching their heads when it comes to understanding what causes cancer. About the only thing we know with 100% certainty is that there are a lot of contributing factors, including our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health.

Where does that leave us?

How you feel about your healing journey is critical. When you're stressing out about what you should or shouldn't be doing, you're actually preventing your body from tapping into its innate healing systems. Instead, you're activating the systems of stress that prevent resilience.

You don't have to empty your cupboards, strip your house, or abandon every "bad" habit you've ever had.

Simply start where you are, and see how it feels to slowly, thoughtfully, integrate the following essentials to activate your healing system.

Sunlight Exposure

Sunlight is an inexpensive, omnipresent, essential source of achieving human wellness. It improves mood, our immune system, cognitive function and regulates our sleep cycleーlet alone boosting vitamin D production. Its benefit outweighs the risk associated with skin cancer, with benefits coming from whole body exposure in even just a short amount of time.

Hydration

Scientific studies show a direct correlation between water intake and longevity. Water is an essential component of our body consisting of 70 percent of body mass. Most people don't even come close to consuming enough water, opting for liquids like coffee, soda, or juice, which don't count towards your total water intake.

Laughter

Who hasn't felt better after a good belly laugh? Laughter, like sunlight and water, is such an inexpensive, underutilized tool in our total wellness tool box. Studies shows it improves immune cell activity, cardiovascular function, and pain perception, in addition to being our body's own 100% natural way to relieve stress.

Losing Track of Time (Flow State)

When was the last time you lost track of time doing something fun, and remembered how it felt after having experienced it? Incorporating such activities in life can have multiple positive effects on a sense of well-being and fulfillment. And the good news is YOU get to choose which activities initiate this kind of flow stateーtime in nature, art, movement, meditation, or maybe even vacuuming your living room.

Sleep Cycle Synching

Even though it's recommended to have 7-8 hours of sleep each night, we all have different sleep needs and it's imperative to find the right environment and quantity of sleep that will rejuvenate your unique body's function. If you think you can skimp on sleep and catch up later, consider this: every living creature needs sleep to stay alive.

Whole Foods for Energy

In a world full of fad diets and contradicting recommendations, it is important to find an all-encompassing principle that can be agreed upon. Consuming food in its "whole" state and minimizing processed ingredients is an anchor to which we can keep ourselves from getting swept up in the overwhelming sea of nutritional information.

Learning New Things

Cancer as well as our health is dynamic and ever-changing, and it is essential to give our brain, which is our operating system, opportunities to take itself off autopilot. We know now that our brains are actually capable of developing new neural pathways throughout our life. And learning new things is a highly effective way to leverage this neuroplasticity to improve our health and well-being, even in a fast-paced and often stressful modern world.

Treating Chronic Inflammation

In spite of its somewhat negative reputation, inflammation is actually a necessary process in our body to heal in the most effective and rapid manner. However, when it gets chronic, it can cause damage and create an environment that's highly conducive to cancer and other common chronic diseases.

Getting Out In Nature

Nature has a calming effect on our mind and improves anxiety and depression (evidenced by numerous studies). Even just putting our feet in the grass fosters an environment where healing can take place by multiple different mechanism, including stress reduction, improved sleep, reduced inflammation, and immune function improvement.

Spending Time with Loved Ones

Studies show that people with stronger social support recover faster from surgery with less complications. Our social bonds have a direct impact on our physical and mental sense of resilience. So, spending time with people you love can alleviate the sense of isolation and depression that is common in the journey of cancer treatment.