13/01/11 Perfect Balance
Thirdly, I just wanted to express a need for balance in our lives. If your job is sedentary, you must do some exercise, if you are an athlete by profession, some sedentary time is crucial.
For those of us who think all day long and primarily use our left brain (analytical) then we really would do well to stimulate our creative sides a bit, drawing, painting, signing, playing games and meditation are all good right brain exercises.
If you find that you use the right side of your brain more than your left then look at learning language working with mathematics, puzzles or games in those subjects to sharpen the left hemisphere. When you try to solve a word puzzle, for example, electrical and chemical impulses travel among the neurons in the left hemisphere until you identify the answer. Games like Sudoku and crossword puzzles, logic brainteasers and mathematical word problems all exercise the left side of your brain.
Also, it is really important to get out in the fresh air every day. Grab a colleague, make it a challenge (pedometers), start with once a week and try and increase to at least 3 or 4 times.
Daylight is excellent for keeping you immune system in top shape. ‘You should get between 15 and 20 minutes of sunlight a day so your body can develop vitamin D which is very important for our immune systems,’ says Professor Ingo Froboese from the Centre for Health at the German Sports High School in Cologne.
Sunlight converts the precursor form of vitamin D, which is produced in certain cells in the body, into active vitamin D. That encourages our immune cells to build anti-microbial Cathelicidin which plays an important role in our body’s response to bacterial infection.
That means sunlight can help you stay healthy. It does not always have to be direct sunlight, which is in short supply at this time of year. Even on an overcast day enough scattered light penetrates the clouds to have a positive effect on our immune systems.
So grab your boots and rally around the office, you may start a healthy trend!
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 13th, 2011 at 7:17 pm and is filed under Health articles, Perfect Balance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.