Three years ago, I began my journey to health and wellness. I was working as an ex-pat in India when I was laid off from my job as a Program Manager for a large telecom project. Feeling desperate to reclaim my health after a year of eating fattening Indian food, continually inhaling some of the worst pollutions on the planet, and smoking cigarettes, I decided to learn yoga. Since I had a travel blog with a few thousand followers, I thought maybe I could trade the enrollment fee for promotion of the yoga school on my blog, so I sent a few e-mails, not really expecting a response. One yoga school responded, and they agreed to give me free tuition if I would write about the experience on my blog!
I arrived at the yoga ashram in Rishikesh India to find that I was enrolled in a comprehensive, intensive 30-day yoga teacher training course. Since it was a business arrangement, I didn’t feel I could back out. I also quit smoking that day, cold-turkey! For the next 30 days, I lived in the ashram, doing four and a half hours a day of yoga along with several hours of classroom theory. I began to change in the most beautiful ways. By the end of the program, physically, I was ten pounds lighter, but emotionally I felt like a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I felt calm and happy for the first time in decades.
When I got home, I put my teacher training to use and started teaching yoga to others in my community. Unfortunately, not long after my return home, I was diagnosed with chronic bronchitis and hip arthritis. Not wanting to take any medications, I researched naturopathic remedies and cured myself of both conditions by going on an anti-inflammation diet. That was when I truly realized the power of plants as medicine.
Lifestyle Changes
My yoga students struggle with all kinds of ailments, from diabetes to heart disease and arthritis. They often ask me what else they can do (aside from yoga) to get healthier, and my answer is always the same, lifestyle changes. Lifestyle changes include things like making radical changes to your daily diet, getting regular aerobic exercise, quitting smoking and drinking alcohol, and establishing healthier sleeping habits. Typically, lifestyle changes are the hardest type of change to make, but they also make the most significant impact. Too many people complain about their health but are unwilling to make the lifestyle changes necessary to be healthy.
Reduce/Eliminate Medications
Americans spend over 60 billion dollars per year on pharmaceuticals, far more than any other country. What’s more, 70% of Americans take prescription drugs. I’ve traveled to 30 countries, and people from around the world often ask me why Americans are so overweight and why we take so many medications. There is usually a correlation between the two issues. Americans take medications for two main reasons. The first is because we are unhealthy, and a pill seems easier than a lifestyle change. But a lot of additional medical issues usually arise from taking a single medication. Soon you have to take another drug to deal with the side effects of the other. Before long, your medicine cabinet is lined with pills, and your body is full of toxins.
The other reason that Americans take so many medications when compared to other countries is that the pharmaceutical industry is big money, and there is more money in treating disease than preventing it! According to CBS News. “Researchers from the Mayo Clinic, a non-profit medical and research center, antibiotics, antidepressants, and painkiller opioids are the most common prescriptions given to Americans.” Depression, pain, and often, infections are mostly preventable, but seldom does a doctor talk about prevention. For example, instead of recommending an excellent counselor to get to the root cause of depression, a doctor prescribes a medication, or instead of advising a patient to lose 50 pounds to reduce joint pain, a doctor prescribes pain killers. If you’re on drugs, ask yourself this, would you still need those medications if you lost weight, quit smoking, quit drinking, and got more regular exercise?
Meditate
Hundreds of studies suggest that meditation doesn’t just decrease stress levels but that it also has tangible health benefits such as improved immunity, lower inflammation, and reduced pain. Additionally, brain-imaging studies show that meditation sharpens attention and memory. Meditation has been proven to increase the grey matter of the brain, and increase the volume in areas related to emotional regulation, self-control, and positive emotions. It also has been shown to improve cortical thickness in areas related to focus.
In a world where our attention span is rapidly eroding, that seems like reason enough to give it a try. Check out this article on 20 Scientific Reasons to Start Meditating Today. If you’re not sure how to start meditating, begin with guided meditations in a classroom setting or use an app like Insight Timer or Calm.
If you’re feeling overweight, tired, depressed, anxious, and have been hoping medications will help, perhaps it’s time to take a single step towards improving your health. Remember, a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. You can do this! Take yoga classes, hire a health coach, or read a good book about improving your diet. Want to live longer and feel better? Start today!