Does fear lead to pain?

In short: yes. Although there are other reasons for pain besides fear.

In order to better understand if fear might be affecting your pain level, please consider the following questions:

1. Do you feel anxious, emotionally, or tense throughout the day (even if on/off)?
2. Do your emotions control you more than you control your emotions?
3. Does your mind race?
4. Do you worry?
5. When you feel these emotions, do you notice an increase in your physical pain level?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the above questions and you are currently experiencing pain, it’s a good bet that fear is a contributing factor.

This being said, pain has many causes. Physical pain is caused by:

Should you eat a big meal for dinner and go to bed full? Or should you eat a light meal and go to bed hungry? What’s better for you?!

In short, it comes down to body type and timing. Here goes:

Body Type & Timing For Dinner:

• Ectomorphs benefit from a lighter meal at night that doesn’t overwork their digestive systems. So, if they eat early enough (i.e. 3-5 hours before bed), then a big meal is fine. Otherwise, it makes more sense to focus on satiety through a heavy starch like a potato 2-3 hours before bed instead of a dense protein that will take mechanical effort while asleep.

Lunch depends upon location and situation.

Out of all of the meals of the day, lunch tends to have the least uniformity from one person to the next. Let’s take a deeper look:

Lunch at work/on the go (the “packed” lunch): generally speaking, this means that you either eat cold food or resort to using a microwave. Neither option is great on a chilly day, so use warm/hot beverages to warm your system and choose the cold lunch option. Using a microwave is not the way to go!

When packing a lunch, ideally choose something that would be equivalent to a dinner at home, in that it’s a fully balanced meal with some veggies, a source of protein, and maybe a little bit of fruit on the side as a dessert. Instead of being in the habit of associating one type of food (like a sandwich) with lunch and another kind of food (like a steak) with dinner, consider the fact that your body is looking for nutrient value to sustain your energy level throughout the day.

When you consider eating lunch for sustaining/improving energy levels, it drastically changes what you’ll pack for lunch, and therefore what you’ll eat as well. Here are a few examples of personal “packed lunch” favorites that you might enjoy, as well:

Before you read today’s post, think back to what you ate for breakfast over the last 3 days…

Now, consider this: breakfast is the first energy ingested during the day. This means that you wake up feeling like yourself and what you eat (or do) next will combine into a new feeling.

This means that food is a contributing factor to how you will feel. Whether or not food matches your body, how well you are able to absorb it into nutrient value through digestion, and how long it takes to digest are all factors that affect how you will feel.

So, in order to make a wise decision about breakfast please consider the following questions:

• Did you wake up warm or cold? (Breakfast can help regulate your temperature when chosen to do so.)
• Did you eat within 3 hours of going to bed last night? (If so, your tummy may still be full, so something less dense would make more sense than a hearty breakfast like eggs.)
• Are you fully hydrated? (If not, you may want to consider waiting to eat until you rehydrate.)
• Will you have other opportunities for fruits today? (If not, you may want to strongly consider a smoothie.)
• Will you be exercising within the next 2-3 hours? (if so, you may want to eat a more hearty breakfast, so long as you have time to digest.)

What drives you?

What makes you survive and want to thrive and flourish?

And on the other hand, what threatens you?

Knowing and understanding your biggest drivers are keys to improving your health. Know what you are shooting for, yes. Know why and you’ll hit your goal.

For most people, fear is the bigger driver, which means that which threatens them makes them more motivated than that which inspires them.

(HINT: it’s not just diet and exercise)

In Physical Therapy school, they taught us that ‘physical’ health — in spite of being the focal point for our education — is one of FOUR pillars of health (25% each). The four pillars are:

• Physical — diet and exercise; how, when, and how much you eat and move.
• Mental — thoughts and healthy thinking; both conscious and subconscious thoughts and programs.
• Emotional — feelings and understanding how we feel and process this world; again, consciously and subconsciously.
• Spiritual — connection to self, others, and something greater; views and beliefs about the world in which we live.

Without one pillar of health, we are missing a leg of the table. Without two, our table starts to become quite shaky. If we avoid focusing on three or more legs our table falls over, which is a metaphor for saying that health will deteriorate quickly.

This morning I was slicing up some ginger to steep with a jasmine green tea, and I thought of you. My boys see me do stuff like this all the time, so health habits like these are almost second nature to them.

You see, ginger has amazing health benefits; perhaps the greatest of which is digestive assistance. Ginger is a known super-spice that helps reduce strain with digestion and assist with balancing gut health.

And since it’s so easy to buy a few branches of ginger and cut a quarter to half of one up before steeping tea in the morning, I almost always do it.

At first, I thought that the taste would be too strong. Although, I learned to portion it differently, not put it directly into the tea, and instead add it to tea leaves as they steep.

Nowadays, I almost always add ginger.

Satiety.

Is feeling full not the solution to dieting and nutrition? It must be.

Portion control is at least as important as the foods you choose when it comes to losing weight and/or feeling great after a meal.

Europeans know this. Australians and New Zealanders know this. Americans are over-fed at restaurants and subsequently eat too much at home. (There are more regions of the world that are the same, although the United States is certainly a prime example of over-eating during mealtime and snack time.)

1. So, how do you eat less when you still feel hungry?
2. What can you do to feel more full if you decide to fast and need “something” to keep you going?

Stress is known as the silent killer: a cause for heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and Diabetes.

So, where does stress come from? Here’s a deeper look at the causes for stress, which are still being studied and examined scientifically over time:

Environment — is your home and/or outside environment too hot or cold? Too messy or nice and organized?

Hobbies — do you choose hobbies that alleviate stress or cause more of it? For example, if your hobby is hunting, you might find yourself relaxed in one way and crammed into an uncomfortable position while hiding in a tree in another?

Social life — do you experience social anxiety each time you go out? Or do you alleviate feelings of being recluse by spending time with others?

This post is intended to help you “pause”, take a breath, and alleviate fears, concerns, and anxieties for today. It won’t take long, and you’ll feel so grateful that you took a few minutes in order to do so.

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