Today’s Brain Booster is: Improve your mind by being kind.
Being kind to YOURSELF lowers stress hormones, and lights up the brain’s reward centres to improve brain function and overall well-being.
The brain’s reward system is a network of brain structures designed to ensure our survival. When we do something beneficial — like exercising, socialising, or practising self-kindness — this network is activated, and releases chemical messengers (neurotransmitters) that improve the workings of our brain.
For example, one of the neurotransmitters that plays a key role in the reward system is dopamine. Apart from motivating us to do pleasurable things, dopamine acts as an internal spotlight. It signals to your prefrontal cortex (your decision-making and planning centre) that your current activity is highly valuable. This clears away mental fog, and helps you focus intensely on the task at hand. So the first thing that self care and kindness do — by activating our reward pathway — is to sharpen our focus and attention.
Dopamine also instructs the hippocampus (our learning hub) to ‘save this file.’ This means the connections between brain cells are strengthened, which makes it easier to absorb and retain new information.
So whatever you’re doing, treat yourself with kindness while you’re doing it.
What does that look like?
Talk to yourself the same way you’d talk to your best friend, and remind yourself that not getting everything right, is simply being human. No one can always be on top of their game. No one always makes the best decisions. And on one executes every plan perfectly.
But nothing is failure — if we regard it as feedback.
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Today’s Health Headline is: Disease is a normal response to an abnormal world.
Most people have come to regard chronic disease as one of the unfortunate facts of life. High blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune conditions, chronic pain, depression, anxiety, digestive disorders, obesity, cardiovascular disease and cancer, have become so common that we almost expect them.
But that does NOT mean there’s anything wrong with our bodies.
Chronic disease is our body’s normal response to an abnormal world.
It’s a normal response to:
- the speed and stress of our lives
- air and soil pollution
- social disconnection
- desk jobs that cut us off from nature
- a toxic food environment
- and suppression of our emotions.
All those factors conspire to make us sick. Of course our body is going to revolt!
Disease is our body screaming at us to pause, reflect, and re-connect with what’s truly meaningful and brings us a sense of peace and safety.
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What’s Missing From Modern Medicine is asking the right questions.
Modern medicine is focused on the wrong questions. That’s why it’s coming up with ineffective answers. Instead of asking:
- How do we get rid of this symptom?
- Or: how do we eliminate this disease?
The compassionate questions we need to be asking are:
- What is this symptom inviting me to notice?
- Where in my life is my voice saying ‘yes’ but my body is saying ‘no’?
If this sounds like a call to ‘be true to yourself,’ it is. Unfortunately the phrase ‘be true to yourself,’ or ‘find your authentic self’ has become a hackneyed social media post. It makes it sound like your ‘true self’ is hiding under a rock in Bali. It isn’t. Authenticity is not something you find; it’s a series of choices you make every day.
Authenticity is asking yourself: ‘What am I currently doing that I don’t necessarily want to be doing, but I’m doing it to avoid others being uncomfortable?’
That doesn’t mean doing whatever I want without regard for anyone else. It doesn’t mean indulging every impulse, and refusing responsibility. And it doesn’t mean abandoning others if their needs conflict with my own.
Being true to yourself means developing the inner honesty to recognise what is genuinely important to you, and then allowing your choices to increasingly reflect that knowledge.
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Today’s Whether Report is from Nadine: I’d like to know whether you can provide a list of resources for dealing with chronic pain.
Yes, I most certainly can.
You can download the list from drhelenapopovic.com/podcast and scroll down to Resources.
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Click here to watch the episode on my YouTube channel, or listen to Healing with Dr Helena on your preferred podcast platform. I’ll publish a new episode every Monday, and you’ll receive an email notification that morning. Please subscribe to my podcast or YouTube channel so that you don’t miss an episode, and send your whether questions to: podcast@drhelenapopovic.com
If you’re happy for me to play your voice on my podcast, you can provide an audio file. Otherwise, you can type your question for me to read out.
I very much look forward to answering your questions, and exploring how we can all build a smarter brain, stronger body and deeply fulfilling life.
Please share this Health-e-Byte with anyone who is too hard on themselves.
