5 Things You Can Do Every Day to Feel Limber and Energetic
With so much available at our fingertips in the way of activity, experience, and entertainment, it’s more important than ever to take steps to protect our body’s health and youthfulness. Many people say they want to “look younger,” but many people fail to realize that an important component of looking younger is feeling younger. Your spine and nervous system function are essential to generating limberness and energy in your body. Limberness and energy contribute to a feeling and an appearance of youth, but most importantly, limberness and energy allow you to live your highest quality of life. If you’d like to discover 5 things you can do every day to feel limber and energetic, read on!
1. Exercise regularly
One of the most effective activities to boost your body’s limberness and energy levels is exercise. Exercise is an important part of any healthy life and has a huge host of benefits. Exercise keeps the systems of your body in top form. Exercise helps to increase the circulation of nutrients and oxygen through the blood, strengthen your muscles, regulate your nervous system, and boost your immune function. Exercise comes in many forms, but the most important factor is that it is practiced safely and consistently.
Cardiovascular Conditioning
Cardiovascular conditioning typically involves rigorous exercise that increases the heart rate. When the heart rate is increased regularly over time, the heart muscle is strengthened and becomes more efficient at being a pump. This can lower the heart rate, decrease the risk of heart disease, and improve the function of other systems in the body.
Strength Training
Strength training uses external weights (or bodyweight) in repetitive motions to tear the muscles of the body. As the muscles recover, they are built back stronger, with more muscle tissue. As the muscles adapt to the use, they grow proportionally. This helps the body to become strong and resilient. Strength training, in conjunction with cardiovascular conditioning, is a fantastic way to improve the body’s ability to adapt, respond, and regulate.
2. Take breaks from sitting to stretch deeply
Exercise is an important part of a healthy lifestyle, but stretching often gets forgotten! While exercise helps to condition the body’s circulatory systems and strengthen the muscles, stretching helps to retain elasticity in the body and the muscles. Without stretching, even the most well-intentioned exercise can result in injuries and stiffness. Building muscle without regular stretching can make new muscles stiff and slowly reduce the body’s range of motion over time. For this reason, it’s important to take regular stretch breaks.
Stretching should be done in an intentional manner, without any bouncing or forcing into the stretch. Select stretches that elongate your tightest and largest muscle groups, and ease into them gently. Do this every day, even if it’s just for small intervals of time.
Take breaks to walk.
In addition to stretching into specific positions, engaging in a walk can be a helpful way of incorporating physical activity, as well as getting a gentle stretch. When possible, take breaks from your routine to walk. The walk doesn’t need to be extremely vigorous, as it’s not for the purpose of strengthening the muscles or conditioning the heart. Instead, walk to mindfully stretch and warm your body.
Change your working or sitting posture.
As you incorporate walks and stretch breaks into your daily habits, be sure to change your working and sitting postures regularly. Whatever your primary occupation is, challenge yourself to modify the activity to feature a different posture. Even the smallest changes can be beneficial to the body, increasing your limberness and adaptability.
Change your activity.
Another way to increase your mobility and flexibility is by frequently changing your activity. While it can be tempting to practice the same activity for prolonged periods of time – especially if it’s part of your work schedule and routine – it’s not always beneficial for the body.
Instead, try to change your activity throughout the day as much as possible. Different than taking breaks, changing your activity means rotating your routine frequently, ensuring that you don’t spend too long on any one task. This helps your body to remain adaptable and mobile and is also beneficial for your brain.
3. Get a full night’s sleep
One of the first wellness habits to fall through the cracks when your schedule becomes busy is sleep. A full night’s sleep should not be underestimated, as it is one of the most powerful and effective methods of rejuvenation for the body. Receiving between 7 and 9 hours of sleep each night will keep your body’s systems functioning at their optimal capacities throughout the day, helping you to feel limber, full of energy, and youthful.
Ensure your sleeping posture is beneficial.
If you’re already getting between 7 and 9 hours of sleep each night but still feel like the quality of your sleep could be improved, check to make sure that your sleeping posture is helping, and not hindering, your sleep.
Try to sleep in a position that supports your neck and head, keeps your spine naturally aligned and free of unusual twists, and that there are no pressure points that may be causing pain when you wake up.
Improve the quality of your rest.
Another important factor to boost the efficiency of your sleep time is to improve the quality of your rest. This can be done by making the environment you sleep in as comfortable, quiet, and dark as possible. Consider lowering the temperature of your sleeping space, as the body tends to rest more deeply in cooler environments.
Check the lighting arrangement in your sleeping space to reduce blue light before sleep, and when possible, keep the environment as quiet as you can.
4. Make your environment ergonomically sound
While the term “ergonomics” has come to be recognized as a process for creating a more comfortable workspace and environment, ergonomics is technically the process of increasing efficiency. It just so happens that a highly efficient workplace is usually a more comfortable one!
To enhance the ergonomics of your home, office, or workplace, examine the places where you work and look at how they support your body function. You can do this by consulting a professional (usually an occupational therapist) or using simple principles to match your workspace to your body’s natural movement patterns. Below is an example of how to optimize an office for proper ergonomics.
Place your computer, your desk, and your chair at the right height and distance.
In an office setting, your computer should be at least one arm’s length away from your face. This distance helps to support your eye health, reducing strain and discomfort. Also to boost eye health, the center of your computer screen should be level with your gaze – this often means lifting your computer monitor accordingly (try using books or another flat surface).
Your elbows should be able to bend at a 90-degree angle while typing or using your mouse, so adjust the height of your chair and desk accordingly.
By optimizing your workspace ergonomically, you are helping your body to move more naturally and efficiently. Not only may this help increase your productivity, but it will also support your health.
5. Seek regular chiropractic care
Chiropractic is one of the most valuable forms of treatment for your neuromusculoskeletal system (nervous, muscular, and skeletal system). Chiropractic care has a long list of benefits that help to keep your body limber, energetic, and youthful. These benefits include increasing flexibility, increasing clarity and cognitive function, improving the quality of sleep and movement, enhancing the function of other systems in the body, regulating the nervous system, and contributing to a more positive mood.
To help your body thrive, chiropractic care is unmatched. Patients who receive regular integrative chiropractic care report feeling younger, more vital, and more agile and comfortable in their bodies.
Support your spinal health by keeping your bones and joints aligned.
Your spinal cord is a critical component for many functions in the body, primarily because of its relationship between the spine to the nervous system, which regulates many of the body’s automatic processes. Chiropractic care helps to keep your spinal health in top form, improving your spinal alignment, increasing the flexibility between joints, and supporting the communication of the spinal cord to the nerves of the body.
Gain the benefits of chiropractic care from regular treatment.
To fully experience the benefits of chiropractic care, regular treatment is ideal. Regular chiropractic treatment helps to maintain and build on the benefits that you receive from each of your treatments. When you are using chiropractic care to correct misalignment, regular treatment is even more essential, as time and consistency are required to reap the full effects.
If you’re ready to begin experiencing the multitude of benefits that chiropractic has to offer, and you live in the Oakland, CA area, then it’s time to book your appointment with Dr. Cindy Boyd and the team of Symmetry Health Center. At Symmetry Health Center, we focus on providing you with the highest quality of chiropractic care available to meet all of your needs. We proudly serve ground-breaking chiropractic in Alameda and Oakland areas to help our community reach their highest health potential.
Make your appointment today!