Paleo Cookbook For Dummies (12 page)

Here are some suggested techniques to help you decompress. Make one of these options, or another healthy stress management technique you enjoy, part of your lifestyle:

Chiropractic:
Analyzes the body for nerve interference that occurs as a result of life's stresses. Many people feel immediately calmer after treatment. The later section
“Improving your framework”
has more info on incorporating chiropractic care into your life.

Massage:
Decreases the stress hormone cortisol and the hormones that can cause aggressive behavior.

Yoga and meditation:
Provide mental calmness, improved breathing, increased energy, and immunity.

The HeartMath Solution:
Calms the nervous system and creates positive mind body connections. Go to
www.heartmath.org
for more information.

Energy work:
Taps into that force within your body that gives you deep healing and strength. Chinese medicine, acupuncture, Qi Gong, Reiki, and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) are just some of the techniques that center their healing on your body's life force (also called
prana, chi,
or
Qi
).

Exercise:
Boosts metabolism and changes the way your body responds to stress. Exercise is one of the most powerful things you can do to reverse stress, depression, anxiety, cravings, or negative eating patterns.

Probably the single most effective path to finding a practitioner or a technique that may be right for you is to ask a holistic practitioner (holistic MD, naturopath, or chiropractor) who knows your history about her recommendations. These folks are often very well connected to other practitioners in natural health and can recommend techniques and individual practitioners that suit your needs. If you don't know any such practitioners, just start asking around; people love to share this kind of information. Most of my patients have come to me by word of mouth. You can also find a Paleo practitioner at
http://paleophysiciansnetwork.com/doctors
.

Practicing Paleo Fitness: Movement by Design

If you could take a miracle pill every day that would decrease your incidence for about every disease, help you look better, moderate your cravings, and allow far less stress on your body, would you take it? Well, you already have this miracle pill; it's called exercise! Movement is a big part of living Paleo because it keeps your body healthy and makes all the structures and functions in your body work better. One of the best ways to stimulate your brain and hormones to produce pleasure is through exercise, so movement is great for elevating your mood as well. The following sections give you an overview of exercise's role in a Paleo lifestyle.

Paleo fitness covers so much more than I can address in a cookbook; check out my book with Melissa Joulwan,
Living Paleo For Dummies
(Wiley), for more background and an extensive workout schedule.

Making exercise a requirement, not an option

Exercise offers too many benefits for Paleo practitioners to ignore it. Your cells require exercise in order to be healthy; if you're deficient in anything that's required for healthy cell function, your overall health eventually suffers.

Here's the good news: Just as a deficiency in exercise can make you sick and obese, the reverse can work as well. You can use exercise to create healthy cells and robust health and even use it in place of some medications to heal your body and help fight aging.

Here are some of the medications that regular exercise may help you avoid:

Cold and flu meds:
The average adult has two or three colds or flu viruses each year. But if you're active, studies suggest that you'll have fewer colds than those who aren't.

Cholesterol meds:
Being active boosts your good cholesterol and reduces unhealthy triglycerides, keeping a clear pathway for blood to flow naturally and preventing conditions like diabetes, stroke, and heart disease.

Antidepressants:
If you work out three times per week hard enough to sweat, you can reduce depression just as well as an antidepressant can. The connections made between nerve cells while exercising behave as a natural antidepressant.