East Asian Secret to Healthy Life

As soon as we are born, the countdown of our life starts. Our day-to-day lifestyle, the food that we eat, the water that we drink, the air that we breathe and the environment that we live in, all contribute to our body’s aging and wear and tear. We all know that we have to die one day, no matter what we do. But how long we will live and how well we will live this life, largely depends upon our lifestyle and the environment around us. In order to sustain our health and longevity, we use several natural methods which differ from region to region, culture to culture and have come to us after passing through the generations by our ancestors. It is called the alternative medicine. Just like India has its natural science like Ayurveda, Yoga to live a healthy life, East Asia, that is the oriental countries have their own unique scientific method which is called The Oriental Medical Science. While most of the methods defined in natural science are common in every region, for example, drinking more water, getting quality sleep and doing exercise, some methods are exclusively followed in a particular region and most of the people in other regions are not so much aware of it.

Today we are going to explore two unique methods of East Asian culture which define the essence of healthy life. The oriental medical science, just like any other natural science has numerous things to follow in order to delay our aging, to prevent diseases and to maintain a healthy lifestyle. However, it particular focuses on two major aspects of our health.

One of the major contributors to our health is the health of our spine. As we all know that our spine is a protective cover for our spinal cords and through each of its vertebrae, our nerves are connected to different organs of our body. Animals do not face severe health problems like us as they walk on four feet resulting in their spine being straight all the time. On the other hand, we who walk on two feet carry all our body weight upon our spine, including the considerable weight of our head. Moreover at times, we also carry things like bags, purse, and other weights on our shoulders which increase the pressure on our spine even more. You will be surprised if I say that if you measure your height in morning while stepping out of house and compare it with your height when you get back home, it will show the difference of a few centimetres. Due to this pressure the vertebrae of our spine keep on getting pressed and so are the nerves passing through them. In case any of the nerve gets pressed over a limit it will be damaged gradually resulting in the damage of the organ it connects to.

Usually when we sleep at night our body is supposed to repair itself by the hormones and fluids that our brain releases in order to heal the wear and tear throughout the day. However even our sleeping posture is not straight. Even at that time our spine remains in curved position and thus not able to properly heal itself. Moreover our sitting and walking posture is also not straight most of the times. People who sit crossing legs and wear high heels clearly invite serious harm to their spine. This keeps contributing to the damage of our organs and shows up as some really severe health condition over the time. So one thing is clear, that in case we want to live a healthy life, then a healthy spine is a must.

Second important factor to our health is our body temperature. Most people either don’t know or not concerned but the reality is that it is one of the most important factor to our overall health and immunity. Not only humans but most of the living creatures existing on the planet have one common nature. Their bodies feel more comfort and relaxation in warm environment. A normal human body temperature of a human must be 36.5 C to 37.5 C. However depending upon body type and mass this temperature varies. Also the human body temperature differs in each body area. Our heart is the warmest part of our body because it always moves. In order to understand the relation between body temperature and health we must know three important properties of heat.

Heat expands: when our body is warm our blood vessels expand resulting in better blood circulation, especially in the lower body region where usually blood circulation is not good unless you move your lower body more frequently. In today’s busy office life people spend whole day sitting on chair working with their spine bent over their computer systems and eating junk food now and then. This all contributes to the unhealthy body conditions. When you go to health club for workout the instructor asks you to do warm up first of all. ‘Warm up’ is also known as cardio which means heart. All the exercises included in cardio are related with lower body movements, be it jogging, running, treadmill, cycling, jumping jacks, etc. The purpose is to warm up your body so that your blood vessels expand and your heart can be stable enough to pump up the blood throughout your body faster. Proceeding with any other exercise without doing the ‘cardio’ can also result in disturbing the rhythm of your heart and can cause a cardiac arrest. Every health instructor knows this fact.

Heat melts: If you have studied the process of digestion of our food in science class, you must be aware of the process of combustion which actually means burning of our food in order to make it easy for our body to absorb its nutrients. Whatever we eat gets dissolved in our digestive system through heat. However if our body temperature is low, it results in improper digestion and also accumulation of fat in our body. When you fry some stuff and after that leave the fry pan to cool down you can see the oil or butter getting deposited on the pan surface. Something similar happens with the fat we consume when our body temperature is low. It starts depositing over our organs and inside our blood vessels. Over a period of time this leads to conditions like high cholesterol, blood pressure, heart problems, etc.

Heat rises: Another science lesson that you have learnt in school is that hot air balloon always rises up which means whatever is hot will rise up. Here is another important aspect of doing cardio exercises or walking. Our lower body requires more movement compared to our upper body. the reason why is because our lower body is far from our heart and pumping blood down there is not easy for our heart. So when we move our lower body more the temperature rises resulting in blood rushing up due to which our heart does not need much effort to pump the blood down and it easily completes our blood circulation cycle.

Now that we have learnt these unique health concept which are followed in Oriental medical science we must know what should we do to keep our spine straight and our body temperature warm.

In order to keep our spine straight we must first correct our sitting, standing, walking and sleeping postures. Secondly there are several natural methods of correcting our spine alignment like acupressure, chiropractic, massage etc which help in relaxing of our muscles and correcting our spine. However there are one important thing about which we must be careful. There are many automatic massage equipment and rollers available in market these days which claim to correct your spine alignment and even reverse your diseases. Our bone strength, muscle strength, mass and body type varies from person to person. An automatic machine cannot differentiate this. So in case you opt for methods like massage, acupressure and chiropractic, be sure to get it done by an expert who does it manually and not by some automatic machine.

For maintaining your body temperature you must drink lots of water, avoid artificial cooling like air conditioner, eat foods which are known to increase your body temperature and workout regularly. Again there are so many heating mats and other equipment available in market which are too expensive and also unnecessary. Even if you dip your feet in warm water for sometime, drink hot water few times in a day, take a shower with warm water and have warm milk before sleeping, it will do the job. Always eat your food while it is hot. Light walking after eating food is also a useful method to sustain body temperature.

I hope you find the facts stated here useful and you will try to follow them in order to maintain a healthy life and share with your near and dear ones as well. Wish you health, wish you life