Flexibility and health go hand in hand. The more flexible you are, the more resilience you have and the healthier you are. Physically and mentally. Our health is governed by the psychological, neurological, immunological and endocrinological systems in our body. And these systems constantly influence each other.
Clinical Psycho-Neuro-Immunological Science (cPNI) has mapped out these influences in recent decades and has developed them into a useful medical approach. cPNI sees people as a whole; the systems in our body interact. We make grateful use of that fact: with one system we influence another system in a positive way. That is the power of this holistic approach.
How does our health work?
An example on a physical level. Suppose you are running a virus. This activates your immune system. Instead of 5 grams of glucose per day, it suddenly needs 300 grams. To produce this glucose, your insulin gland goes into overproduction. This makes other organs insulin insensitive and, as it were, they get neglected. If the infection lasts 4 to 7 days, nothing is wrong. But if the infection becomes chronic, you have a problem. You become insensitive to insulin and to cortisol. The pancreas and adrenal glands are producing more and more of these hormones. This while insulin makes you heavier and makes you more susceptible to infections.
An example on a mental level: Imbalance in cortisol can cause sleeping problems, fatigue, behavioural changes, fears, depression, stress sensitivity and the like.
It also occurs the other way around. When you experience long-term stress, adrenaline and cortisol stress hormones are used. If you then get an infection, there is not enough cortisol to send the immune system from the bloodstream to the source of infection. The infection is not tackled efficiently and gets the chance to become chronic. This again shows neglect of organs, and also of the brain. It then becomes a vicious circle.
Our body can experience stress for a variety of reasons. Due to an infection, work pressure, relationship problems, wrong behaviour, too little exercise, poor nutrition. What happens then? All hormone axes are disrupted. For example, The stress axis affects our sex hormones and thyroid gland. And this confuses our entire operating system as it were.
With our lifestyle, we can protect ourselves against this. In order not to become chronically ill, we have to make choices and adjust our lifestyle accordingly. In the beginning, this requires a certain discipline. As soon as you can reap the benefits, it goes without saying. Staying fit, clear and alert for yourself and for each other, that is valuable!
Positive medicine
If you are recovering from an illness, it will take a lot of energy. It is then important that you look at your recovery from a positive perspective. Positive thoughts provide more energy than negative ones. That is often easier said than done. Positive medicine helps us with this. Because of this, we include your thoughts and behavior in the personal treatment plan, for example through reframing exercises.