3565: How to Feel Better: 10 Gentle Ways to Support Your Health by Courtney Carver of Be More With Less on Self-Care Habits

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[00:01:01] This is Optimal Health Daily. How to feel better. 10 gentle ways to support your health. By Courtney Carver of BeMoreWithLess.com. And I'm Dr. Neal Malik, your host and narrator. Hey there, happy Saturday. I hope your weekend is off to a great start, and welcome back to Optimal Health Daily, or OHD, where I act as your narrator of popular health and fitness blogs and provide my commentary at the end.

[00:01:26] Now, we have a bunch of shows covering different topics. Just search for Optimal Living Daily in our podcast app to find them. Alright, and with that, let's get right to today's article and start optimizing your life. How to feel better. 10 Gentle Ways to Support Your Health. By Courtney Carver of BeMoreWithLess.com. If you want to feel better but don't have the energy for a perfect plan, start here.

[00:01:56] So often, we are trying to figure out how to feel better when we are sick or struggling with chronic illness. Remove the stress of it all and keep it simple. I didn't simplify my life for clear countertops or to be better organized. I simplified my life because I got sick. Really sick. I was sick, tired, and overwhelmed for a long time. But when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I knew things had to change. I just wanted to know how to feel better.

[00:02:25] The stress and excess in my life may not have caused my disease, but it contributed to relapses, new symptoms, and other health issues. If you've ever thought, this is too much, things need to change, or this headache or cold or exhaustion is my body telling me to slow down, then you know what I mean. How to feel better. 10 Gentle Ways to Support Your Health If you're trying to feel better, you're not alone. We've all been impacted by the effects of stress and excess.

[00:02:55] Someone with multiple sclerosis, or MS, once asked me, how can I be healthier and feel better with MS? After writing back with some suggestions, I realized you don't need MS to benefit from these recommendations. They apply to all autoimmune and even other chronic conditions. In fact, even if you don't have a specific diagnosis or condition, but are running on low energy, don't sleep well, or simply don't feel your best, these gentle ways to feel better can be helpful.

[00:03:25] 1. Build a healthcare team you trust so you can feel better. My first neurologist and her team were terrible. I was diagnosed over the phone at work. They told me to review the medication marketing kits and pick my own treatment. They told me diet and exercise don't matter and that my health would decline. After a few months, I realized they weren't on my team and fired them. I also understood that I had to rise up and build and lead a team.

[00:03:55] I used to be intimidated by doctors and other medical professionals, but now I know we have to work together. They know their stuff and I know my stuff. Creating good relationships with healthcare professionals gave me a chance to feel well and become healthier. 2. Trust that you know your body better than anyone else. When I mention that I know my stuff, I mean that I know what I believe and I know my body. You know your stuff too.

[00:04:23] Keep this in mind when working with your medical professionals, when taking advice from well-meaning friends and family, and especially when gathering information from the internet. Trusting what you know will take some practice, but you do know. Learning to trust yourself will make all the difference. This can be challenging in the beginning of a new diagnosis or when you feel like, because it feels like your body is betraying you. But what if instead, it was simply letting you know that things have to change?

[00:04:52] 3. Reduce stress to feel better. If you want to feel better and have more energy, you have to be willing to live with less stress. Here's the road to less stress. Less stuff, less busyness, less drama, less debt, less worry, less fear. It takes time, but go down this road. I've tried a bunch of things to reduce stress in my life, but simplifying my life has been the most effective. I meditate, journal, work out,

[00:05:22] eat, and sleep well most of the time, and still simplicity is the most direct path to living with less stress. 4. Rest first if you want to feel better. If you want to feel better, put rest first, and not just when you're sick. While rest is important when you don't feel well, put rest first even when you do feel well. Our bodies and brain depend on good sleep and consistent rest and recovery. We know what happens when we push through until the weekend

[00:05:52] or until a vacation. We exhaust ourselves until rest is the only option. Don't wait. Rest and renew. 5. Stop apologizing for taking care of yourself. Let's stop apologizing for taking care of ourselves, for taking naps, for staying in on a Friday night, and taking a bath. When you put your health first, you can serve and connect from a place you just can't access when you are run down, sick, or tired. Sometimes,

[00:06:20] we feel like we have to apologize for or explain or excuse our self-care practices. From going to bed early, to taking time off, to taking a walk in the middle of the day, or incorporating more unconventional self-care practices. Feeling guilty and apologizing for taking care of yourself is not taking care of yourself. Good health is nothing to apologize for, so please, do what's best for you. 6. Put your phone down.

[00:06:49] According to an article in Fortune magazine, you might spend 17 years of your adult life online. We are hyper-connected to the internet and it's disconnecting us from how we feel and what we enjoy. If you're trying to feel better physically and mentally, pay attention to how time online actually affects you. Create boundaries around how much time you spend on your devices. Spend one full day a week completely disconnected and see what happens. Do you feel less anxious when you stay off social media?

[00:07:19] Do you experience less physical pain when you aren't online as much? Pay attention to how you actually feel while online. 7. Give yourself time to heal and feel better. Give yourself time to heal and don't put a time limit on it. Adding random deadlines for feeling better only adds more stress. Instead, take a little step each day and rest when you need to rest. I used to try to replicate the diets and health plans of other people. I watched the videos,

[00:07:48] read the books, and thought, if I could do it just like them, I'd feel better. As it turns out, some of what I discovered worked for me and some didn't. I had to create my own unique plan. Learn what makes you feel well. There isn't a one-size-fits-all diet or exercise plan. You have to learn what works best for you and be open to the idea that what works best for you will change over time. 8. Live without. Experiment living without the things

[00:08:18] you think you can't live without. I quit drinking years ago, but it started as a little living without experiment. You're likely different. Take a look at the things you depend on every day and ask yourself what value they add. If you aren't sure, take a break. 9. Act your age. I know we're all supposed to pretend we aren't aging, but the reality is that we need different things at different ages. We can't treat our 50-year-old body and brain the same we treated

[00:08:47] our 20-year-old body and brain. The good news is that when you act your age when approaching healthcare, you can experience your best health at any age. Even better news is that it's never too late to start. And 10. Remember that health includes all health. How you feel physically and mentally contribute to your best health. It's all connected. I assess the quality of my mental health by checking in. I ask questions like, how do I feel?

[00:09:16] Am I more reactive than usual? Is my mind racing and making snap judgments? Or do I have space to be more thoughtful? Am I responding to stress in a healthy way? Or is stress affecting my sleep, work, or relationship? I'm not a medical professional, but these questions do help me understand where and when I might need a little work. Simplifying my life helped me stress less and feel better. I haven't had an MS relapse since 2008, but I still remember

[00:09:46] what it was like to wake up afraid that I wouldn't be able to see or walk or think straight. I can't predict the future, but now I wake up hopeful and excited for the day ahead and find it easier to focus on what really matters to me. Not feeling well is scary. Not knowing what's wrong is scary. A devastating diagnosis is scary. The words chronic, debilitating, unknown, all scary. But we have to make a choice. Will we live in fear or in hope?

[00:10:15] It's not as easy as a flip of a switch, but if you find daily pockets of hope each day, the fear will dissipate. Write down what you are afraid of and what makes you smile, what you're curious about and what you're willing to do to feel better. Keep writing it down until your hope lists are longer than your fear lists. The way you feel better will be unique to you. It won't look exactly like how I feel better or how anyone else chooses to feel better. It will also look different today than it does in five years.

[00:10:45] You've done a great job taking care of everyone and everything around you and now, it's time to do what's best for you. Take all the time you need to give that gift to yourself. You just listened to the post titled How to Feel Better 10 Gentle Ways to Support Your Health by Courtney Carver of BeMoreWithLess.com and I'll be right back with my commentary. Observe The North American Dad 50s

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[00:12:14] There was actually a theme I noticed throughout today's article. As today's author Courtney was sharing her health promoting suggestions, I realized that an underlying theme was support. We are responsible for our own health but at the same time it takes a team to help us along the way. We have a team of health professionals like we have a primary care doctor, a nurse, a dentist, maybe a dietician and personal trainer, maybe a therapist, a pharmacist and that's just

[00:12:43] the medical side of things. We also have our friends and families, maybe even our colleagues at work or school. There's that social aspect to all of this. Courtney suggested we disconnect from social media and give ourselves a social media break. Well, if social media is the only way we stay social, we need to rethink it. So, why not use social media time instead to actually call or meet up with friends or family? Just recently I talked about this in my commentary

[00:13:12] on another episode, in fact. We know that loneliness increases the risk for several diseases and conditions. Like, if you want a surefire way to decrease stress, hang out with those that bring you joy. Don't just message them on social media. Speak to them over the phone or actually meet up with them because, as Courtney said in today's article, health includes all aspects of health and after all, it's all connected. All right, that'll do it for today. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing

[00:13:42] the show with someone. That is one of the best ways to keep the show going. I hope you have a great weekend and I'll see you back here tomorrow where optimal life awaits. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.