Enhancing your nervous system through your daily living

Since the 1990’s, there has been an incredible surge of research on neuroscience. The buzz and excitement around these findings is palpable and reaching a fever pitch as we learn new ways to understand and support nervous system function. While the research provides evidence, it’s vital to assess the quality of the research. Along with this, it’s not always clear how to implement the findings supported by evidence.

While we crave having fast tools to achieve superhuman results that work for everybody, it’s not always this simple. Like any effective strategy for improving your health, it seems to be that the best tools are often simple and take time. It’s an investment into your self that could pay out huge dividends over time or at worst, yield nothing. Run your own experiment and see what does and doesn’t work for you. Here are some simple ways to start considering your nervous system into your daily living.

Sleep

• Self assess your sleep and if necessary, seek out a trained and licensed health care professional if you need help improving the quality of your sleep

• Do you wake up feeling well rested and recovered?

• Evidence supports not necessarily more sleep but consistent quantities of sleep each night

• Limit light exposure from 10pm-4am, maximize natural light exposure (safely) between sunrise and 9:30am. If possible, get outside around sunrise as well.

• Neuroplastic processes, emotional processing, healing and more, occurs during sleep which is why it’s imperative to consider sleep first and foremost

Exercise

• Exercising early in your day can help you in establishing a healthy sleep routine

• Aerobic exercise can help enhance hippocampus size which is the region associated with memory, learning, and neurogenesis

• Anaerobic exercise can help enhance slow wave sleep, an important part of the sleep cycle

• Exercise can help with stress management, circulation, inflammation. These all have positive effects on brain function.

  if you are new to exercise or restarting after time away, please consult with a professional for guidance on getting started safely

Mindfulness

• Meditation can help to regulate coritsol (hormone used as an objective measure of stress) levels, increasing neural efficiency, improve immune system responses, slow aging processes, and increase parasympathetic activity as measured through heart rate variability

• Breath and the nervous system are inextricably linked whether through the vagus nerve, oxygenation of blood to the brain, cerebral spinal fluid, hormone regulation…the list goes on. Restoring a natural, nasal, distributed breath pattern to optimize breath will certainly help to optimize your nervous system function.

Play & Learn

• Both play and learning help to support neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Find ways to play and learn throughout your day and life not only for the benefit of your nervous system but also for the joy and satisfaction they bring.

all information provided here is derived from published, peer-reviewed research. references available by request.