What is the fastest way to reduce inflammation?

If the first thing you think of is changing your diet and nutrition you're only partly right.

Here are 3 of the very best, non food related, anti-inflammatory things you can do that WILL change your perspective on health forever.

Grounding / Earthing

Sleep Sunshine

All 3 of them tie together - it takes very little time and the benefits far outweigh any time it would take to do them.

What are they?

Grounding is simply the act of getting some bare skin touching a natural, living thing or the ground itself.

It has been shown that as little as 20-30 minutes of grounding per day will improve blood flow, decrease stress, improve your sleep, and decrease whole body inflammation. (best done all in one go)

To go a bit deeper into this we must understand what free radicals and anti-oxidants really are.

A free radical is an element or chemical in the body that is missing an electron. It's on the hunt and it will steal an electron to balance itself out.

An Anti-oxidant is the opposite - it has an extra electron that it can donate to another chemical in the body.

Why is grounding so important in all of this?

The Planet Earth is FULL of free electrons (anti-oxidants) - your skin is a conductor of electricity (otherwise you wouldn't get an electric shock) and when skin is sweaty it works even better as a conductor - the salts in the sweat make this easier too.

Your feet sweat.....a lot They have approximately 125,000 sweat glands on each foot and perspire around half a pint of sweat per day....that's a lot of sweat. You've got to wonder what the purpose of all that sweat is!!

Well, I would say it's to improve the conductivity of your skin with the Earth.

Wet feet, grounding, earthing

In our Modern Age we wear insulating shoes, working in insulated environments, very rarely touching anything that is natural and connected to the Earth. All of this combined means we have generally lost the ability to get a pleantiful supply of anti-oxidants from our environment.

Improving your sleep quality.

Sleep is a foundation of health, in fact it's generally what I teach first to my clients.

Sleep is the time of day when our body does most of it's cleaning up activities. Dead cells and debris are swept away from the Brain and the whole body to provide a healthy environment for your new cells to grow and replicate.

If there is debris around then the immune system COULD go into a bit of an overdrive situation - killing off healthy cells where it shouldn't be. If things aren't being cleared up effectively in the first place then it can create a vicious circle and that's when we get auto-immune conditions.

Getting Quality Sleep

The body isn't attacking itself as we commonly believe - it's attacking dead or dying cells and healthy cells are getting caught in the cross fire which creates more debris and inflammation for the body to clear up.

Eventually it can't replace the unhealthy cells with healthy cells fast enough - sadly that often leads us into chronic pain, sickness or disease.

Sleep is also the time where our body de-stresses - cortisol levels decrease throughout the day and into the night reaching their minimum around 2AM.

If you're a poor sleeper it's quite likely that the rhythm of your Cortisol Cycle is not running on schedule. It won't peak high enough in the day and doesn't drop off fully in the evening.

This isn't great news - because when cortisol is at it's lowest, that is when Melatonin is at it's highest.

Melatonin is widely regarded as the sleep drug (along with magnesium and Vitamin D) But it is so much more than that - it is one of the MOST effective - endogenous (your body makes it) - anti-oxidants that we currently know about.

If your sleep isn't going great then it's highly likely you're missing out on one of Natures best healing chemicals. p.s. you CANNOT get this over the counter in the UK. It's a prescription only medication - but fear not part 3 on sunshine will help you out!

Sunshine the anti-inflammatory!

Let's not forget that it's only in the past 100-200 years that we have become fully cave dwelling.

Our ancestors did not live in caves - maybe they sheltered there but they actually lived outside and probably only went INSIDE from the Sun when it was extremely hot or at night time for safety.

Us, modern humans, we work inside, have our leisure time inside, sleep inside rarely being outside for more than a few minutes per day....seriously - how much time do you think you spend outdoors everyday (not including being in your car...that doesn't count either!)

Just take off the Sunglasses - but this!

That means we get very limited access to Sunlight and extreme amounts of artificial light.

Being inside is unnatural, it CREATES a state of stress in our body. We aren't supposed to sit in offices under florescent lights staring at screens for 9 hours a day. Stress creates inflammation - when we are stressed our body goes on high alert. The most minor and insignificant things within our body get blown apart by the immune system.

The healing power of the Sun

The Sun emits the full visible spectrum of light (the rainbow) it also emits Ultra Violet light and Infra red light which, unless you have bought special devices, you aren't getting from anywhere else.

Sunlight does so much more than we give it credit for

UVB Sunlight - is the only form of Sunlight that helps us to make Vitamin D - immune system support, cholesterol management, melanin stimulator. UVB light doesn't penetrate far through the skin so it only interacts with the first few mm of our body. UVA and UVB both are a natural bacteria killer (many COVID devices are made using UV technology to destroy viruses) Overexposure can cause burning and serious skin damage Underexposure can cause long term illness too. I know which side of the fence I sit on. Get some, little, often and start as early in the year as you can ....Sun exposure for UV rays is like training for a marathon - give yourself plenty of training and be sensible in the height of Summer.

Infra Red Light

Infra red light can penetrate deeply into the body. It is widely used in medical devices to encourage healing of damaged tissues such as muscles, tendons and cartilage. This alone can decrease inflammation as those tissues heal faster there won't be so much work for the body to do to clean up. What I find super cool is that IR light will penetrate into the gut. It will stimulate the bacteria in the gut to remain healthy (they need light too for the same reasons as us). As much as 70% of our immune cells work in and around our gut - it's why when it comes to decreasing inflammation in the body we tend to focus on diet! But if the bacteria aren't getting the right stimulation from the Sun then you're going to be fighting an uphill battle.

If getting in the sun is an issue for you, you can get infrared devices for the home. Use my link to get 10% off all of your orders: emr-tek.com/discount/RETRAINPAIN

There you have it - my 3 ways to reduce inflammation in your body and really get to grips with healing your body without changing your diet.

Sure there's more than this that you could do but start here, please. You'll save yourself so much time, effort, worry and stress if you simply focus on spending 30 minutes per day grounding in the Sun (2 birds with one stone) and work on getting your sleep sorted. Part one of my sleep course is here, take it.

If you want the rest email of the sleep course: info@retrainpain.co.uk with the subject line SLEEP and the rest is yours, literally everything you need to do for great sleep for £97 (includes a 30 minute 1:1 worth £50)