Take Control of Your Health - Your Guide to Vitality

In a world where our first instinct is turning to pharmaceuticals, there is a medicine for anything. We medicate undiagnosed issues like pain and fatigue along with diagnosable concerns like RA, fibromyalgia, and autoimmune issues. Don’t get me wrong - medical advances exist for a reason. Medication can be absolutely necessary in managing health. But not if you’re using medicine as a crutch to get through the day. Are your medications holding you back from healing? You can heal and get back on track to a healthy, pain free life.

At Huemn we service the Houston area with natural healing modalities to reduce pain and solve common health issues. There are natural ways the body can be guided back to its strong, active, and energetic state. There is no need to live in pain.

There are even steps you can take at home! Our services naturally treat your individual health needs, but it doesn’t end there. Approaching your health in a holistic way happens day-to-day with every decision you make. Your body is made of multiple systems, many health issues signal you’re off balance. What is your pain and fatigue telling you?

Let's explore some ways you can nurture your body and reach vitality. You may be surprised at how simple and easy some of these changes are. Small routine changes can completely reshape your health. Monitoring your sleep, immune system, and inflammation can tell you so much about your overall health without expensive hospital bills.

Sleep is Healing

Your body needs sleep to operate properly. Without adequate sleep, none of the bodies’ systems can function as designed. After a hard workout you rebuild muscle while sleeping. When you are sick, your immune system works hardest while you sleep. Sleep is crucial to good health. Yet, we don’t take it seriously.

You may be so used to inadequate sleep that you’ve forgotten what being rested feels like. Sleep deprivation, especially long term, can contribute to stress, chronic illnesses, and a compromised immune system. It leaves you feeling less than your best and makes every area of life harder.

Out of desperation many turn to medication. These pills will put you to sleep, but can leave you groggy the next day. You might even become dependent over time. Sleeping pills aren’t always necessary! You can change your routine and naturally sleep longer, deeper, and reap the health benefits of consistent rest.

The first step to better sleep is to make it a priority. The three most common sleep interrupters are overheating, light disruptions and loud noises. So keep your room cool, dark, and quiet. Sometimes your environment makes this harder, so invest in ways to fix it! Live in a loud, busy city? Get a white noise machine to cancel out the noise. Work third shift and have to sleep in the daylight? Invest in blackout curtains. Create a space that promotes good rest.

Try this - only use your bed for sleep. It is tempting to do work, eat dinner, or scroll on your phone in bed. This confuses your body. When you have different spaces for different tasks it separates them from sleep. That way, when you get in bed you know it's time for rest. This allows the body to fully relax and drift into a deep sleep. 

Once you're relaxed and taking your sleep more seriously, add a schedule. A nightly ritual before bed will train your brain to shut down for sleep. It could be as simple as brushing your teeth, putting on your pajamas, and laying down for bed. You could make it more elaborate and add in a nightly bath, chapter of a book, journal entry, or meditation.

Avoid screens during this routine. The blue light emitted from screen tricks your brain to think it is daytime and suppresses natural melatonin release. Add in lights-out and wake up times for maximum effectiveness. No matter the routine you create make sure you stick to it.

Naturally Combat Viruses

Why do we all get sick during the cold, wet months? It isn’t because viruses multiply rapidly in the cold - it has to do with your behavior.

In the colder months we tend to gather indoors. It's human nature to stay warm. The close contact brings more cozy memories, but it also means more exposure to viruses. With more exposure you’re at higher risk for catching a virus, but exposure alone doesn’t make you sick. Sickness comes from the body’s inability to fight off the virus.

Boost your immune system naturally and you’ll be better able to overcome cold and flu season. One of the most influential vitamins for your immune system is vitamin D. You absorb this best from sunlight,so less sun = more sickness. Chronic Vitamin D deficiencies are also linked to autoimmune conditions like: Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Diabetes Mellitus, and System Lupus Erythematosus. You can up your Vitamin D levels with a good vitamin D3 supplement or diet enhancement via fatty fish, cod liver oil, and egg yolks.

Other foods and supplements are known to naturally build the integrity of the immune system too! Using them along with consistent water intake could drastically change your health! Elderberry is an antioxidant with anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties that may be helpful in fighting colds and flus. Raw garlic contains allicin, which can help to kill both bacterial and viral invaders in the body. Oregano oil has a history of antimicrobial, antiviral, and antifungal benefits. Honey has vast nutritional, antimicrobial, antibacterial, and anti-inflammatory benefits. Manuka honey from New Zealand specifically kills bacteria topically and improves the efficacy of antibiotics. Ginger has antiviral properties. It binds to viruses so you can excrete them from the body. There are so many options you can add to your diet to naturally improve immune system health, and bonus they taste delicious!

Once you’ve given your immune system a boost with good nutrition, there are behavioral options you can explore too. Sleep is necessary for your body to fight off viruses and regain health. Make sure you’re getting good quality sleep each night. It can be hard to make time for sleep during the busy, stressful winter months, but it’s essential.

Limiting stress is important for immune system support. Whenever you're stressed, your body releases cortisol. This hormone interferes with your white blood cells, which are vital to your immune system. Cortisol also inhibits secretory IgA, compromising gut health and further weakening the immune system.

Chronic stress is not only detrimental to your mental health, but also your physical health. Methods of stress relief can be as varied as the people using them, but there are some common denominators. Try meditation, exercise, mindfulness and making time for activities you enjoy. All of these paths naturally lead to increased vitality.

Monitoring Inflammation

You usually hear about inflammation in a negative way, but it’s a truly amazing tool your body possesses. It’s one of the first signals that something is wrong, giving you a chance to help bring your body into balance. It signals the brain to prevent further damage to your already stressed joints, muscles or other body parts.

Inflammation becomes an issue when it’s chronic. If your body can’t heal properly, inflammation can continue for a long period of time. Chronic inflammation is painful and is generally linked to disease. When you think of inflammation what comes to mind? A rolled ankle or sprained wrist? Did you know your body reacts the same way when foods don’t agree with you?

Some foods are treated like foreign invaders. Your body will attack them and fight to create a balance with inflammatory cytokines. This inflammation is uncomfortable, sometimes downright painful and weakens your immune system.

If you have allergies, the best line of defense is avoiding foods that cause reactions. But it doesn’t stop there, if you are serious about reducing inflammation, it’s time to cut your sugar intake. Sugar is the biggest dietary culprit for inflammation in the body.

You may think sugar only affects your waistline, but it’s impact is much more profound. A high sugar intake suppresses the immune system and causes excess inflammation.Refined sugar could be making you sick, or keeping you that way. It’s associated with an increased risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, aging, and depression. Because of this risk, Inflammation should be properly monitored.

You can monitor inflammation through blood testing. There is a biomarker in your blood called high sensitivity C Reactive Protein (CRP), which is produced in your liver in response to inflammation and tissue damage. Consistently high CRP levels are associated with numerous diseases and directly linked to inflammation. Blood tests can be done at your healthcare provider or at home with in-home tests. For busy individuals kits that check your CRP and other blood levels are simple, easy solutions. With a single finger poke and 4 drops of blood, you can have lab results back within 7 days. All you need is a simple testing pad and 30 minutes.

A healthy balanced life goes a long way in managing inflammation. An anti-inflammatory diet, adequate sleep, and moderate exercise can reduce inflammation and keep CRP levels and risk of disease low. If your inflammation isn’t showing the improvement you want, take heart. There are various natural interventions to treat inflammation, heal chronic pain, and bring down those CRP levels.

Cryotherapy is a natural therapeutic option linked to inflammation reduction by increasing your norepinephrine production. Norepinephrine is a hormone that acts as a neurotransmitter. It affects how you perceive pain. When production is increased, norepinephrine can act as an anti-inflammatory agent in the brain. Here at Huemn we offer full body cryotherapy options. The cold naturally triggers norepinephrine production and could help solve chronic issues due to inflammation.

Photobiomodulation (PBM) is another promising natural intervention to naturally treat inflammation. This therapy is new to the game, but has proven to have many anti-inflammatory benefits without the harsh side effects that can come with medication. PBM increases oxygen uptake to your cells, which increases Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) production. As an end result of this process, inflammation is reduced. We offer this service to patients in the Houston area who want to naturally treat their inflammatory issues.

Another natural intervention we offer at Huemn is Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. Oxygen is a natural anti-Inflammatory. In order to recover from an injury, your cells need an abundance of oxygen. As you age each injury creates more cellular inflammation. Cells can balloon and deteriorate causing more damage. We utilize a hyperbaric chamber and the Live O2 oxygen training system to increase the oxygen in your blood plasma via a super oxygen event. The blood carries the oxygen to your distressed cells, returning them to their normal pattern. This results in a natural decrease in pain and inflammation.

All of these interventions may or may not be necessary for you. Listen to your body and find ways to naturally reach your health goals. You can reach vitality and become strong, active, energetic, and pain free.

Supporting Long Term Health

You can find natural ways to gain long term health.[1]  Regain your feelings of youth and vitality and fine tune your routines and reach optimal health. Before you know it, you can find yourself feeling better than you thought possible.

Stress management is guaranteed to improve your health. Find a balance within your body and make sure each system is not over or under stressed. Stress relief is crucial to ongoing mental health and reducing chronic inflammation. But believe it or not, the goal isn’t to be completely stress free. Beneficial stressors can improve your health as well.

You can easily come up with a list of stressors in your life. Most of these factors are outside of your control. You can’t always change your workload in the office, traumatic events from the past, or current stressful events in your personal life. Find some time for yourself to decompress, release your feelings, and do things you enjoy.

Meditation and mindfulness supports brain function by utilizing focus and breath. If you are unsure how to meditate on your own there are apps that can help. Headspace is a great app to start your meditation / mindfulness journey. Relaxing activities are another way to decrease overall stress.

You can certainly benefit from some stress relief, but believe it or not it’s possible to be too relaxed. Your body is designed to be challenged and to grow. When you are relaxed all the time your health can suffer the same way it can when you’re nearly too stressed to function.

Find balance by adding good stressors like regular exercise and cryotherapy to your routine. These act as reset buttons to your nervous system and help the brain determine which stressors are beneficial and which aren’t. Adding exercise or cryotherapy to ‘stress’ the body actually helps combat the negative environmental stress you experience day-to-day.

Finding balance with natural solutions like meditation, exercise, cryotherapy, and HRV tracking are the key to feeling your best and reaching vitality. If this balancing act sounds challenging, you can monitor stress and know when it is time to relax or stimulate your nervous system with Heart Rate Variability (HRV) tracking.

When HRV is high you are rested and ready for exercise and cryotherapy. When it is low you should be resting and meditating to reduce stress. The Oura Ring is a great tool to monitor HRV. It gives you a new reading each day, taking your body temperature into consideration. Using this tool, you’ll have a clear green light to push hard or a red light to take it easy.

Health is the foundation all else builds upon

Stop surviving and start thriving. A natural approach to your health helps you combat illness, keep inflammation in check, sleep well, and balance your stress. Find increased vitality when you care for your body, just as it cares for you.

Contact us at Huemn to learn about the natural services we offer to help you reach vitality. You can feel (and even look) your best and not worry about the harsh side effects that come with medications. We offer a variety of services to reduce inflammation, find balance, and have you feeling strong and energized.