Your body is a living experiment
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Your body is a living experiment
We tend to think of an experiment as something that is done in a science lab involving chemicals or drugs, rather than something we are doing to ourselves. But consider the possibility that the way we live life is a form of experiment.
The simplest and most basic premise of an experiment is:
What happens if I do this? … and then observing the consequences.
Now it could be in a lab, adding one chemical to another, or treating cells with a drug or a whole myriad of scientific possibilities.
However, it can also apply to the way we live our lives, for example we could ask ourselves – what happens to the way I feel if:
- I drink 1-2 bottles of wine
- I eat lots of junk food day after day
- I smoke cigarettes
- I take drugs like cannabis or cocaine
- I stay up late every night
- I work too hard every day
- I care for everyone else before myself
- I perform lots of hard exercise, pushing my body until it hurts?
Most of us can probably already feel without even doing these activities that we will end up not feeling too great about ourselves and our bodies.
Equally we could ask ourselves ...
What happens to the way I feel if:
- I eat healthy nourishing foods
- I drink plenty of water each day so I’m not dehydrated
- I go to bed early and have a good quality sleep
- I look after myself first so I am more able to look after others
- I exercise gently with consideration for my body?
Again we can probably already feel that we would actually feel better about ourselves and more healthy in our bodies, but if you are not sure, you could conduct an experiment and see what effect any of these choices has on the way you feel and how your body feels. For example, commit to going to bed earlier for a week and see how you feel – it’s as simple as that! No rocket science required ... our body is our laboratory.
The fact is, every day we are making choices, and those choices are affecting our bodies and how we feel – perhaps much more than we have previously realised. In effect we are conducting experiments every day – we make choices and we get to feel and observe the effects of those choices.
However, because we have not fully realised that how we live has such an effect on our bodies, we have, if you like, been conducting experiments blindly – without even knowing that is what we have been doing.
Science is now confirming that many of our illnesses and diseases are associated with our lifestyles – the choices we make in our daily lives.
In other words, sometimes the end-result of how we have been living life, how we have been conducting the experiment, is an illness or a disease – and that is an outcome we don’t like!
And sometimes it is only when we get a result that we don’t like that we actually take the time to stop and consider how we have been living life, what choices we have been making, how we have been conducting the experiment.
Would it not make more sense to be aware that we are a walking, talking living experiment and to pay attention to how the choices we make every day influence the way our body feels? By listening to the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) messages of our bodies, we can then decide whether we need to repeat or change the experiment and make different choices.
Seeing yourself as a living experiment is a fun way to live and it puts you in control, realising you have considerable power over the way you and your body feel by the choices you make in your daily experiments.
Filed under
Lifestyle, Ill health, Disease, Healthy living
