By ROY LOVE, D.C. (Ret.)
As a retiring chiropractor, I greatly cherished working with patients for 40 years in which I worked on their musculoskeletal conditions and health conditions to help them function at their best.
Now one of my focusses in retirement is community, individual health and well-being. I plan to write about the value of social interaction, the importance of daily activity and exercise, laughter, joy, positivity, family, compassion, diet, attitude, travel, interacting with the great outdoors, and how all these factors play a role in your overall well-being. All of this is scientifically researched and validated. I’ll go over the research which explains the hows and whys of how it helps in each article.
I feel the Centre region is a very unique place in Pennsylvania and even in the world. We have an incredible connection with a major university, Penn State University. We are surrounded by beautiful natural parks and clean flowing water. We interact with diverse scholars from many different fields, as well as farmers, and workers in all fields. We are blessed, and we all deserve to know we play a vital role in the choices that we make in regard to our health and well-being. These decisions start from early childhood and continue through life. Lifestyle decisions on food, exercise, outdoor activity, social interaction, and our care and concern for our environment or exposure to our wonderful, great outdoors of Centre County, all play roles in our personnel and community health. Our decisions and positive interactions counter our genetic expressions and help us to stay healthy and live a longer, happier life.
Perhaps we will learn that love, laughter, kindness, and compassion make us all better people and make us healthier. Negative attitudes do just the opposite. Communication via cell phone doesn’t stimulate this healing system as personal interaction does.
So, in this first installment, I will touch briefly on how important it is to be socially active, to have friends and work hard to commit to those partnerships as your friends, your family and loved ones, and even beyond that, to the person you don’t know. Just simply saying hello and asking strangers questions about their lives, benefits you. These small social interactions are described by Barbara Frederickson, PhD., a researcher on positive emotions at UNC, as the fruits and vegetables of your life that make you a healthier happier person. These positive interactions that you have with a stranger, with your colleagues at work, with your friends, with your family, add substantially to your physical and mental health. So, reaching out, saying hello, sharing a handshake, caring, being compassionate, has a multitiered effect, not only on yourself, but on those around you and it continues to grow and help our community be a happier, healthier, safer community. In the next article I will discuss ways to make social healthy interactions fun and easier for our communities.
Lastly, I strongly believe that all wisdom should be mixed with a smirk, with laughter, and joy, to help it absorb well.
So for your health:
Cherish your friends and neighbors,
Plan more time to be with them, outreach to strangers,
they may become a friend,
and
Blink into a grin,
maybe even a smirk,
A few times a day,
You’ll feel good again!
