I was having a discussion with one of my clients about her belief that what was once possible (and seemingly easy) before the age of thirty is now a much greater physical challenge.
We discussed the fact that a full days (or weeks) work in her profession was once a breeze, but now leaves her feeling much more physically tested and generally results in back and joint pain from being on her feet all day.
This got me thinking in some depth about the gradual increase in joint pain, muscle pain, health conditions, disease, weight creep and fatigue that gradually sneak up on us as we get older.
Enter the overflowing glass concept:
If we think of our bodies as an empty glass and our lifestyle as the fluid which we pour into the glass it is easy to understand the relationship between what we subject our bodies to over time and the “overflow” effect that can occur if we never empty the glass.
The human body is a very resilient organism that is capable of surprising levels resistance to poor lifestyle practises that we subject it to. Tales such as people holding “self-experiements” and surviving on nothing but twinkies for periods of up to 6 months are proof of our resilience.
Everyone has their overflow point: As we age, our overall, continued exposure to bodily stressors slowly start to “fill” our glass towards the top. High fat, high salt, low nutritional value foods, alcohol, poor sleep patterns, work and relationship stress are examples of bad habits that we seem to be capable of tolerating in the short term but slowly as our glass gets full, one or more of these issues may cause an overflow effect and a health issue to arise.
See part two in my next blog.
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