How to Promote and Maintain a Healthy Nervous System (by Dr Ben Kim)
1. Ensure optimal nutritional support for your nervous system.
Your brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves are coated with a layer of fat, called myelin, which provides insulation to your nervous system. When myelin is not properly maintained or is eroded by autoimmune illness, you are bound to experience any number of symptoms of nerve dysfunction, common ones being muscle weakness, inexplicable chronic pain, and diminished vision.
Action Step: Ensure adequate intake ofhealthy fats, and ensure adequate vitamin Dand vitamin B12 status. All are essential to maintaining optimal myelin and nervous system health.
In looking to make sure that your body's needs for vitamins D and B12 are met, be sure to understand the differences between synthetic and natural vitamins.
2. Exercise your nervous system on a daily basis.
As explained earlier, the simple act of writing requires that you use all major components of your conscious motor and sensory pathways; a number of different sensory receptors, peripheral nerves, synaptic connections within your spinal cord, major tracts within your spinal cord, and nerve tissue throughout your brain need to be utilized with great precision and coordination to produce neatly written words.
Action Step: One of the best ways of keeping your nervous system fine tuned is to spend a minimum of 15 minutes per day writing on paper as neatly as you can.
Writing with pen on paper is far more effective at exercising your nervous system than writing with a keyboard on a computer, as typing on a keyboard doesn't require as much fine motor control as writing on paper.
An alternative to writing on paper is to draw on paper, as drawing with precision also requires intensive use of all of the major components of your conscious motor and sensory apparatuses.
Getting back to the client that I recently saw for intermittent muscle weakness, within days of following the suggestions mentioned above, he noted a significant improvement in his grip strength. Interestingly, he mentioned that he hadn't written on paper on a regular basis for more than 25 years prior to beginning a daily ritual of writing for 15-30 minutes each evening. He was surprised to find out how much energy was required of his brain and his writing arm to produce neat and coherent sentences.
Clearly, taking optimal care of your nervous system requires that you pay attention to all of your daily choices. The main point of this article is to encourage you to provide optimal nutritional support for your nervous system, and to take up the habit of writing on paper on a regular basis - both of these actions can go a long way toward keeping your nervous system healthy in the years ahead.
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