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What is stopping you from beginning, or resuming, an exercise routine?
What are your obstacles? How do we change our behaviors? We all know that we should exercise more and eat
healthy foods. Why can this be so difficult?
Behavior change takes place when we carefully examine our obstacles and then make a plan, when we address and eliminate our limiting beliefs, and when we can release our defeating emotions. The example I cited above was one of overcoming an obstacle by breaking it down, realizing a different way of thinking about, and planning ahead. An example of a limiting belief is: “I’m just not athletic” or “If I lose weight, I’ll just gain it back – I’ve done it a dozen times” or “I don’t work out because I hate gyms”. If you repeat something over and over again, be it in your head or out loud to another person, you will make it real. To change a limiting belief, we first have to realize what our limiting beliefs are, we can then explore the root cause of this belief and then begin the process of letting go of this belief and replacing it with a more positive belief. The final obstacle to behavior change is defeating emotions. The primary defeating emotions are fear, anger, guilt, sadness, and shame. These are all emotions that we have experienced since early childhood and throughout our lives. Sometimes one or more of these emotions becomes overwhelming and we experience stress, anxiety, depression, or worse, panic attacks, insomnia, or physical ailments. Imagine a water pitcher sitting in your abdomen. When you were a child and you first experienced fear, anger, guilt, sadness, or shame, a little drop of “water” went in to your pitcher. As you have lived your life, more droplets of water have been added to the pitcher, until sometimes, we find ourselves walking around with water pitchers sloshing around at the brim. We are desperately trying to hold the water in the pitcher, even if means tiptoeing through life to keep it in. It is difficult to start walking (or running) on the treadmill if we have to tiptoe to keep the pitcher from overflowing. This is when it is time to empty your pitcher. You don’t need to carry the weight of the water around any more, and once you’ve emptied the pitcher, you will feel lighter and free to begin to do the things you want – like start exercising. General Guidelines to Healthy Behaviors This document was produced by the Lance Armstrong Foundation in collaboration with: Sue L. Frymark R/N/, B.S. Executive Director: Cancer Care Resources HEALTHY BEHAVIORS: DETAILED INFORMATION
This information is meant to be a general introduction to this topic. The purpose is to provide a starting point for you to become more informed about important matters that may be affecting your life as a survivor and to provide ideas about steps you can take to learn more. This information is not intended nor should it be interpreted as providing professional medical, legal and financial advice. You should consult a trained professional for more information. Please read the Suggestions and Additional Resources documents for questions to ask and for more resources. What are healthy behaviors? Treatment for cancer can be very hard on your body. Living a healthy lifestyle is especially important for cancer survivors. Good nutrition, exercise and other healthy behaviors may help your body heal from the physical harm cancer and its treatment may have caused. If you think healthy behaviors may help you feel better during your survivorship, you might want to consider creating a self-care plan. A self-care plan is something you can develop with members of your health care team. It provides practical ideas for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Everyone's self-care plan may include different diets and different activities. However, all self-care plans should include choices in daily activities that support a healthy lifestyle. A good self-care plan may improve your quality of life and may lower your risk for illnesses, including cancer and heart disease. Four parts of a self-care plan are: Physical activity Nutritional recommendations Stress reduction Medical care Each survivor is different and therefore each self-care plan is different. It's extremely important that you consult with your health care team and discuss your medical history when developing a self-care plan. Some healthy behaviors that a self-care plan may include: Physical activity Breathing exercises Walking Hiking Running Cycling Swimming or water aerobics Gardening and outdoor work Playing sports you enjoy Dance or movement classes Nutritional recommendations Eating five to seven servings daily of fruits and vegetables Eating plenty of fiber Eating enough fat - up to 20% of your total calories per day Drinking eight to ten glasses of water per day Avoiding salted, pickled or smoked foods Not eating a lot of red meats Not smoking Drinking little or no alcohol Stress reduction activities Doing things you find fun and that make you laugh Doing things that make you feel relaxed Taking classes - like music, painting or other hobbies Writing in a journal Praying and meditating Attending support groups or counseling Medical care Taking your medications as directed Having regular medical follow-up Knowing what symptoms to look for and when to contact a member of your health care team If you are living with a disability from cancer or its treatments, activities that promote wellness and health in your life after cancer may be totally different from what you did before cancer. Even with physical limitations, there are still things you can do to maximize your health. It may mean learning new ways to do the things you enjoy. You might want to consider discussing with your doctor ways to maximize your health and incorporate changes in your body into your self-care plan. Who benefits from healthy behaviors? Many cancer survivors find that they feel better if they incorporate healthy behaviors into their daily routine. It's important to remember that not everyone's healthy behaviors are going to be the same. Eating right for your health needs and including some exercise that relates to your recovery needs may improve how you feel. It may also reduce your risk for cancer and other major health problems. Some of the major risk factors for cancer are: Not getting the nutrition your body needs Being overweight Drinking too much alcohol Using tobacco products Spending too much time in the sun without protection A good self-care plan may help you avoid these risks. You should ask your health care team about your particular risk factors so you know what things you should avoid. When are healthy behaviors important? Even if you feel fine after your cancer treatment ends, you can still benefit from incorporating healthy behaviors into your daily routine. Survivors who experience physical changes like weakness or changes in their weight after cancer may be more likely to discuss healthy behaviors with their health care team. But all survivors can benefit from learning what healthy behaviors are good for them during their survivorship. Healthy behaviors may help some survivors who experience: Weakness Loss of balance Fatigue Stiff muscles and joints Weight loss or weight gain Problems sleeping Restlessness There is no guarantee that healthy behaviors will cure or prevent possible aftereffects from treatment. However, healthy behaviors may make you feel like you are doing as much as you can to improve how well you feel on a daily basis. If physical problems still affect you after you have been following your self-care plan for a while, there may be other treatment options that will help you. This doesn't mean you should stop having a self-care plan. It may mean that you and your health care team need to make some adjustments to your self-care plan or that you receive other medicines or treatments that become part of your self-care plan. What are ways that survivors can incorporate healthy behaviors into their lifestyle? Below is a brief list. For more information, see Suggestions. Talk to your health care team about what diet and exercise plan are best for your recovery needs Establish some long-term goals and also set realistic and specific short-term goals to include more healthy behaviors in your life Explore the different ways you can manage stress in your daily life Works Cited Lorig, K., Holman,H., Sobel, D. Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Conditions. Colorado: Bull Publishing, 2000. Brown, J., Byers, T., Doyle, C. “Nutrition and Physical Activity During and After Cancer Treatment: An American Cancer Society Guide for Informed Choices.” CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 53 (2003): 266-291.Enter content here Using Your Mind's Eye to Heal From the Rodale book, New
Choices in Natural Healing for Women:
You can't take a laser gun and zap away cancer cells. And you can't sweep endometriosis out of your pelvic cavity with a broom. But setting aside time each day to think about doing those things could be the first step in getting better. In a world of high-tech medical gadgetry and space-age technology, the best software in the world is still that gray matter between your ears, notes James S. Gordon, M.D., director of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, D.C., and author of Manifesto for a New Medicine. Using thoughts to deal with pain, control illness or reach goals is known as imagery or visualization. Strictly speaking, visualization uses the mind to concentrate on visual images, while imagery borrows from all the senses--mainly touch, sound, sight and smell. To use visualization to relax, for example, you might visualize a restful beach scene. Imagery, however, is more of a self-guided, multimedia event; you imagine hearing the waves, feeling the breeze and smelling the salt air. MAKE THE PIZZA CONNECTION To get an idea of how strong the mind-body connection is, try this exercise: Picture a big, gooey pizza. The smell of garlic, tomato and basil tickles your nostrils. The cheese is all bubbly and the crust is golden brown. Imagine that you pick up a slice and take a bite. Taste the tangy sauce, the chewy cheese stretching like a mozzarella rubber band from your mouth to the slice. If your mouth waters just thinking of that tantalizing pizza, then you get an idea of how your thoughts can trigger physical reactions in your body. And it's no surprise that mental images can be used to treat everything from headaches to menstrual cramps, says Judith Green, Ph.D., professor of psychology and biofeedback in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Aims Community College in Greeley, Colorado, and author of The Dynamics of Health and Wellness. "With arthritis you might envision someone coming along with an oil can, and the rough edges of the joint smoothing out," says Dr. Gordon. "Or with headaches, I encourage people to imagine the size, shape and color of their pain and to see it disappearing." Guided imagery occurs when someone else--most often a psychotherapist--shapes the images or kinds of images that you have, based on what kinds of images seem to have the strongest healing potential for certain conditions. To help give reality to the image, therapists often show you medical text pictures or x-rays of what your disorder looks like in the body or even of what the body part looks like. That makes visualization much easier, says Dr. Green. "It's the difference between telling someone with cancer to find her own image that helps strengthen her body and taking someone through her body, telling her to see the white cells move the cancer cells out," says Dr. Gordon. TWO-WAY COMMUNICATION To be sure, it's annoying to be told that a health complaint is "all in your head." That's an oversimplification. But how you feel really is largely dictated by mental outlook, says Dr. Green. "Imagery is the primary language of the body," she notes. "The body understands English and you can talk to it directly, but it truly loves images." The mind-body connection centers in the hypothalamus, the section of your brain that regulates the autonomic nervous system, which controls automatic processes such as blood pressure. The hypothalamus regulates two branches of the autonomic nervous system--the sympathetic, which responds to stress and gets the heart pumping, and the parasympathetic, which calms the body's responses, explains Dr. Green. "These parts of the brain are set up so that they'll respond to our thinking and feelings," notes Dr. Green. So, if your brain regulates your body and your thoughts regulate your brain, it only makes sense that you can affect many of your physical responses, including illness. The relaxation response that visualization and imagery create has a positive effect on the body, notes Howard Hall, Ph.D., assistant professor of pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University and psychologist at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital, both in Cleveland. "Stress causes hormones like adrenaline to flush through the body, which may cause physical symptoms," says Dr. Hall. "Imagery helps counterbalance stress." After burning himself on a hot pan, Dr. Hall used the technique himself. "Thinking 'cool' and 'comfortable' actually helped ease the pain," he says. "That and applying ice, of course." Another way that the technique works is by changing the rate of blood flow in the body. "If you or your child gets cut, a calming suggestion in a crisis will help stop the blood from gushing," he notes. In other cases, such as Raynaud's phenomenon, you can increase blood flow by achieving a relaxed state. Imagery specifically dealing with warming the hands, such as holding a cup of warm hot chocolate, or less specific images, such as picturing oneself on a beach, facilitate warming. Images should be tailor-made to suit each person's preference. Doctors who employ imagery and visualization often combine them with other mind-body techniques, such as biofeedback, hypnosis andrelaxation, notes Dr. Hall. Many of the psychologists, psychiatrists and medical doctors who use visualization, for example, do so either in tandem with alternative treatments or with conventional therapy, notes Patricia Norris, Ph.D., clinical director at the Life Sciences Institute of Mind-Body Health in Topeka, Kansas. "I don't think of it as a stand-alone treatment," she says. A MODERN USE FOR AN ANCIENT SKILL Imagery was used by the ancient Egyptians, in East Indian Ayurvedic medicine and yoga as well as by the shamans (or healers) in American Indian tribes thousands of years ago, notes Archana Lal-Tabak, M.D., clinical psychoneuroimmunologist (who studies the mind-body connection) at the American Holistic Centers in Chicago. "So really, historically, we've been looking at a mind-body connection throughout time," she says. It wasn't until the 1960s, however, that Western medicine stood up and took notice. Oncologist Carl Simonton, M.D., and psychologist Stephanie Simonton, Ph.D., developed a program for cancer patients using conventional treatment and visualization after Dr. Carl Simonton noticed that patients with spontaneous remission of cancer were usually the ones who said, "I always imagined myself as well." The visualization involved four pictures: seeing the treatment destroy cancer cells that are too weak to repair the damage, seeing the white cells of the immune system swarm all over the cancer, seeing the cancer shrink and seeing a return to health. In the early 1970s, the Simontons tested this procedure on 159 cancer patients who'd been given one year to live. Of these, 63 patients were alive two years after their diagnosis. Of those 63, 22 percent showed no evidence of cancer, while 19 percent saw their tumors get smaller and 27 percent had stabilized. Later studies have shown visualization and imagery to be effective with less serious ailments as well. In a study of 15 women who suffered from menstrual or premenstrual problems such as pain, water retention and mood changes, for example, troublesome symptoms were cut roughly in half through the use of guided imagery. Western medicine hasn't always considered the value of mind power in treatment of ailments, says Dr. Green. But that's slowly changing. Over a two-year period, for example, researchers have done at least 30 studies involving the use of imagery and visualization. These techniques are most commonly used for headaches, cancer, pain, colds, asthma, allergies, arthritis, gynecological problems (like heavy or painful menstrual periods), menopausal symptoms (such as hot flashes), infertility, ovarian cysts, lupus (an autoimmune illness in which the body attacks healthy tissue), fibromyalgia (painful "trigger points" in the muscles) and chronic fatigue, notes Dr. Lal-Tabak. That doesn't mean that imagery or visualization is a panacea for every problem or that conventional medicine isn't also a good idea, notes Dr. Norris. "It's not necessarily a cure. It helps the immune system and eases pain," she says. "If you can get over a cold in three days instead of ten, then you're helping your body." BELIEF CAN BRING RELIEF An open mind is key to using imagery and visualization successfully, says Dr. Green. That's why children are especially good at it; they truly believe that it will work, she notes. "Children are successful because they have no preconceived notions that imagery will not work," she notes. "They are more 'tuned in' to using their minds than adults are." Once grown, however, it's women who have the real edge when it comes to using the old noggin for healing, notes Dr. Gordon. "I think that women are much more open to anything that has to do with psychological aspects of illness and, in general, are more open to self-help," he notes. "Men are more oriented to a technological fix and to letting someone else do it for them." In fact, being easily hypnotized, which indicates that you're open to suggestion, is another sign that visualization and imagery could come easily to you, says Dr. Hall. Hypnotizable people can focus and concentrate better, so they could also probably create images better as well. But Dr. Hall stresses that, with practice, anyone can make visualization and imagery work for them. "The most important thing is that you just have to be motivated. It's constant practice that makes the headaches go away," he notes. "And other things, like exercise, diet and state of mind, can all have an effect on how well it works for you." PICTURE YOURSELF WELL Getting started with visualization and imagery is as simple as closing your eyes. In fact, a brain (as well as an open mind) is all the "equipment" that you'll ever need when using visualization to help the body heal. Say you have asthma. Picture your bronchial tubes opening and then cleaning them out with a vacuum cleaner. Do this for about ten minutes, twice a day. This visualization guides the body toward healing, says Dr. Green. (But don't stop using your asthma medications without close supervision by your health care provider.) Visualization can also be used as a preventive measure, she notes. In general, though, it's probably best to learn how from a psychologist or psychotherapist who is trained in using imagery or visualization and can help you find images that best work for you, notes Dr. Norris. If you want to try imagery or visualization for yourself, these guidelines can help get you started. Sit quietly and comfortably. Then start deep breathing--that is, breathe in and out with your eyes closed and your stomach 'soft,' says Dr. Gordon. Let that softness spread from your belly into your legs and upper body, breathing deeply. "At this point, I take people using guided imagery on a little trip--walking down a road, going off the road, crossing a meadow, stepping into a clearing," he says. "Or I ask them to mentally visit a place where they feel completely comfortable." Imagine a bright white light. To utilize imagery for general good health, says Dr. Lal-Tabak, picture a bright light going through your body, surrounding and protecting you, keeping out negative energy. Do it for about 15 minutes twice a day--once in the morning and once at night--she says. Do it daily. Whether you select a healing image from your mind's image gallery, follow imagery suggested by a professional or practice "maintenance" bright light imagery, experts say that you should practice regularly. "It's a skill that you really can sharpen," says Dr. Green. Daydream at your leisure. Aside from doing visualization and imagery, you can daydream whenever you have a moment, says Dr. Green. "Daydreaming is a way to learn how to get into the quiet state and let the images come to your mind," she notes. "So learn to be more creative by turning on your mental eye, relaxing and getting into a state of reverie." Then add the images that come to your "databank" of healing visions.
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"Then you could see an arthritic joint as a beautiful ball bearing that's smooth and perfect, or a person with asthma
can see all the little bronchial tubes open while breathing perfectly," she notes. Enter supporting content here