Self-care

The health of your muscles, ligaments and bones are dependent on essentially the same things as the health of any other part of your body.

Each cell of your body is serviced and nourished by an extensive system of blood vessels that carry blood and it's many constituents (nutrients, oxygen, carbon dioxide, waste materials etc) to and from each region.    
For this reason, your lifestyle is just as important for your muscles and bones as it is for your heart, blood vessels, liver and lungs.

Health does not always segregate itself and for this reason, the more unhealthy you become, the more systems of your body (cardiovascular, respiratory, musculoskeletal, etc.) may become involved and affected. Therefore, to make your musculoskeletal system healthy, it requires the same care as making the rest of your body healthy.

The requirements for health are consistent and vary only in the proportion of each required at any particular time.  For example, rest and activity (eg. exercise) are two essential requirements for health, but when you are ill or injured, you require less activity and more rest. The basic requirement is the same, but the proportion of each has altered. Health becomes a matter of balancing and coordinating these essential requirements.

There are many factors that influence health, but the most recognised, easily adjusted requirements of health are nourishment (food), clean water, clean air, hygienic living conditions, sunshine, physical activity, rest and sleep, shelter, positive mental attitude.  Once we have attained these requirements we need to:

    1. Improve the quality of each,
    2. Learn to recognise the indicated proportion of each required at any particular time in our life.

We are responsible for each of these requirements and therefore responsible for our own health.  We are able to develop and improve our health as an active process, in the same way we can develop our own ill health.

There is not one of these factors that most of us cannot alter.  If there are, many still remain that can be improved upon, and doing some good is far better than doing no good.  There may be many excuses for not improving upon these essential requirements of life, but nature does not care for excuses and both the effects and the responsibility fall back on the individual.

Once we have developed an understanding of the principles of health and have successfully incorporated these principals into our lifestyle, we are then able to minimise energy spent on health concerns and get on with the true purpose of life……..living.