Asking the right question for health

Good health should not be viewed merely as the absence of diseases. Rather, it is the physical and mental ability to live without being dependent on others, irrespective of whether one has a disease or not. Good health is also having the resilience to overcome life’s challenges. The health we are born with depends on a genetic lottery – that is, the kind of genes we inherit. The health we have as children may depend on the socioeconomic environment we grow up in. But the health we have as adults, and especially as older adults, depends on having the right knowledge to protect our health. To get the right knowledge, we need to ask the right questions.

We live in a world where many things can make us sick. Yet, most of us are not ill every day. This is because we have learnt many ways to protect our health. We have learnt, for example, that good personal hygiene and vaccinations can protect us from germs. We have learnt to avoid exposure to pollution and toxins in the environment. We have also learnt to pay attention to nutrition and healthy lifestyles as ways of protecting our health.

There is inflammation at the core of every disease. Inflammation is generally a protective mechanism to destroy germs and harmful substances that enter our bodies. However, there are times when unwanted prolonged inflammation in the body becomes a problem. Scientists now believe that all diseases that are seen with increasing age have a correlation with chronic inflammation. This includes diseases like heart attacks and strokes. It includes cancers. It includes degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.  

Since inflammation underlies every kind of disease, the right question to ask for protecting our health is: How to prevent unwanted inflammation within us?

Inflammation occurs from external triggers and internal triggers. The type of food we eat, the degree of pollution in the air we breathe, and the lifestyle we practice can contribute to increasing or decreasing inflammation in our bodies. Less obvious internal factors that trigger and modulate inflammation in the body arise from the brain. Anything that threatens survival will trigger the brain to produce the fight or flight response. This is the stress response which, when prolonged, creates chronic inflammation.

Signals that trigger the brain’s survival mechanism include distracted attention and rapid breathing. Distracted attention is something that evolution has programmed into the brain for surviving in unsafe surroundings.  Distracted attention is moving our attention from one thing to another rapidly so that we are ready to react appropriately at the first sign of danger. When we display distracted attention, for example while navigating traffic, the brain interprets it as danger and the stress response is triggered for fight or flight. In our modern lives, with so many things clamoring for our attention, distracted attention is almost the norm. Rapid breathing is another mechanism the brain uses for survival. Through rapid breathing the brain ensures there is enough oxygen for muscles to fight or flee. Which is why rapid breathing, which occurs whenever we feel afraid, anxious, worried, irritable, angry, or unhappy, triggers the brain to release stress hormones and prepare for fight or flight.

In the past 70 years, researchers in neuroscience have documented that the opposite of distracted attention, which is focused attention, can counter the fight or flight response. Focused attention is simply paying attention, deliberately and with intention, to one thing at a time. It is the essence of what is called flow. It is taught in all forms of contemplative practices. Similarly, the opposite of rapid breathing, which is slow-paced breathing, has been shown to dial down the stress mechanism. Slow-paced breathing is breathing slower and deeper than usual. We usually breathe at the rate of 12 to 14 times per minute. When we take 5 seconds to breathe in and 5 seconds to breathe out, we are breathing at 6 breaths per minute which is optimal for triggering the relaxation response in the brain.

Knowledge of how inflammation is triggered, and the ways in which we can protect ourselves from unwanted chronic inflammation, can help us extend our health-span till the end of our lifespan.