You wake up, drink your coffee, go to work, come back, cook dinner, and then crash on the couch. You feel a little tired, but that’s only normal because you’ve had a long day.
Still, nothing hurts, you feel fine, so you’re pretty healthy, right?
Healthy? Well… Possibly. Most people are ‘fine’ on normal days, but how would you feel if you had to carry a heavy suitcase up 3 flights of stairs? How fast do you get over colds?
Now, things like that are true tests of being healthy.
You might not know it, but your body is spectacularly good at hiding the so-called slow problems. It might be years until you feel the first headache from high blood pressure, but no matter how healthy you think you are, that blood pressure could be creeping up little by little.
The truth is that, when you feel normal, all that means is that there’s nothing terrible happening in your body right this second.
| High blood pressure is often referred to as the ‘silent killer’ because it doesn’t come with any obvious/noticeable symptoms until real damage has already happened. – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention |
It’s scary to think about, but feeling healthy and being healthy are two different things.
Why You Might Feel Fine and Not Actually Be Fine
The human body is weird.
It might be gradually getting worse without you noticing, and that’s called adaptation.
Think about it – just imagine you, as an example, had a door hinge that started to get just a little bit stiffer every single day.
You wouldn’t exactly notice it because you’d simply push harder on it each day, and that’s the same thing your body does. If you lose a little bit of mobility in your shoulder every day, you’ll start to tilt your neck and arch your back, all without realizing it.
That’s your body auto-compensating where it needs to redistribute more power/force.
| When a part of your body is weakened/restricted, other areas will compensate, resulting in increased strain; this cumulatively increases risk of injury in that area that’s compensating. – American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons |
It happens automatically and on a subconscious level. A part of you has basically taken on the job of another part that stopped working (properly).
What then happens is you still do what you need to do, but you do it sloppily, and slop starts to add up.
Delay is also part of the problem, and by the time you feel like something’s off, there’s a good chance things haven’t been working that great for months or perhaps even longer. Your knees work fine, and you have no idea your cartilage is getting thinner. At the same time, though, a long walk kicks your butt, and you need a day or two to recover, which isn’t necessarily normal.
And you might say, “Oh, that’s just age”, but unless you’re in your golden years, it’s not age (not yet). This becomes even more obvious after more serious incidents (e.g., sports injuries, car accidents, etc.).
Yet again, you might try to dismiss the situation as, ‘Oh, it’s Chicago, it happens here with this traffic; let me get in touch with an attorney for life-changing injury cases in Chicago and move on.’
To be clear, it’s nice to have this kind of attitude towards the negative in your life, but in doing so, you also risk missing serious injuries.
Strain and reduced mobility can linger on for months, and you might be feeling ‘healthy’ during that time.
Your Daily Habits and Their Impact on Health
If you go online and research a healthy lifestyle, you’ll see plenty of advice on how to eat clean and how many times a week you need to work out.
And it’s not that those healthy things aren’t important because they are, but compared to the little things you do every day without thinking, they barely matter. And you don’t exactly think about them. You feel okay at the moment, so why would you? But all those years of stuff like bad posture because of all the bad walking or sitting compound like crazy, until one day you feel a sharp pain in your back and realize you can’t get up on your own.
And at that moment, you won’t think about how you didn’t get injured NOW, at this very moment, but it’s been a slow grinding process instead; you’ll likely hear this from the doctor first.
How You Move Every Day
If you do it often, your body will learn it, regardless of whether it’s healthy for you or not.
If you’re reaching for the mouse every day for 8 hours the exact same way, your body adapts to that small range. If you round your back while you’re sitting, it starts to feel normal.
And it doesn’t really matter how well you’re working out, because no amount of that can undo 40 hours a week of slouching.
| Prolonged sitting (even if you exercise) is linked to musculoskeletal issues and reduced mobility, both of which are long-term health risks. – National Institutes of Health |
How You Go About Recovery
Recovery doesn’t happen without rest. You not (currently) working doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re resting.
This is a common misconception because people associate ‘not working’ with ‘resting’ all the time.
5 hours of sleep also isn’t resting, but if you never get more than that, your body will learn to function on those 5 hours. Will you feel a little tired all the time? Yes, but that’ll feel normal, even when under the surface, problems start to stack up.
| People who lack sufficient sleep typically adapt to feeling tired all the time and are cognitively and physically impaired compared to when they receive enough sleep. – Harvard Medical School |
How You Hold/Handle Your Body
Every time you lean and every time you shift, you change your center of gravity. This basically means that at those moments, you change how gravity affects your body (how it pulls you).
Here’s a quick example:
If you were to stand on one side (lean into it more often than the other side), your body would memorize that crooked way of standing.
This’ll cause your movements to become less efficient. Not to mention how uneven the wear on your body will get.
Conclusion
So, now what? You feel okay, but you’re probably falling apart. Is that it?
Maybe, maybe not. The point of this article wasn’t to make you a health weirdo.
If you feel healthy, that’s great, but how about paying more attention? How about going to bed earlier to get those elusive 8 hours a few times a week?
Just try to notice what’s happening, and if something doesn’t feel right, don’t brush it off because you’re too lazy to deal with it.
As with anything you read on the internet, this article on being healthy should not be construed as medical advice; please talk to your doctor or primary care provider before changing your wellness routine. WHN neither agrees nor disagrees with any of the materials posted. This article is not intended to provide a medical diagnosis, recommendation, treatment, or endorsement.
Opinion Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article on being healthy are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of WHN. Any content provided by guest authors is of their own opinion and is not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything else. The Food and Drug Administration has not evaluated these statements.
