Getting Outside Today… A New Idea I Tested Out For You And Loved

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Time for some uplifting content.

 

In fact, for the rest of the year, I am planning tons of fun, uplifting blog posts that include fun “trying it out for you” videos (like the one below!) free access to my health ebooks, and even some uplifting artwork that I am painting right now!

So today, with this beautiful fall weather arriving, I want to encourage you to head outside and get moving!

To walk the walk, instead of just talk the talk, my friend Stacy and I went to a local Nia class and to try out a new form of exercise. Outside, in the fresh air and sunshine, grounded with bare feet, boy did we have fun!

I highly recommend doing Nia outside — just put on a YouTube video (here’s a fun one!) if you don’t have a local outdoor class in your area — and get grounded to the earth while you move your precious body!

 

 

 

 

Turns out, Nia is a very gentle, low key, easy way to get your body moving, while still feeling the tremendous perks that traditional exercise gives.

I barely felt like I exerted myself, yet my body felt completely mobilized, stretched out, energized and refreshed afterwards!

The medical literature backs our experience up. Even gentle exercise is life changing — reducing your risk of morbidity and mortality significantly… even if you have been sedentary for most of your life.

 

Truly it is never EVER too late to start moving your body and reaping the benefits.

 

New research published March 8, 2019 in JAMA Network Open shows that introducing physical activity later in life, even in your 60s (and as you’ll see in other studies below, in your 70’s and beyond as well) has a similar benefit of increasing lifespan as you would enjoy if you had been exercising since young adulthood.

Researchers looked at over 300,000 patients and found that exercising for an average of 2 hours a week was enough to protect longevity, significantly dropping their risk of dying from heart attack, stroke, cancer, and all causes of death combined.

And here is the interesting part: folks who were inactive but started to exercise in mid-life had every bit the protection to their lifespan as folks who were active from adolescence on. Participants who reported routinely exercising from adolescence had a 33% decreased risk of dying for any reason. And participants who reported being inactive during young adulthood but increasing activity in midlife enjoyed a similar benefit, at a 34% decreased risk of dying for any reason.

 

 

 

 

This echoes what researchers found in a study published April 2017 in the Journal Of Geriatric Cardiology, where researchers looked at almost 3,000 adults, with an average age of 71, and evaluated their mortality rates in relationship to how much they exercise.

What they found is that adults who exercised routinely dropped their risk of dying from heart attack or stroke by almost 60%. And again, the interesting part is how you are never too old to boost your health with exercise. Because even though the average study participant was in their 70s, if during the study they increased the amount they exercised even more, their risk of dying from a cardiovascular dropped by an additional 25%!

So truly, I mean it, it’s never too late to start exercising routinely, because even if you up your activity level starting when you are in your 70s you are significantly, measurably protecting your health and prolonging your life.

 

 

 

 

Then, in another exciting medical study published May 30, 2019 in Neurology Clinical Practice, researchers found that not only does getting active extend your life, it keeps your brain sharper.

After conducting a meta-analysis of 98 different randomized controlled trials looking at older adults (average age of study participants was 73) researchers found that adults who exercised, even with low impact activities such as yoga and tai chi, enjoyed statistically significant improvements to brain function.

And this included adults who already had mild cognitive impairment and even adults who had outright dementia — all were found to improve their mental processing speed, attention span, executive function and global cognition in functional brain studies.

 

Why am I saying it’s never too late to start?

Because the key to this study was not to have exercised your entire life or to exercise for long periods of time or to exercise more strenuously or even more frequently…

…it was only to exercise at all.

 

In fact, this study showed that you can begin to see these brain boosting results from exercising after only 6 months.

It didn’t take years and years to see benefit (statistically significant benefits began to accrue after only 6 months) and it didn’t take hours and hours of exercising (statistically significant benefits began to accrue after only 2 hours of exercise a week — that’s roughly 17 minutes a day.)

After analysis of the data, the only thing researchers found that made a difference in whether or not the exercise provided brain benefits was that the total time accumulated to roughly 17 minutes a day.

17 minutes, people!

 

 

 

 

And it doesn’t have to be strenuous activity.

A study published May 2019 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that replacing just 30 minutes of sitting time a day with even light physical activity decreased mortality rates significantly. And again, here’s the clincher: the benefit of replacing sedentary time was actually increased even more if you were older than 75 years old.

So light activity decreased mortality rates in adults older than 75 years old more than it decreased mortality rates in younger age groups. In other words, the older you are, the more that activity of any kind increases your lifespan.

So even at 75?

You’ve got no excuses not to put off that activity you’ve always kind of been curious about. It’s never too late to lengthen your lifespan through exercise. You can start today by doing Nia and having some fun!!!

Outside, if at all possible! And here’s why:

 

 

Directly touching the earth impacts your metabolic function, and as I found out, it can even help you lose weight.

 

The first study to look at the basal metabolic rate of grounding was published in 2010.

In this study, half of the participants were grounded and half were sham-grounded in a double-blind placebo-controlled study.

After grounding (or sham grounding) the patients for 40 minutes, all of the parameters of metabolic function immediately improved in all of the grounded patients, but that boost was not seen in any of the ungrounded patients.

Heart rate increased slightly, respiratory rate increased, and there was an increase in blood oxygenation in the grounded patients during grounding.

 

But here’s the interesting part…

…even when they stopped grounding, there was a persistent metabolic boost of increased heart and respiratory rates.

 

Think about how this small boost to your metabolic function helps you over time.

With a slight increase in respiratory rate, you are actually getting more oxygen into your blood (which, while grounded, is pumping and flowing more efficiently) and as the blood is improved in its flow and delivery, it’s carrying more oxygen throughout your entire body.

It’s like exponential support, because you are delivering oxygen, antioxidants and nutritional support to all the tissues in your body, on top of the direct conductive support you receive from the grounding.

This got me thinking.

I decided I wanted to study my own patients because I wondered if, by boosting our metabolism through touching the earth, we would see a change in weight over time.

So I personally enrolled a dozen overweight patients into an informal private study on grounding and weight loss. I followed them for 10 weeks, measuring weight, energy, mood, sleep, and pain, with weekly weigh-ins and assessments.

 

In my study, the instructions were to touch the earth outside directly for 15 minutes a day… and that was it.

 

I told them not to change their diet at all. I wanted them to eat everything they had eaten before in the same quantities and in the same fashion.

I told them not to start new activities or to change their activity level at all. I wanted to see metabolic changes from short periods of daily grounding over time.

Following those patients with weekly weigh-ins and weekly assessments was very, very interesting.

 

 

Most of the patients lost clinically significant amounts of weight

— between 4 and 15 pounds in the 10 week study period —

doing nothing more then adding in daily grounding for just 15 minutes a day.

 

The fact that the majority of patients lost weight with no change in their diet and no change in their exercise pattern is priceless.

I started thinking about the amazing results I saw in my patients and how encouraged I was by them and how wonderful it was to really see these powerful results first hand.

As an intuitive physician I tend to get more holistic-minded patients coming to me for support.

Many of them are already really healthy.

They eat the best they can eat.

They meditate all day long.

They do yoga morning and night, they drink raw juices, they sleep well and they take all kinds of supplements.

It seems that it should be impossible for a human being who’s breathing that well, who’s eating that well, who’s hydrating that well, who’s sleeping that well and who’s getting all the nutritional building blocks they need to feel bad… and yet they still do.

They come to me telling me there’s something missing in their health.

They have weight that they cannot seem to lose or they have another chronic health issue.

And every single time, after I talk with them extensively about their health practices, it turns out that grounding and docking themselves to the earth is that missing piece.

 

 

A lot of my patients are healers themselves.

They’re wellness-life coaches or they’re acupuncturists or they are energy healers or they are nurses or physician assistants or physicians themselves. They know a lot about healthcare and a lot about the health of the body and so they’re doing all the checklists. They’re doing everything right.

But the one missing piece of never touching the earth is enough to throw everything off because conductive healing is not something you can truly get in any other way.

Particularly if you’re an empath, weight may be an issue because you are absorbing energy and connecting and feeling other people’s energy and your body is becoming the tank for that energy and it’s stressful. You gain weight. Your body is using weight as a way to try and neutralize this stress and to ground itself if you are not grounding.

It’s increasing its mass to try to ground the energy that you’re taking in when you’re healing or working with or connecting to your loved ones or family members or coworkers or patients or clients.

You are constantly taking on energy.

And your body is really trying its best to help you by gaining weight to try and offset that energetic burden. I tell patients who have weight problems and chronic pain issues, your body’s doing the best it can.

It’s actually trying to neutralize things for you. It’s trying to ground itself.

But we don’t want to take on the stress or the pain from others.

Taking on the burdens of others and carrying it in our ungrounded bodies is not really helping anyone because now it’s harming you as well.

What we want to do is be that neutral grounded supported vessel so that we can be feeling our best, so that we can help others the best.

 

 

To do that, we have to reintroduce this missing piece of grounding.

 

As my study revealed to me, it only took a few minutes a day to make significant changes in the physical body.

In just 10 weeks, some people lost up to 15 pounds with no change in their diet or activity and I feel on a spiritual level that’s because all the energy they were taking in from all the people they care about every single day, was finally discharged.

Their body became a clearer, more stable vessel.

Their body no longer needed a larger physical size in order to try and ground the soul energy of the person living it.

When you can directly ground with the earth, your body doesn’t need to ground itself. It can then become the avenue for expression, instead of the dumping pit for everyone else’s stress and strain.

Directly grounding to the earth takes the pressure off of your body and that is what is most impressive to me about grounding.

 

 

Want more tips on how to safely, easily, and effectively reset your weight in a way that supports your innate health?

I’ve got you.

 

I’m running my 5 day Weight Reset Online Class to give you the 5 pillars of sustainable, feel-good weight loss.

I’ve based this course directly off of the medical literature and my 20 years of experience helping to support my patients with their weight loss goals.

Hop over here to sign up and reserve your spot today:

Yes! I’m joining into this

Weight Release & Reset Online Class

 

And meanwhile, today’s take home point is this: move your body outside for 17 minutes today.

Repeat again tomorrow.

Bonus points for doing it grounded when you can.

Make this a lifestyle change that starts right now and you will reap the benefits for the rest of your life.

To your resilient health!

xoxox, Laura