eXercise

Think Low Impact

The benefits of exercise are off-the-charts good for you and impact your body in so many positive ways.  However there is no benefit if you do not exercise, so the trick here is to do light to moderate exercise that is easy and fun so you keep doing it.

Start easy with walking 20-30 minutes 5 days a week.  Walk at a comfortable pace so that you aren't taxing yourself too much.  As you get stronger day by day, add speed and or distance to your walks to increase energy, reduce inflammation, and activate the lymph system to remove toxins from your body.

Lymph System: Remove The Dead Wood

Your body is an engine that converts fuel into energy.  We eat food, our body breaks this down into building blocks we can use to create new cells, repair or remove old broken cells, or generate energy in the form of heat and electricity to power our movements and enjoy life.  However if we do not physically move our bodies and stress our muscles and bones regularly, our bodies do not go into repair mode and this is where you want to be to fix damage to your body, grow new healthy cells, and calm down your immune system.

Strength Training: 3x Per Week

To further reduce inflammation and activate growth hormones and cellular repair, you must include 3 days a week of resistance or strength training.  This doesn't mean you need to go to a gym for hours at a time and lift super heavy weights and grunt.  Using your own body's weight for resistance training is a fantastic way to engage in strength training, its free, and you can take it with you anywhere!

Start with weights or exercises that are of medium effort.  For example if you bench press, find our what your max weight is (or might) be without risking injury, and cut that number in half and simply do 8-10 reps in 3 sets.  If you do push ups, find a comfortable number of reps and start there.  Then as you gain strength, slowly add weight or reps, depending on the exercise, to take advantage of your new super powers.  The key is to stick to the program and do it consistently.

Now You're An Athlete!

As you continue to progress with your physical fitness, you will obviously find that what might have been a little challenging last week is easier this week.  Continue to add to your cardio and resistance training regiment to challenge your body and grow while reducing inflammation.

It is important to stay in the band of "medium effort" because this is the sweet spot for reduction of inflammation.  No exercise leads to increased inflammation.  So does high intensity and long duration exercise.  This doesn't mean you cannot adopt high intensity interval training (HIIT) at some point, but be aware of the effects of HIIT on your inflammation level and how that will affect your overall immune system health, you may need to compensate with additional supplementation, sleep, or other steps to offset the effects.

Meditation

Meditation?  Really? Ommmmmmmm...

YES!

Meditation isn't just for Sufis, Yogis, or people who like to spend lots of quality time in caves!  Meditation has been well documented by western medical science to reduce stress, activate brainwave patterns that are not seen in any other type of activity including sleep, and balance hormones.  All of these have the side effects of reducing inflammation, improving your focus, and generally improving your mood and overall well-being.

Meditation doesn't have to be mysterious or difficult.  At its most basic, meditation is simply training your brain to improve its ability to focus on a single though without being interrupted by other random thoughts.  A simple way to  do this is to focus on two thoughts or ideas and alternate going back and forth thinking about only those two thoughts for a few seconds at a time.

For example, simply use your breathing and your field of vision.  Sit in a relaxing position in a quiet place and focus on your peripheral vision for about 10 seconds.  Then switch to your breathing and focus on that for about 10 seconds.  Then repeat for about 3 minutes or as long as you want as you get better at it.  Getting "better" at it means not letting your brain wander into other random thoughts.  At first random thoughts will be happening all the time, and that's ok, but as you improve random thoughts will decrease.

Positive Feedback

Be patient.  Consistency is THE most important thing.  If you're reading this, you probably have severe psoriasis or other auto-immune related disorder.  It took a long time for your body to get to this point and a lot of damage has been done.  It will take time for it to heal and repair.

Give yourself positive feedback as your health and physical fitness improve.  Keep a log of your progress so you can remind yourself how far you've come.  Relish in the new, stronger, younger body you are molding and draw power from that joy.  Use it to motivate you to do it again the next day, and again, and again.  Stick to the program. be patient.

I took me about 1 month for every year that I had sever psoriasis to heal myself to a level I and those around me, considered normal.  Have fun with the program.  Be kind to yourself physically and emotionally.  This system works.