Daily Tip#25: Healing Power of Play in Health
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~ Welcome to the podcast. Welcome to Functional Medicine with Dr. Barr. Reset Your Health and Reclaim Your Life Podcast. Today's daily habit tip has to do with. Healing Power of Play. Have you ever found your, oh, I'm not even looking at the camera. Okay. Welcome to today's, oh, shit. Okay. Welcome to today's, ah, welcome to the podcast.~[00:00:00]
Welcome to Functional Medicine with Dr. Var. Reset Your Health and Reclaim Your Life podcast. Today's daily habit has to do with the healing power of play.
Have you ever found yourself laughing so hard, you forgot what time it was, or you're dancing around your living room like nobody's watching, only to realize how much lighter and calmer you felt afterward. What if I told you those playful moments aren't just feel good memories? ~They may be, ~they may be one of the most powerful tools to lower inflammation, protect your heart, and even slow aging.
~We usually think of health. We usually think health comes from, ugh. Sometimes I talk fast, sometimes I talk slow. Okay.~
We usually think health comes from strict habits, exercise supplements, and nutrition, and that's important, but science is also showing that something we dismiss as silly or unproductive play may actually be just as important for your immune system and [00:01:00] long-term resilience.
~Here's why. ~Here's why. When we play, our bodies release a feel good cocktail of dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins. These neurochemicals don't just improve your mood. They flip your nervous system out of stress mode and into recovery mode. That shift matters. ~Chronic stress. Keeps inflammation high. ~Chronic stress keeps inflammation high, raising the risk for heart disease, autoimmune flares, and even brain fog.
But when your parasympathetic nervous system, your rest and digest state switches on inflammation, starts to calm down and research backs this up. Some research has shown that adults who engage in playful activities tend to have lower inflammatory markers such as CRP and interleukin six
~res decades showing.~
Finding some time in your day for play can help reset your brain and body, and it acts as a buffer against chronic stress. So it's not just fun, it's [00:02:00] actually helping you stay healthy.
Why do many of us stop playing? Somewhere along the way, society teaches us that being silly and playful is childish and unproductive. We start to believe that we constantly have to be working and going and doing things, especially if we have a lot of things that we do have to get done.
We're taught that we're just goofing off and we're not serious.
We start believing that if an activity doesn't check a box towards a certain goal, it's not worth our time.
But this mindset could actually be quietly sabotaging our health. Without play, stress, hormones stay elevated, inflammation, smolders, and resilience starts to tank. over time, that can show up as fatigue, mood swings, or even accelerated aging. I mean, think about it, your kids can spend hours building forts or making up games without any guilt.
Pets instinctively play without any particular agenda. Yet as adults, we trade, play for productivity, and our bodies start to pay the [00:03:00] price. And I'm not saying that it's bad to be productive or to have a lot of goals. I'm just saying make sure that it's not
keeping you from finding joy in your life.
if you feel like you're constantly just on the go and you feel guilty about taking a little bit of time to do something fun, then this is a habit that you definitely want to incorporate. it doesn't have to be a lot of time you could just start with five to 10 minutes.
The beauty is play doesn't have to be fancy. What matters isn't what you do, but how you do it. True play has four qualities. So the activity that you choose should have ~these four cri four CRI criteria, ~four criteria. Number one, it should be voluntary, so you are doing it freely.
Number two, it should be joyful that you actually are enjoying it.
Number three, it should be absorbing that you lose track of time while doing it. And number four, it should be creative or spontaneous so that there's room for imagination.
today's habit challenge is to [00:04:00] schedule just 10 minutes of unstructured play today. Pick one activity that meets those four criteria and that feels good to you. This could mean dancing in your kitchen. Doodling. Playing with your pet, trying a puzzle, experimenting with a new recipe, ~playing a musical instrument, ~playing a musical instrument, or even just engaging in a fun conversation with a friend.
Having times of play and rest, your brain gets a break, your body gets good neurochemicals running through it, that when you are sitting down to focus and are working on your goals, you're able to do more faster. You're able to be more productive.
So start with 10 minutes and you can do more. Whatever feels good to you, just incorporate it. Just be aware of how you feel and weave it into your daily life.
And most importantly of all, don't feel guilty. You deserve to [00:05:00] have some joy in your life I hope this was helpful. Please share with someone that may benefit from these daily habits. If you're listening to the podcast, please rate and review as this may help my podcast be discoverable to other people so they can also benefit from these daily habits.
Also head over to my YouTube channel, functional Medicine with Dr. Var as there are other videos on various functional medicine topics that aren't on this podcast. ~Thanks for listening and watching. ~Thanks for listening or watching, and have a fantastic day.
