Have you ever played a video game? I am a video game fan and have been for a long time. In many video games your avatar or character you are playing has a life bar somewhere visible on the screen. This life bar is a graphical representation of the vitality or health of your character. When it goes all the way down or to zero, your character is knocked out or killed and you obviously lose the game. This is usually followed by a “respawn” in which you play the game again but may have to start at the beginning again. Or you just rage quit the game all together and throw your controller. I dont know anything about that…..
The life bar depletes as they strike each other. And they spelled critical wrong
“But Coach Boone” you say, “what does this have to do with health and fitness!?” Well impatient reader, this is a good analogy for two ideas taken from Chiropractic teaching called Accumulative Constructive Survival Value and its opposite, Accumulative Destructive Survival Value.
In my video game example above, I am referring to the accumulative destructive survival rate firstly. In real life these are the things that “drain your life bar.” These are life stresses, physical stresses, injuries, traumas, disease, toxins, fatigue, age, being punched by a ninja, exc. All the things that make us run down, injured, or sick. Even in real life we only have so much physical capacity or “life bar” and all of these different factors in life chip away at our capacity. Also like a video game, once our capacity reaches zero, we can be killed by ailment or injury. Unlike a video game however, there is no respawn option, the game is over for good on earth.
Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.
On the other side of the coin we have Accumulative Constructive Survival value. These are things that increase your “life bar.” These are things like healthy foods, exercise, vitamins and minerals, rest, prayer and meditation, laughing, massage, exc. These things restore your vitality.
The concept though is not as simple as things that simply heal you. For example, if you have a disease simply resting and eating vitamins wont necessarily heal you. The idea is that things that add to your constructive value give you more overall capacity and resiliency against the stresses and sicknesses of life (the destructive values).
You could also think about it this way. You are a bucket. There is a constant stream of water being pored into you (the bucket). If the bucket overflows with water, you die. The water can be drained out somewhat slowly also, but normally the water comes in faster than it leaves. BUT what if you could be a larger bucket? This way you can hold more water safely and not risk it overflowing. This is working on your Accumulative Constructive Survival Value.
You see your body’s natural state is one of health and healing. This is evidenced in small part by how our wounds heal. Like if you get a paper cut its gone in a couple days. Our bodies are programed in our subconscious to heal, repair, and thrive. If you can keep a reserve of life bar or extra room in your bucket, your body will start the healing and repair process. If you are dangerously close to overflowing or zero life, your body is overwhelmed and has an extremely difficult time of restoring health or repairing itself.
This is why healthy eating and exercise are so important and helpful to us. These are two of the lowest hanging fruit we have at our disposal to increase our Accumulative Constructive Survival Value and keep ourselves healthy and able to withstand the stresses, toxins, and ninja kicks that life throws at us all the time. Yes our overall Constructive Survival Value will decrease with age (our overall life bar is maybe max 75% rather than 100%) but hopefully our wisdom in navigating life and keeping our constructive value topped off, and destructive values at bay will let us lead a healthy life right up till the end.
I watched both sets of my grandparents health decline slowly over years as they suffered more and more with disease until they died. What I didn’t understand at the time was that they were not doing anything to grow their bucket. Most things in their life only added more water in. I don’t want this for myself and I dont want it for you either dear reader.
As I always say, “live a healthy life and then drop dead.” Who wants a long suffering state of being when you get old? By keeping these values in mind and adding to our constructive survival value as much as possible, hopefully we can avoid suffering and live in health till the end. What are you doing to keep your health-bar up?
I dont know about you but I want to be able to sword fight pirates and yell at kids to get off of my lawn for as long as possible. Who’s with me?