It’s that time of year again! If you haven’t already, you will soon be seeing lights popping up everywhere! Lights on houses, lights in stores, lights on trees and bushes, lights in windows! Lights everywhere! A festival of lights!
Often during the holidays, people seem to light up as well with the joy of seeing family and friends or receiving a surprise gift or the delight of a first snow!! It’s always such a pleasure to see someone who is truly joyful and while science hasn’t discovered all that is involved you know it when you see it. People actually glow!
Some people naturally glow more than others. This is due, in part, to the fact that skin shines when it’s smooth enough to reflect light. On the other hand, skin can get dull when it is rough due to dead skin cells piling up. Children and teenagers glow more easily because their constantly making new skin cells (about every 28 days) which itself is AMAZING! You are constantly recreating yourself!
But people of any age can glow. You’ve may have heard the expression “she lights up a room” or “he lit up” when the ice cream was served. However, people are especially prone to “lighting up” when they are filled with love. For example, your parents were probably radiant as they looked into each other’s eyes on their wedding day. And they surely beamed when they first laid eyes on YOU!
Super AMAZING though are the results of recent studies that showed that the giddy feeling we have when we love someone (or something) triggers a physiological process that can benefit your skin (i.e., increase your glow factor.) The simple act of loving someone or something increases the production of a chemical called oxytocin. How smart is your body that it does that!?!
Oxytocin is also known as the “attachment hormone” because surges of it are responsible for the bonds between people in love, or between mother and child, and even between people and their beloved dogs (or ice cream.) So, your very smart body produces exactly what it needs for this incredibly unique situation. AMAZING!
Interestingly, oxytocin can also help lower the production of stress hormones that have a negative effect on your skin and reduce some of the inflammatory factors that slow healing. With regards to your skin, less inflammation means less irritation and that means MORE GLOW!! Oxytocin, and lots of other chemicals that control how we feel and look, are made by glands and to function properly glands require clear communication from the brain via the nerve system. Sometimes, bones in your spine can misalign and distort the communication between the brain and the glands, then your body chemistry won’t be what it should be. That’s why seeing your family chiropractor regularly is so important. He or she will check your spine to ensure that misalignments, called vertebral subluxations, are not interfering with the proper function of your nerve system. A well aligned spine allows your glands to function efficiently and you to let that little light of yours shine, Shine SHINE! Happy Holidays to All!
—By Judy Nutz Campanale, DC, ACP