When it comes to your health, there is one factor that is more important than almost any other ...

If it is missing from your life, it causes or worsens 95 percent of all illness. It has been associated with dramatic reductions in disease and increased longevity.

And it is more important than cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, or any other risk factor in determining whether you will live a long and healthy life. But it doesn’t come in a pill, and it can’t be found in a hospital or in your doctor’s office.

What is this critical factor that determines so much about how healthy or how sick you are?

Your attitude, your social networks, your community, and your spiritual beliefs.

Put another way, the health of your mind and spirit and your sense of connection to your community has an immense impact on the health of your body. In fact, aside from eating breakfast, biggest predictor of longevity is psychological resiliency -- being able to roll with the punches that life throws at us.

We’ve known about this in medicine for a long time. I was recently browsing through my library and found an old book that I read in college called Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer, written by a friend and leader in the field of mind/body medicine, Kenneth Pelletier. He is a clinical professor of medicine at the medical schools of the University of California, San Francisco and the University of Arizona.

His book was published in 1977. I wish I could say that a lot has changed since that book was published. Sure, we have filled in the gaps and learned more about the mechanisms through which the body affects the mind and the mind affects the body, but the basic truths remain the same.

There is a dramatic and powerful connection between your mind and body, and between your body and your mind. In fact, it really should not be called a connection because it is just ONE bidirectional system.

Unfortunately, few doctors accept or understand this fundamental reality about biology. So, in most doctors’ offices, you aren’t going to learn about the connection between your body and brain or how to use that connection to help you heal.

However, in this blog I am going to give you the tools to do that. I am going to explain how the body and mind are intimately connected and give you 10 tips you can use to calm your mind and heal your body.

Calming your mind is the last of the 7 keys to UltraWellness; today you are going to learn how you can relax your way to vibrant health and optimal weight.

Welcome back to my series of blogs on my new book, The UltraMind Solution.

You can download a free sneak preview of the book by going here:

www.ultramind.com

Now for today’s blog ...

Thoughts are things. They can heal or harm. Beliefs mold your brain.

This is not just a figurative metaphor for what happens. Your brain literally stiffens, slows, and loses function in direct relationship to your thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes about you and your place in the world. How each of us responds to our life—to our perceptions—has enormous implications for how we feel, how we age, and the health of our brain.

The most powerful pharmacy in the world is right between your ears!

Other than eating breakfast regularly, and eating more fruits and vegetables, the one characteristic that is present in all healthy older people is resiliency. Resiliency is that hard-to-measure quality of adapting to change, shifting with changing tides rather than drowning, seeing the glass half full, or knowing how to turn lemons into lemonade.

You see, your thoughts have real and measurable effects on your body and brain.

In fact, every cell in your body listens to your thoughts.

Your immune cells know your deepest feelings.

Your stem cells are wired to your brain and help you repair and regenerate. But they ONLY turn on and make new brain cells when you relax! And you don’t need placental injections or embryos to get them to work.

Research has shown over and over again that learning to relax is one of the most important keys to long-term health and vitality. In fact, it is a critical part of The UltraMind Solution. As you will learn in this blog, relaxing helps your brain regenerate and renew itself.

You need to learn how to hit your “pause button” if you want to heal your brain.

But that doesn’t mean sipping a glass of Chardonnay while watching TV or practicing retail therapy. You have to learn how to deeply relax and stimulate your vagus nerve.

In this blog I will teach you how to do that. I will explain how stress kills, relaxation heals, and how you can begin turning on your relaxation response—today.

A deficiency in this critical nutrient makes you are twice as likely to die as other people, according to a study published in the journal "Critical Care."

It also accounts for a long list of symptoms and diseases -- which are easily helped and often cured by adding this nutrient.

In fact, in my practice, this nutrient is one of my secret weapons against illness.

Yet up to half of Americans are deficient in this nutrient and don't know it.

What is it?

I'm talking about magnesium. 

It is an antidote to stress and the most powerful relaxation mineral.

You can lose weight without changing what you eat or doing one minute of exercise!

It's a bold claim.

And don't get me wrong: Nutrition and exercise are important!

But there's another key to weight loss -- and most people don't even know about it.

It's sleep.

That's right. Besides eating whole foods and moving your body, getting enough sleep is the most important thing you can do for your health.

On the flip side, sleep deprivation makes you fat -- AND leads to depression, pain, heart disease, diabetes, and much more.

Take sleep apnea.

In this condition, your sleep is interrupted all night because your airway closes and your body startles you awake so you don't suffocate. 

This is a very common and extremely under-diagnosed problem.  It affects 18 million Americans and most are NOT treated for it.

Let me tell you about one of my patients who was in that same predicament.

In last week's blog, I reviewed UltraWellness Key #6 how important energy is for life and for UltraWellness.

You learned why we lose it and how to make it.

But in this final week of our journey, I'd like to talk about an equally important factor in health - UltraWellness Key #7.

It's one that causes or worsens some 95 percent of all illnesses.

And it's something that, once you get it under control, is more important than cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, and any other risk factor in determining whether you will live a long and healthy life.

What is this crucial factor?

It is your attitude, social network, community, and spiritual beliefs.

In fact, one of the biggest predictors of longevity is psychological resiliency -- being able to roll with the punches life throws at you.