When you were a tiny, bobble-headed baby, you were good at sleeping, crying, pooping, eating and charming the adults who cared for you. The right side of your brain was growing, changing, firing, wiring and learning. Your brain developed from right to left, and growth was focused on the big muscle tasks - rolling over, sitting up, standing, walking, reaching, feeding. Around age two, growth switched to the left side of your brain- word formation, and making sense of the world around you. Between two and ten, your brain kept growing and switching back and forth between development of right and left frontal lobes, until your brain was adult-sized.
Your brain controls everything that happens in your body, through the nervous system. But if there were glitches in brain growth, some crazy things can happen.
For example, let's look at your immune system.
The brain is the controller of the immune response. The left immune center is the action side. It activates antibodies when illness threatens.
The right side suppresses the immune system by preventing it from becoming overactive.
So if you had a delay in brain development or a trauma that affected your right brain, you might struggle with an immune system on overdrive, which hyper-responds to everything as a threat, resulting in asthma, allergies, and chronic food sensitivities. But you didn't catch every cold or sniffle.
If you had a glitch during the left side of your brain development, your immune system may not activate antibodies when illness threatens. In other words, if you were a kid with a left brain deficiency, you got sick a lot. Bacteria, viruses and other “bugs” played Red Rover and headed right for your sinuses, lungs and respiratory system. You were the kid with ear infections and constant doses of antibiotics. On the bright side, you probably DIDN’T have allergies.
Brain development also controls your digestive system. Right-brain problems show up as constipation and diarrhea, limited stomach acid and digestive enzymes, and poor muscle tone in intestines, so food doesn't get broken down, doesn’t absorb well, and doesn't move through the digestive tract very efficiently. As kids, right-brainers were picky eaters who were very sensitive to the way food smelled and looked.
Do you see patterns in yourself, either now or when you were a kid?
The good news - and there is PLENTY of good news! - is that your brain can rewire and make new and better connections. Specific movements and exercises can stimulate different parts of your brain so you can develop new pathways and rewire you for a healthier future!
Angela Hall
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