Available Without a Prescription
Diabetes, hypertension, obesity, arthritis, depression. These are but a handful of the
diseases I see every day in my clinic.
I am an orthopaedic surgeon—a highly sub-specialized one who mostly
treats conditions of the foot and ankle—but when I go in to see a new patient I
review the patient’s entire medical history. It amazes me how many medical diagnoses people carry and the
amount of prescription medications that they take for them. We live in the richest nation on Earth,
with the most advanced medical technology available to us, but we seem to be
getting sicker and sicker. I am a
firm believer that many, if not most of the diseases I see can be managed,
cured, or best of all, prevented.
Not with expensive medication.
Not with therapy. Not even
with surgery. What is this
“miracle medical intervention?” As
it turns out, it is not a miracle at all.
It is lifestyle.
Principally, diet and exercise, but stress management, meditation and
sleep, are probably just as important.
Let’s start with exercise. I ask all of my patients what they do for a
living. Most answer that they sit
at a desk all day. It has been
said that “sitting is the new smoking.”
It is a fact. Our sedentary
lifestyle is slowly killing us. Humans
are not meant to sit at a computer desk all day. From an evolutionary perspective, we have evolved as hunters
and gatherers. Thus, our sedentary
lives are at odds with what our bodies are engineered to do. It should come as no surprise then that
our bodies are failing. It is
imperative that we become more active.
Most of us should strive for at least 30-60 minutes of exercise each
day. This doesn’t have to be going
to the gym and being weirded out by the sweaty guy with the tank top. Find something that you enjoy and JUST
DO IT. Walk, run, bike, garden,
vacuum the house, anything! As
long as you are not sitting on the couch, it is probably exercise. Motion is life, and life is motion.
There is a sign at Good Life Fitness that says, “you will
never out-train a bad diet.” It is
totally true, and I am living proof of this. I have completed 53 marathons, including 4 double marathons
with back-to-back Saturday-Sunday marathons. I qualified for the Boston Marathon and ran it in 2002. However, despite these accomplishments,
I have seen my own waistline expand a little bit each year, and have seen my
cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure rise a little bit each year,
too. How can that be, when I am so
very active? The answer is
diet. I am from western Nebraska,
raised on steak and eggs. Sadly, I
was probably also raised on margarine and other sources of partially
hydrogenated oils. Over the
years, I have become a healthier eater overall, probably, but the stress and
hours of my job mean that more often than I should, I reach for a bag of chips
and can of soda. Like our
sedentary lifestyles, our processed food culture is killing us, too. Again, our bodies evolved as
hunters and gatherers. We crave
sugar and fat because our bodies know that these mean calories, and calories
mean energy and sustenance. Sadly,
nearly everything we buy pre-packaged at the store or get in the fast food
drive through is laden with salt, sugar, and fat. Perhaps in another thousand years, our bodies will evolve
and thrive on the Western Diet, but right now, this diet is killing us. But it’s not too late. I am not vegan (at least not yet), but
for 6 weeks this spring, as a sort of experiment of one, I adopted a
plant-based, mostly whole foods “diet.”
In that very short period of time, my total cholesterol dropped more
than 30 points and my blood pressure and blood glucose, once borderline, are
once again normal. I am not saying
you have to be vegan or vegetarian to be healthy. Michael Pollan said it best. “Eat food. Not
too much. Mostly plants.”
We live in a very fast paced, competitive world. Most of us are chronically stressed out
and deprived of sleep. Jobs, kids,
money, the latest crisis on the news (Ebola, ISIS, etc.) raise our collective
level of stress. This, in turn,
causes the level of cortisol, a stress hormone, to be increased. This causes physiologic changes in our
body that contribute greatly to the diseases I mentioned in my
introduction. I have been
meditating here and there for several months, and have found it to be a very
powerful tool for dealing with stress.
It helps me to be more mindful in my everyday life. My wife can probably tell you exactly
the days I have and haven’t meditated over the last few months! When I do it, I am a more relaxed,
authentic version of myself.
Finally, sleep.
Most of us simply don’t get enough. It’s funny how we spend the first 20 or so years of our
lives doing anything to avoid sleep (as parents of 3 small kids this is
particularly true in our house!) and the rest of our life wishing we could
somehow get more sleep. We will
spend outrageous sums of money on mattresses and even tech devices to help us
sleep better. How little sleep one
gets is sometimes seen as a badge of honor among many professionals. There are individual differences in how
much sleep we need, but in general, a lack of sleep over time has been linked
to lower life expectancy. When we
are even mildly sleep deprived, we are the worst versions of ourselves, having
short tempers and making poor decisions, like reaching for the caffeinated
beverages and fast, unhealthy food.
Any wellness program is incomplete without a lot of focus on getting a
good, restful night sleep.
Eliminate the TV from your bedroom, late night meals, alcohol and
caffeine, and you will wake up feeling better than you have in a long time.
As a society, we are starved for health. We spend money on gym memberships, the
latest fad diet, and trips to the doctor, all in search of well being. I am by no means a hippy, new age witch
doctor. I am a product of western
medicine and I know first hand the difference that can be made in people’s
lives with a traditional approach to medicine, and this often necessitates
pharmaceuticals and even surgery.
However, I have become more and more convinced that the solution to many
of our problems isn’t the physician’s prescription pad or the surgeon’s knife,
but lifestyle modifications that are available without a prescription or even
an appointment. Eat your fruits
and vegetables, exercise regularly, meditate, and get enough sleep. Doctor’s orders!
Suggested reading list:
Finding Ultra by Rich Roll
No Meat Athlete by Matt Frazier
Running With the Mind of Meditation by Sakyong Mipham
The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal
Eat and Run by Scott Jurek
In Defense of Food & The Omnivores Dilemma, both by Michael Pollan
In Defense of Food & The Omnivores Dilemma, both by Michael Pollan
