Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Hi, I’m Dr. Pete Weiss of More Health Less Care, and today I’d like to talk about the work of Har­vey Hyman, J.D.  Har­vey is a lawyer who has ded­i­cated the remain­der of his career to help­ing other lawyers achieve well­be­ing.

Recently I posted a piece sug­gest­ing that lawyers might actu­ally be able to help their clients achieve well­be­ing, and Har­vey con­tacted me to say, “Pete, I don’t think you know it, but many, many lawyers are suf­fer­ing them­selves.”  Phys­i­cal, emo­tional and spir­i­tual ill­nesses are very, very com­mon in the legal pro­fes­sion.

Appar­ently, lawyers get burned out and they don’t take care of them­selves very well.  I was aston­ished to learn how com­mon this is.  About 20% of all lawyers in Amer­ica have some com­bi­na­tion of depres­sion or alco­holism.

Har­vey was there him­self, suf­fer­ing from major depres­sion.  When he recov­ered, he decided he would ded­i­cate the rest of his career to help­ing other lawyers recover.  That’s why he wrote this book.  It’s called “Upward Spi­ral: Get­ting Lawyers From Daily Mis­ery To Life­time Well­be­ing.”

I read it and I like it.  It’s a sort of field man­ual for lawyers who are strug­gling with the dif­fi­cult nature of the pro­fes­sion and their stress.  It shows them how they can make some changes so that they feel emo­tion­ally bet­ter; achieve well­be­ing; take care of their phys­i­cal life, their emo­tional life, their spir­i­tual life; and take good care of their fam­i­lies too.

With Harvey’s knowl­edge of how law is actu­ally prac­ticed, he’s able to give very prac­ti­cal advice that addresses the nitty-gritty of what goes on in law prac­tice and how to do things dif­fer­ently, such as how to think dif­fer­ently and how to act dif­fer­ently to make real improve­ments in your life.

So if you’re a suf­fer­ing or dis­sat­is­fied lawyer on the edge of burn out, or if you know some­one or care about a lawyer that you think is burn­ing out or could ben­e­fit from tak­ing bet­ter care of them­selves, I strongly rec­om­mend this book, the “Upward Spi­ral” by Har­vey Hyman.  Thanks Har­vey.

I’ve got a sim­ple mes­sage for you today.  Big is bad.

Big Gov­ern­ment is bad.  Big Health­care is bad.  Big Insur­ance Com­pa­nies are bad.  Big Food Indus­try is bad.

All of them are destroy­ing our health and well being in Amer­ica today.  I’m talk­ing about our phys­i­cal health, our emo­tional health, and our spir­i­tual health.  They’re being sucked out of us by these pow­er­ful forces.

Don’t kid your­self.  The politi­cians have one inter­est, and that’s stay­ing elected.  The big food indus­try has one inter­est and that’s sell­ing you more and more food whether it’s healthy for you or not.  They don’t care.  The big insur­ance com­pa­nies — they want to stay in busi­ness and keep pay­ing their CEOs large bonuses.  That’s just the way it is.

I know we got the “Tea Party” going on.  I kind of like the Tea Party, but I don’t think the Tea Party’s going to change much.  We’re going to vote some peo­ple in, they’re going to promise us change.  Hey, Obama promised us change.  Are you get­ting any of the kind of change you want?  I don’t think so, and I don’t think these new guys are going to giv­ing us the kind of change we want either.  It’s going to be the same old thing.  Within one or two elec­tion cycles they’re going to be the same kind of weasels we’ve got on Capi­tol Hill now.

If you want to be healthy, if you want to be well, you can­not rely on the big gov­ern­ment, the big insur­ance com­pany, the big health­care sys­tem, or the big food indus­try to change.  You’ve got to do it your­self.  There are peo­ple that can help you.  They’re all around you.  Just start ask­ing.  I’m one of them, and I’m try­ing to gather them together so you can find them.

You can be dif­fer­ent.  It’s not that hard.  It does require courage, but you can do it.  Go for it.

Hi, I’m Dr. Pete Weiss of More Health Less Care, and today I’d like to talk to you about four things that I like about alter­na­tive med­i­cine. The first is that alter­na­tive med­i­cine is not “big busi­ness” in the same sense that tra­di­tional med­i­cine is big busi­ness nowa­days. Yes, a lot of money is spent every year on alter­na­tive med­i­cine, but alter­na­tive med­i­cine providers typ­i­cally are solo prac­ti­tion­ers or in very small groups, maybe two or three at the most.

This is not what you see in tra­di­tional med­i­cine, where big­ger is bet­ter, where there are very large physi­cian groups, hos­pi­tal chains and other large orga­ni­za­tions. I think when you have an orga­ni­za­tion that’s very large; it’s easy for the orga­ni­za­tion to lose focus on the indi­vid­ual who needs care. On the alter­na­tive side, providers are always focused on pro­vid­ing the best care they can, not on run­ning a huge orga­ni­za­tion.

The sec­ond thing I like about alter­na­tive care is the holis­tic focus. As you know on the tra­di­tional side, there’s a hyper spe­cial­iza­tion these days. There’s an ear doc­tor, nose doc­tor, throat doc­tor, lung doc­tor, spleen doc­tor, liver doc­tor, kid­ney doc­tor. There are so many doc­tors, it seems like there’s even a pinkie doc­tor. That’s just how it is.

On the alter­na­tive side, yes there are spe­cial­ists. You may have a chi­ro­prac­tor or acupunc­tur­ist or another spe­cial­ist, but almost all of them approach their prac­tice from a holis­tic, whole per­son approach.  They con­cern them­selves with the whole per­son — mind, body and spirit — not just the nar­row slice of the per­son related to one organ or one organ sys­tem — not just related to the com­plaints that they’re hav­ing or their rea­son for pre­sent­ing.  They’re more con­cerned about the whole per­son, and I like that.

The third thing I like is that alter­na­tive providers sim­ply have a lot more time than tra­di­tional providers. You know it’s not unusual to have a 10-minute doc­tor appoint­ment, a 12-minute doc­tor appoint­ment, or a 15-minute doc­tor appoint­ment. You can’t really find out too much about a per­son in fif­teen min­utes. You can’t really cre­ate a deep and mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship in fif­teen min­utes three or four times a year. But that’s just the way it is in tra­di­tional med­i­cine.  It’s got­ten very, very short, and a half an hour appoint­ment or an hour appoint­ment would be unusual in today’s world.

On the alter­na­tive med­i­cine side, that’s more nor­mal.  It’s nor­mal to have a 45-minute appoint­ment, an hour appoint­ment or even longer.  Within that time you can really get to know a per­son. The provider can know you and you can know them, and that’s the best rela­tion­ship for heal­ing.

And lastly, alter­na­tive providers tend to touch peo­ple a lot more, and touch is impor­tant.  It’s really been left out of a lot of doctor-patient inter­ac­tions on the tra­di­tional side these days.  The doc­tor rushes in, the doc­tor rushes out, maybe he slips his stetho­scope on you, touches you lightly, but not very much. As humans, we relate to each other through spend­ing time together, con­ver­sa­tion but also through touch­ing. Touch­ing is so impor­tant, and I believe it’s an impor­tant part of heal­ing and an impor­tant part of a ther­a­peu­tic rela­tion­ship.  You see that a lot more on the alter­na­tive care side.

So these are four things that I like about alter­na­tive care.   “Alter­na­tive” care — I think it’s los­ing its pejo­ra­tive nature, the term “alter­na­tive,” and, as I was think­ing about this, I was think­ing, “when do I use alter­na­tives?” I use alter­na­tives when what I do isn’t work­ing. If I’m on the high­way and there’s a traf­fic jam, I’m look­ing for an alter­na­tive route.  And I don’t think that tra­di­tional health care is work­ing all that well for most Amer­i­cans these days, so maybe it’s time that you look for an alter­na­tive.

Hi, I’m Dr. Pete Weiss of More Health Less Care, and today I’d like to talk about the three most pow­er­ful words in the Eng­lish lan­guage. No, the three most pow­er­ful words in the Eng­lish lan­guage are not, “I love you.” A lot of peo­ple say that, but I think the 3 most pow­er­ful words in the Eng­lish lan­guage are “Please help me.”

Think about the power in ask­ing for help. You can get almost any­thing you need done. If you’re hav­ing a prob­lem, find some­body who’s an expert, some­body who can help you and say, “Please help me.” — Please help me get well. Please help me do bet­ter at my job. Please help me be a bet­ter par­ent. Please help me be a bet­ter hus­band, or wife. You can accom­plish a lot if you’re will­ing to ask for help in life.

But it’s hard! You know, a lot of peo­ple don’t ask for help, and men pro­vide good exam­ples. Think about the man dri­ving, lost and unwill­ing to stop and ask for help by seek­ing direc­tions. Even though his wife is say­ing, “Honey, honey, can’t we ask for direc­tions? We’re lost.” He replies, “No, we’re not lost! And I don’t need any help!” That’s the way a lot of us are. It’s very, very hard to ask for help.

I think that’s because we’re wor­ried about what other peo­ple will think of us. Or who are we if we can’t do it on our own? What will peo­ple think of us if we admit that we need help, or that we have a prob­lem that we can’t han­dle? And we give that power over us — that fear of what other peo­ple will think about us. This is very, very com­mon. But it’s also very harm­ful, you will have a hard time in life if you go around wor­ry­ing all the time what other peo­ple think of you. So try to free your­self up a lit­tle bit and not worry so much about other peo­ple. And the truth is, other peo­ple really aren’t think­ing of you all that much.

I have a lit­tle story about that. Per­haps you’ve noticed I have acne on my face. It’s not so bad today but you can see some scar­ring. When I was a kid I had acne that was pretty bad, and the doc­tors always told me, “Oh, you’ll grow out of it. When you’re older it will go away.” Well it didn’t go away, and here I am in my fifties, and I still have it. And it both­ers me from time to time. Now I get a zit on my face and I think, “What are peo­ple going to think?” I’m walk­ing around with zits on my face and peo­ple see that and I just wish it wasn’t there. What are other peo­ple going to think of me? You know, I’m like every­body else.

So one day I was with a friend that I’ve known for a long time and I men­tioned to her that my face was both­er­ing me — that I had this acne and it still both­ered me. Other peo­ple would see these zits on my face, and that would be bad. You know what she said to me? She said, “You have acne?” It wasn’t even part of her per­cep­tion of me that I had acne.

So here I am, you know, wor­ry­ing what other peo­ple think of me, and this is my friend who just thinks of me as her friend and isn’t really focused on the acne on my face. And that’s really the truth of the mat­ter. The truth of the mat­ter is most other peo­ple are not think­ing about you all the time. They’re doing the same thing you’re doing, which is think­ing about what you think of them, and they’re wor­ried about look­ing good in your eyes. So try to get over that.

Any­way, my mes­sage today is, try to get over this idea of that you can’t ask for help. And just try ask­ing for help. And try to get over this idea that what other peo­ple think of you mat­ters, because in the long run your life really isn’t about other peo­ple, it’s about you. So free your­self from other people’s opin­ions, and ask for help.

I’m try­ing video because I’m try­ing to keep up with the times and I think it’s a bet­ter way to com­mu­ni­cate. I think a lot of peo­ple will like it bet­ter than just writ­ing, and hope­fully it will give us more of a sense that we’re talk­ing to each other rather than just me writ­ing and you read­ing it.

I’m plan­ning on cov­er­ing on a whole wide vari­ety of top­ics includ­ing health and well­ness, and issues related to med­ical care, but I espe­cially want to talk about our think­ing and our emo­tions because that is so impor­tant to help­ing us change and help­ing us live dif­fer­ently which is what most of us need to do if we’re going to be healthy and well.

This is not “scripted.” I don’t want it to be a speech, you know it’s not a “pre­pared speech.” Let’s look at it as a con­ver­sa­tion, and so I’m open to input.

If you have ideas, ques­tions, com­ments, or things that you’d like me to cover, please send me an email at pete@​drpeterjweiss.​com or just leave some­thing on Face­book or on my web­site and I will try to cover it.

So I’m look­ing for­ward to doing the video blogs and I hope you enjoy them. Stay tuned.

An Open Let­ter to the Legal Pro­fes­sion

Are your clients healthy?  Prob­a­bly not, since most Amer­i­cans aren’t.  Plus see­ing an attor­ney for almost any rea­son is pretty stress­ful for most peo­ple, and stress is a big part of our health prob­lems in Amer­ica today.  And what about you?  Are you healthy?  I hope so, but it’s hard to be healthy in the cur­rent toxic envi­ron­ment.

Our col­lec­tive lifestyle is the prob­lem.

In gen­eral, our diets are lousy.  We don’t sleep.  Exhaus­tion has replaced exer­cise.  Drugs and alco­hol are con­ve­nient escapes.  We accept high lev­els of phys­i­cal and emo­tional stress as a part of life, and we turn to med­i­cine to solve our lifestyle-created prob­lems.

And you know what?  Med­ical care doesn’t really help many peo­ple get well.  Believe it.  Most peo­ple with lifestyle dis­eases get slowly worse despite good health­care.  With every pass­ing year Amer­ica spends more and more money on health­care and we use new high-tech treat­ments, but our over­all health con­tin­ues to dete­ri­o­rate.  That’s why I resigned as a health plan CEO to become a Well­ness Evan­ge­list.

What if well­ness started with you?

What if a lawyer visit was bet­ter for your clients’ health than a doc­tor visit?  Peo­ple don’t need doc­tors to live dif­fer­ently; they need trusted friends to help them.  Could you be that trusted friend for your clients?

Think about it. You prob­a­bly have a client rela­tion­ship strat­egy — some way in which you nur­ture your rela­tion­ship with your clients beyond pro­vid­ing legal ser­vices.  Why not make your rela­tion­ship stat­egy a con­ver­sa­tion about health and well­ness?

My book “More Health Less Care” is designed to start that con­ver­sa­tion.  It’s sim­ple and prac­ti­cal — you can read it in 90 min­utes — but it’s also deep.  It will make you think.  It could change your life.

If you find it valu­able, you can pass it along to your clients as a gift, express­ing your desire for their good health and long life.  If you’re sin­cere, your follow-up con­ver­sa­tion will be mean­ing­ful.

You don’t have to vol­un­teer to be their health coach, but you can con­nect on a deeper level and per­haps encour­age each other towards bet­ter health.  The topic is time­less, and you’ll be talk­ing with clients about it for years.

Why am I, a physi­cian, sug­gest­ing this to you attor­neys?  You have many influ­en­tial clients — busi­ness and polit­i­cal lead­ers whose per­sonal health aware­ness may help our nation.  You also have clients that may be ready to change — indi­vid­u­als in a cri­sis or per­haps draft­ing an estate plan.  Your clients do trust you and close rela­tion­ships can facil­i­tate change.  And of course you’re a very influ­en­tial group your­selves.

Is this a crazy idea or just a way to sell books?  No.  I’m for real — a seri­ous per­son who thinks it’s crazy to look for health from health­care.

Why couldn’t health and well­ness start with lawyers?

Hey Wil­ford Brim­ley: Don’t man­age your dia­betes – lose your dia­betes!

I was watch­ing tele­vi­sion this week and saw Wil­ford Brim­ley in a com­mer­cial for Lib­erty Med­ical.  I’m sure many of you have seen old Wil­ford for years now in his role as pitch­man for the dia­betic sup­ply com­pany — it’s not a new gig for him, but I don’t have cable ser­vice at home and so I see very lit­tle TV.  This week it hap­pens that I’m trav­el­ing and I caught the com­mer­cial in the evening in my hotel room.

I don’t remem­ber exactly how it went but Wil­ford was going over how Lib­erty Med­ical “can help you man­age your dia­betes.”  Appar­ently he feels that they’ve helped him man­age his type II dia­betes quite well over the years.  It sounded like a nice tes­ti­mo­nial, how­ever you couldn’t help but notice that Mr. Brim­ley is very seri­ously over­weight.

Here’s the prob­lem, I can’t say for cer­tain about Mr. Brim­ley, but most type II dia­bet­ics could be cured of dia­betes with a change in diet and weight loss.  Why are we help­ing peo­ple “man­age” their dia­betes instead of help­ing them to health?

Col­lec­tively, we Amer­i­cans live a lifestyle that makes us sick and then we deny it.  We pre­tend that these lifestyle dis­eases, like type II dia­betes, aren’t of our own doing, can’t be cured and need to be “man­aged.”  That’s just plain wrong!

We don’t need to blame our­selves or oth­ers for our lifestyle con­di­tions, although the envi­ron­ment has a lot to do with the national dia­betes epi­demic.   Blam­ing is not help­ful.  We just need to change.  Yes, I know it’s hard to change.  Sure it’s hard to live dif­fer­ently than oth­ers, but it can be done.  And dia­betes does go away!

What would have hap­pened if, decades ago when he first got dia­betes, Wil­ford had called Gary Null instead of Lib­erty Med­ical?  If you know Gary, you know the answer — a lot less “man­age­ment,” no more dia­betes, and a thin­ner more vig­or­ous Wil­ford Brim­ley.

Oh, and prob­a­bly also a lot less profit for the many firms that make mil­lions from push­ing dia­betic sup­plies to seniors with Medicare like Mr. Brim­ley.  Some­times health­care is part of the prob­lem.  Most peo­ple with dia­betes could use a lot more health and a lot less care.  It can be done, but not through the health­care sys­tem.

Mr. Brim­ley will be 76 this year.  Per­haps he thinks he’s too old to change, but I believe that we all can change at any age — if we want to.  Old dogs can learn new tricks!  Don’t you be fooled into liv­ing with ill­nesses or med­ical con­di­tions that are unnec­es­sary, pre­ventable and cur­able!  Wake up.  Find some friends to help you and get started on the road to well being.  You can do it!

Health­care Reform Won’t Make You Well

Are you angry about health­care reform? Me, too. The whole thing’s crazy. Lis­ten, more health­care isn’t going to help us. Has the whole coun­try gone crazy? When did we start think­ing that our health and well­ness depended on doc­tors, or depended on insur­ance, or depended on the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, or depended on any­body but our­selves?

We need to take back our health!

We can be dif­fer­ent. It’s not that hard. There are pow­er­ful forces against us though. Frankly, the government’s against us. The med­ical indus­trial com­plex is sell­ing us drugs, treat­ments, and pro­ce­dures that we don’t need, and, in fact, often harm us. The big food indus­try in this coun­try is sell­ing us toxic food and when we eat it, after their bil­lions of dol­lars of devel­op­ment and their bil­lions of dol­lars of mar­ket­ing, and we get fat, they blame us! And say we’re mak­ing “bad choices.” What’s up with that?

Lis­ten, your life is about you. It’s not about the gov­ern­ment, it’s not about the food indus­try, it’s not really about health­care either. You don’t need an insur­ance com­pany to be healthy. You don’t need a doc­tor to be healthy. You just need to decide to be healthy and look for a lit­tle help.

I’m one of the peo­ple that’s try­ing to help. I’m putting together an orga­ni­za­tion of peo­ple that are try­ing to help. There are peo­ple in your town that would love to help you learn how to eat dif­fer­ently, man­age your stress dif­fer­ently, exer­cise dif­fer­ently, and just live dif­fer­ently to break free of the health­care trap. The best way to “stick it to the man” is to be healthy your­self.

Phil Mick­el­son, one of the best golfers in the world and the win­ner of  this year’s Mas­ters Golf Tour­na­ment, has devel­oped pso­ri­atic arthri­tis, a seri­ous and poten­tially inca­pac­i­tat­ing autoim­mune dis­ease.  This would be quite a blow to any of us, but must be espe­cially impact­ful to a top ath­lete like Mr. Mick­el­son.

Phil Mick­el­son

For­tu­nately, he reports that he’s doing rea­son­ably well right now on Enbrel a pow­er­ful immune system-suppressing med­ica­tion.  Oh, and he has also decided to become a veg­e­tar­ian.

A veg­e­tar­ian?  What’s up with that?  Well appar­ently Phil Mick­el­son is tak­ing charge of his health and health­care and wants to do things that may help him — even things that may not occur to doc­tors.  Nutri­tion is an obvi­ous place to start.  Will becom­ing a veg­e­tar­ian be part of the answer for Mr. Mick­el­son?  Quite pos­si­bly.

I’ve per­son­ally heard or read many sto­ries of indi­vid­u­als with autoim­mune dis­eases includ­ing arthri­tis, asthma and aller­gic dis­or­ders who’ve become com­pletely well fol­low­ing a rad­i­cal change in diet — often involv­ing veg­e­tar­i­an­ism, juic­ing and/or sup­ple­men­ta­tion.  And tak­ing Enbrel is no pic­nic.  The injectable med­i­cine may cause seri­ous, even life threat­en­ing, side effects.  I wouldn’t want to be on it either.

Mr. Mick­el­son should be con­grat­u­lated for his courage — courage in dis­clos­ing his diag­no­sis, tak­ing charge of his own care, and being will­ing to live dif­fer­ently from oth­ers.  It isn’t easy to keep an open mind or to do some­thing out of the ordi­nary.

Most of us would be at least a lit­tle scared.  What will peo­ple think?  What will my doc­tors think?  You can get a sense of that in Mr. Mickelson’s com­ment reported Tues­day by USA Today, “I know this is crazy, I know.  No, this wasn’t rec­om­mended by a doc­tor, I read a book and just thought maybe it will help. And if it helps my sit­u­a­tion, I’m all for it.”

No Phil, it’s not crazy and you’re not crazy.  You’re coura­geous!

Best wishes to you and your fam­ily.

Long­time fol­low­ers of More Health Less Care will remem­ber that I wrote about send­ing a copy of the book to Michelle Obama way back in Feb­ru­ary.  I also sent a sep­a­rate copy to Pres­i­dent Obama around the same time.  My goal was to engage the Obama admin­is­tra­tion in a real dis­cus­sion about help­ing Amer­i­cans to get healthy.

Well, last week I heard back from Pres­i­dent and Mrs. Obama!  Before you get too excited, check out the nice card they sent me.  Kind of mean­ing­less, isn’t it?

But I’m a real­ist.  I didn’t expect to get a call from Pres­i­dent or Mrs. Obama, but I thought per­haps one of her anti-obesity task force staff would see some value in the More Health Less Care phi­los­o­phy and respond to me.  Per­haps we could have a “get real” con­ver­sa­tion about our Amer­i­can cul­ture and the envi­ron­ment that’s help­ing fuel our pub­lic health cri­sis.  Per­haps I could have some small influ­ence on our fed­eral government’s response to the obe­sity epi­demic.  But it doesn’t seem likely.

To be hon­est, maybe I’m not as much of a real­ist as I say I am.  Maybe I was dream­ing a lit­tle bit to think that the admin­is­tra­tion would be inter­ested in my mes­sage.  The card was prob­a­bly the wake up call I needed, because, truth be told, I don’t think that our health answers are going to come from the gov­ern­ment.

Social change starts from the ground up.  It starts with per­sonal change.  It starts with me.  It starts with you.  So, let’s leave the gov­ern­ment out of it and just get healthy!  We can do it!

More Health Less Care Dis­cus­sion Guides Now Avail­able For Free Down­load

Con­grat­u­la­tions on tak­ing action to improve your health.  You can do it.  But you could prob­a­bly use some help.  Find­ing oth­ers to help you is one of the key mes­sages in the book.  Peo­ple have asked me, “Can I cre­ate a health team/support group at work?” Of course.  Here’s what I rec­om­mend:

• Form a group of like minded indi­vid­u­als.  The most impor­tant aspect is cre­at­ing a trust­ing and open envi­ron­ment, where peo­ple can really talk about their prob­lems.  Unfor­tu­nately many, per­haps even most, work envi­ron­ments are not like that.  So you may need to limit your group to just one or two close friends.  That’s okay.

• Also, because you have lim­ited per­sonal time at work, a group of just two or three peo­ple might be more prac­ti­cal.  Three peo­ple can have a mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sion over a 30-minute lunch break.  Seven peo­ple prob­a­bly can’t.

• Find a quiet place to have lunches or breaks together sev­eral times each week.  You could even make it every day.

• Now that you’ve formed the group and set the sched­ule, make sure every­one has a copy of “More Health Less Care” and down­load the free Dis­cus­sion Guide at More​Health​Less​Care​.com.  In a small group, you can just fol­low the guide together.

• Plan on work­ing through the book fol­low­ing the down­load­able guide over about six weeks or so.  But, of course, you can choose your own pace.

That’s it.  Like I say in the book, you don’t have to be per­fect.  Just get started.  And after you’ve worked through the guide, why not stick together and con­tinue help­ing each other on your way to well-being?  You can do it.

More Health Less Care Dis­cus­sion Guides Now Avail­able For Free Down­load

Con­grat­u­la­tions on tak­ing action to improve your health.  “More Health Less Care” can help.  You know from the book that hav­ing a team is essen­tial to mak­ing a last­ing improve­ment and your church group can be your first team.  I wrote the book with small groups of friends, like church-based groups, in mind.

Here’s what I sug­gest:

• First, talk to your pas­tor and the church admin­is­tra­tion and get their per­mis­sion to use church facil­i­ties.  Then form group of like minded indi­vid­u­als.  If you have an exist­ing small group, that’s even bet­ter.  I sug­gest a group size of at least three but not more than ten.

• The most impor­tant aspect is cre­at­ing a trust­ing and open envi­ron­ment, where peo­ple can really talk about their prob­lems.  This is usu­ally eas­ier in smaller groups, but you may gen­er­ate more ideas in a larger one.  Choose what’s com­fort­able for you and the oth­ers.

• For the same rea­son, gen­der is some­thing you should think through.  Some­times women may feel more com­fort­able with other women, and men with other men.  Groups can be formed that way.  Or you could have a cou­ples’ group.

• There are no firm rules here, but the peo­ple in your group must be able to com­pletely trust one other to main­tain con­fi­den­tial­ity, avoid judg­ment, and pro­vide mutual sup­port and encour­age­ment.

• Now that you’ve formed the group, make sure every­one has a copy of “More Health Less Care,” and down­load the free Dis­cus­sion Guide at More​Health​Less​Care​.com.

• Smaller groups don’t require a facil­i­ta­tor, and the mem­bers can sim­ply use the guide together. Larger groups of 7 or more should select some­one expe­ri­enced in lead­ing group dis­cus­sion to guide the process.

• Sched­ule the time of your group meet­ings.  I sug­gest 60 to 90 min­utes for groups of six or less, and 90 min­utes or slightly longer for groups of 7 or more.

• Plan on meet­ing once a week for about 6 weeks.  This is a rea­son­able tempo for work­ing through the basics of More “Health Less Care” fol­low­ing the down­load­able guide, but of course you can choose your own pace.

That’s it.  You don’t have to be per­fect.  Just get started.  And after you’ve worked through the guide, why not stick together and con­tinue help­ing each other on your jour­ney to well-being.

You can do it!

Pos­i­tive Energy Radi­ated Through the Room

This week we heard from Jason San­tini, owner of the Happy Healthy Human mar­ket in Indian Har­bor Beach, Florida.  Jason shared his per­sonal health phi­los­o­phy and the story of his own jour­ney from obe­sity to health.

San­tini,

Sev­eral years ago he gave up smok­ing and drink­ing and effort­lessly lost over 80 pounds after adopt­ing a mostly raw-food, vegan diet.   His pos­i­tive energy radi­ated through the room as he spoke about over­com­ing com­mon road­blocks to health and well­ness.

I found his mes­sage of releas­ing neg­a­tive emo­tions and behav­ior in order to truly accept, love and care for your­self right in line with my own phi­los­o­phy.

Later Gary’s video com­ple­mented the speaker nicely and stressed the need to build your health upon a solid foun­da­tion.  This starts with under­stand­ing your cur­rent state of health.

Bur­nett

What’s wrong, what’s right and how did you get here?  I think he’s right about that.  Too many indi­vid­u­als don’t get to the root cause of their issues, but instead try pills, sup­ple­ments or other quick fixes.  As Gary explained it, that’s like try­ing to build a palace on quick­sand — it won’t last.

So once again, I found a lot to agree with, and I believe the first three group meet­ings have engaged the par­tic­i­pants and are help­ing them set a solid foun­da­tion for per­sonal improve­ment.  Unfor­tu­nately, because of my own other per­sonal and pro­fes­sional com­mit­ments, I am not going to be able to con­tinue the jour­ney with the group.

This will be my last reg­u­lar post about what’s hap­pen­ing at Gary Null’s Mel­bourne Health Sup­port Group.  How­ever, I’ll stay in touch with Shan­non Bur­nett and per­haps I’ll be able to catch up with the group later in the year.

To join or to find out more about this group, con­tact Shan­non via email at shannon@​consciouslivingpartnership.​com.

I hope it won’t hurt my well­ness image to reveal that I was ill recently with a head cold and a touch of sinusi­tis.  Yes, I get sick too.

Nor­mally, I don’t think a lot about com­mon ill­nesses such as colds and the flu.  Many peo­ple seem to obsess over these com­mon ill­nesses, hand wash­ing, and avoid­ing germs.  Not me.  I just try to be pru­dent, with­out being obses­sive, and live a healthy lifestyle.  But as the bumper sticker says “Sick Hap­pens.“
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USA TODAY founder Al Neuharth endorses “More Health Less Care.”

An inter­est­ing thing has hap­pened to me over the last cou­ple of weeks  — I seem to have lost my crav­ing for sweets and junk food.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I still like sweets, but the “gotta have it” aspect seems to have dis­ap­peared.  And I have no desire for chips or other snack foods either.

Where did the desire go?  I’m not exactly sure.  I didn’t sud­denly have any detectable “lib­er­a­tion” expe­ri­ence, I just noticed one day that I was eat­ing dif­fer­ently and it didn’t seem all that hard.  With a lit­tle reflec­tion, I per­ceived the absence of the crav­ings.  Here’s what I think hap­pened. Read the rest of this entry »

Amer­ica Needs More Health and Less Care.  That’s my mes­sage.  You know it by now.

But I’ve been lim­it­ing my remarks to the United States because I feel that I under­stand our Amer­i­can cul­ture.  Although other devel­oped coun­tries are expe­ri­enc­ing sim­i­lar pub­lic health issues, I haven’t felt qual­i­fied to com­ment.
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More New Ideas at This Week’s Gary Null Health Sup­port Group

A lit­tle over 20 of us met for our sec­ond health sup­port group ses­sion in Mel­bourne, Florida this week.  There were some new faces — sev­eral peo­ple brought friends as Gary had sug­gested at the end of our last meet­ing.
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Last week I told you about my expe­ri­ence of Gary Null’s Health Sup­port Group. I’m not ready to live and eat like he does, but I was inspired to do some things dif­fer­ently.

One thing I did was visit a local health food shop, restau­rant and juice bar, The Happy Healthy Human, in Indian Har­bor Beach, Florida with my wife, Sharon.

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This week I attended the kick-off meet­ing of a new Gary Null Health Sup­port Group in Mel­bourne, Florida.

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Are you a per­sonal coach, per­sonal trainer, chi­ro­prac­tor, mas­sage ther­a­pist or other prac­ti­tioner help­ing indi­vid­u­als to well­ness?

To think­ing, feel­ing and liv­ing dif­fer­ently?  To achiev­ing an inter­nal well­be­ing not depen­dent on drugs, treat­ments or “health­care.”  Then you’re a “well­ness pro­fes­sional.”

Per­haps you’ve never thought of your­self in those terms before.  That’s because in Amer­ica we have a “health­care sys­tem” focused on the treat­ment of dis­ease, but where is our “well­ness sys­tem?”   We need one.

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