Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Per­haps you’ve noticed that there’s been less activ­ity on my web­site in the recent days and weeks. 

I haven’t been writ­ing as much lately.  It’s not that I don’t have any­thing to say; I’ve just been very busy prepar­ing for my new posi­tion with Florida Hos­pi­tal and the Adven­tist Health Sys­tem in Orlando.

Yes, I’m about to plunge back into the tra­di­tional health­care sys­tem, and, per­haps sur­pris­ing to some, I’m pretty excited about it!  Over the last cou­ple of years I’ve been work­ing to help indi­vid­u­als to well­ness, but as a “Lone Ranger” my impact was lim­ited.

Get­ting back into the health­care main­stream will give me a broader base from which to make more of a pos­i­tive impact.

For those of you who may not know, The Adven­tist Health Sys­tem is the largest Protes­tant not-for-profit health­care sys­tem in the United States.

Their mis­sion is “extend­ing the heal­ing min­istry of Christ,” and they take that seri­ously.  Just as impor­tantly, and despite their health­care provider sta­tus, they are com­mit­ted to help­ing indi­vid­u­als be well and avoid health­care.

You can see why I’m excited — they’re speak­ing my lan­guage!

My new role, lead­ing their small health insur­ance branch, offi­cially begins Octo­ber 31^st, but I’m already busy mak­ing the tran­si­tion.  My wife and I will be leav­ing Mel­bourne and mov­ing to Orlando as soon as it can be arranged.  So there is a lot to accom­plish both in the new posi­tion and in our per­sonal lives.

For all of those rea­sons, I will not be actively blog­ging for some time. The radio show is also on hold indef­i­nitely.  Of course, I will be happy to make appear­ances on oth­ers’ radio and TV shows, and I will con­tinue to speak and teach on well­ness, as I am able.

But my web pres­ence isn’t going away totally.  Con­tact me by e-mail as before and fol­low my Face­book page, which I intend to keep active with inter­est­ing links, com­ments and updates.

Thanks for all of your sup­port.

Be well!

Dr. Pete

Last week I was priv­i­leged to attend the President’s Con­vo­ca­tion for the Florida/Georgia Dis­trict of the Lutheran Church, Mis­souri Synod held in Day­tona Beach.  

LEFT TO RIGHT: Pas­tor Hoyt Byrum; Dr. Peter Weiss; and Bill White, Well­ness Coach for Pas­tors at Chris­t­ian Care Min­istry, fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of our work­shop.

Although I’m not Lutheran, I was attend­ing to lead a work­shop on well­ness and it’s inter­sec­tion with Chris­tian­ity.

It was a great time.  First, let me say that I have never met any nicer group of peo­ple.  The Dis­trict staff was help­ful and friendly.  I spoke with at least a hun­dred atten­dees and enjoyed every minute of it.

There is no doubt that the folks I met are fol­low­ing Jesus as evi­denced by love, peace, kind­ness, and other fruit of the spirit. (Gala­tians 5:22)

It feels good to hang out with such lov­ing indi­vid­u­als.

John Maxwell, a Chris­t­ian lead­er­ship guru, was the keynote speaker.  Now, I’m always a lit­tle skep­ti­cal of “gurus” (which may just be envy on my part) but John was great.  He imparted deep wis­dom in a humor­ous and very mem­o­rable way.

Although I’ve read some of his books, it was a spe­cial treat as he shared some of the per­sonal expe­ri­ences, which formed him into the leader he is today.  I came away with an even greater respect for him (and added a cou­ple more of his books to my Ama­zon wish list.)

John Rein­hold III, Direc­tor of Health Coach­ing at Chris­t­ian Care Min­istry, and Dr. Pete Weiss.

My work­shop — titled, “Fol­low­ing Jesus to Per­sonal Health and Well­ness,”  was held in the morn­ing of the sec­ond day, which, in my opin­ion, is always the best time slot.  About 50 peo­ple attended.

Per­haps one-third were pas­tors and the rest were church and Lutheran school staff.  Sched­uled for an hour and 15 min­utes, it was shorter than I would have liked but we still had a lot of great dis­cus­sion.

Of course, not every­one agreed with every­thing I said, but I think it gen­er­ally went well and hope­fully the atten­dees are now bet­ter posi­tioned to work on their own well­ness and to help oth­ers.

That was the whole point of the event.  Nat­u­rally I’ll be inter­ested in detailed feed­back as eval­u­a­tions from the atten­dees are shared with me later.

Get­ting the eval­u­a­tions is not always pleas­ant, but as you know, I accept ALL feed­back.

I’ve attached the agenda for my ses­sion (CLICK HERE to down­load) along with this post to give you some idea of what we cov­ered.

If it looks inter­est­ing, and you’d like me to lead a sim­i­lar work­shop at your church (or help YOU lead one) please drop me a line.  I’d be happy to do so.

Pretty much every­one knows that eat­ing more veg­eta­bles, less meat and less processed food would be a health­ier way to live. 

It’s just hard to do it, and when we don’t want to try some­thing, we often turn to excuses.  A com­mon one is, “I don’t like veg­eta­bles.”

When I hear some­one say that I spring into action.  “Really,” I ask in return, “which ones?”  “Oh, ALL of them,” is the typ­i­cal reply.

Then I ask the indi­vid­ual to list all of the veg­eta­bles they have eaten more than once which they don’t like.  “Please, write them down,” I ask.

So they start writ­ing — car­rots, beets, onions, cel­ery, cucum­bers, pep­pers, sweet pota­toes, etc.

By the time they’ve iden­ti­fied about 10 or so they’re run­ning out of steam.  With prod­ding many can eke out another five or 10.

So that makes maybe twenty or so veg­eta­bles that they “don’t like.”

Then I ask them to take a look at this list of veg­eta­bles:   

Alfalfa sprouts, Arti­choke, Arugula, Aspara­gus, Avo­cado, Bam­boo shoots, Bean sprouts, Beets, Bell Pep­pers, Bok Choy, Broc­coli, Brus­sels sprouts, Cab­bage, Car­rots, Cau­li­flower, Cel­ery, Chard, Chick­peas, Chile pep­pers, Chi­nese cab­bage, Chives, Col­lard greens, Corn, Cucum­ber, Egg­plant, Endive Gar­lic, Green beans, Green onions, Green peas, Greens, Horse­rad­ish, Jicama, Kale, Kid­ney beans, Kohlrabi, Leeks, Lemon grass, Lentil beans, Let­tuce, Lima beans, Mush­rooms, Mus­tard Greens, Navy Beans, Okra, Onions, Pars­ley, Potato, Pump­kin, Radishes, Radic­chio, Rhubarb, Rutabaga, Sauer­kraut, Shal­lot, Snow Peas, Soy­beans, Spinach, Split Peas, Squash, Sweet potato, Tomato, Turnip, Water chest­nuts, Water­cress, Yams, and Zuc­chini.

Impres­sive, isn’t it.  (I know some read­ers are tak­ing me to task because, tech­ni­cally, some of these are fruits.  True, but they’re usu­ally thought of as veg­eta­bles.)  And this is actu­ally a pretty short list.  Many more are local del­i­ca­cies or sta­ples in far away loca­tions — sea­weed in Japan, for exam­ple.

After review­ing the list, we cover ways of prepa­ra­tion — raw, steamed, roasted, etc.

What ways haven’t they tried?  Have they tried stir-fry, or veg­etable stews or soups?  How about Indian or Mid­dle East­ern veg­etable dishes?  And so on.

Two things gen­er­ally hap­pen:

1) they real­ize how much vari­ety is avail­able, and agree that per­haps there might be some indi­vid­ual veg­eta­bles and dishes which will appeal to them, and

2) we usu­ally stum­ble over one or more things that they actu­ally do like — per­haps hum­mus, mine­strone, or corn.  Aha!  We’ve got some­thing to build on.

Now they’re ready to end the “I don’t like veg­eta­bles” mantra and begin a jour­ney of dis­cov­ery in search of healthy and tasty plant-based foods. This really works.  If this is you, why not try get­ting started with what you do like.

Then push the bound­aries a lit­tle every month and see where you go.

Are you still resis­tant?  Maybe you’re think­ing to your­self, “No.  Really, I don’t like veg­eta­bles — any of them!”  Per­haps that is so.  You would know bet­ter than I about your taste for veg­gies, but let me sug­gest that you can learn to like them.

Check it out for your­self.  Per­form an inter­net search on “learn­ing to like new foods” and see what comes up.  You’ll find all kinds of advice.

My sug­ges­tion is a sim­ple one — just keep eat­ing the things you know are good for you but may not be the most enjoy­able.  If you per­sist you will learn to like them.

Grad­u­ally your taste pref­er­ences will adjust.  Soon you’ll be think­ing, “this isn’t so bad” and then it’ll be a short step to your actu­ally lik­ing it.

Don’t believe me?  Con­sider beer.  I admit beer is not a veg­etable, but very few peo­ple like beer the first time they taste it.  Yet they keep try­ing it because they like how it makes them feel.  Even­tu­ally most adults learn to enjoy the taste of beer.

Often, the very same bit­ter­ness that turned them off at first becomes part of what they look for in a good beer.

Sim­i­larly, if you eat more veg­eta­bles (and less of the bad stuff), you will like how it makes you feel — healthy and alive with energy.   Of course it will take longer to feel the ben­e­fi­cial effects of veg­eta­bles than the effects of beer.

So give it some time.  Eat your veg­gies.  You really will feel bet­ter, and very soon you’ll enjoy the fla­vor.

You can do it!

I con­tinue to see “Obe­sity” in the head­lines.

“Obe­sity on the Rise.”  “Obe­sity Wors­ens.”  “Can We Win the Fight Against Obe­sity?”

You get the idea.  Obe­sity is appar­ently some new and evil force of nature.  It’s big, it’s bad and it’s get­ting worse.  Obe­sity lurks for us around every cor­ner.  It’s quite men­ac­ing, that Obe­sity.  Yes it is.  I hope it doesn’t get me.

Appar­ently we need to fight, fight, fight Obe­sity.  Let’s con­tain it, man­age it, and defeat it.  Shouldn’t there be a war on Obe­sity, sim­i­lar to the “war on can­cer” and the “war on drugs?”

Surely we need more money for Obe­sity research.

But wait a minute.  Throw­ing money at prob­lems often doesn’t help; the wars on can­cer and drugs haven’t worked out so well; and Obe­sity doesn’t seem able to attack every­one.

Appar­ently, some peo­ple are immune.  How so?

Truth is, “Obe­sity” as we talk about it doesn’t exist.  There is no “Obe­sity,” no out­side force attack­ing us.  There are only obese peo­ple, most of whom have acquired obe­sity from their lifestyles.

We don’t need to fight or defeat obe­sity; we sim­ply need to change how we live.  No blame or shame.  Just change.

Unfor­tu­nately talk­ing about obe­sity as if it’s some exter­nal force pre­vents us from fac­ing our own respon­si­bil­ity for help­ing each other and help­ing our­selves.  Cer­tainly many envi­ron­men­tal and cul­tural fac­tors of today’s world shape our behav­ior, mostly to the dis­ad­van­tage of our health.

We do live in a toxic envi­ron­ment.  Nev­er­the­less we alone remain respon­si­ble for how we think, what we eat, what we drink, and all of our other behav­iors.

We are respon­si­ble for our choices.  An addict may have an under­ly­ing phys­i­cal and men­tal pre­dis­po­si­tion for his addic­tion, but it is his choice to use or not to use drugs.

Every time he smokes, snorts or shoots, it is his choice to do so.  When finally he chooses to become sober, he can seek and find help.  With help, and through his dili­gent and per­sis­tent effort, he can recover.  Some addicts make that choice and some don’t.

It’s no dif­fer­ent with obe­sity.  Obese peo­ple can choose to remain as they are or decide to improve their health.  Many, per­haps most, wish­ing to lose weight will need help.

Chang­ing is hard work, and it’s a sign of courage and wis­dom to seek help.  Don’t let the fact that you can’t do it on your own stop you from being healthy.

We can be healthy and well.  It all starts with us acknowl­edg­ing respon­si­bil­ity for our lifestyles and mak­ing a deci­sion, a deci­sion to be dif­fer­ent.

But as with our exam­ple of the addict, some will and some won’t choose to change.  And I’ve learned that there is no help­ing some­one who isn’t will­ing to help him­self or her­self.

Be some­one who wants to help your­self.  You can do it!

I was sick most of last week­end with the “crud” (as my doc­tor dad likes to call it).  You know the drill — pound­ing headache, runny nose, hurt all over and no energy.

It’s no fun being sick.  For­tu­nately I’m fully recov­ered and feel­ing great again.

No one wants to be ill, least of all me, but it was a use­ful expe­ri­ence to remind me of what it’s like to feel bad.   It’s amaz­ing just how fast you can move down on Maslow’s hier­ar­chy of needs from a sim­ple virus.

I went from self-actualization to deal­ing with my basic health sit­u­a­tion overnight.  It seems that the entire week­end was spent rest­ing and blow­ing my nose.

I want to remem­ber this feel­ing in order to have more com­pas­sion for patients.  Many seri­ous ill­nesses, for exam­ple can­cer, are vir­tu­ally always accom­pa­nied by feel­ings of ill­ness includ­ing malaise and fatigue.  We doc­tors need to remem­ber that more.

On the other hand, many patients with lifestyle ill­nesses seem to feel “fine.”  I take them at their word, but I’m wor­ried they’re a lit­tle like the prover­bial frog who was being slowly boiled.

As the extra pounds accu­mu­late grad­u­ally and their ill­nesses progress slowly, they get adjusted to their new real­ity, never real­iz­ing how much good health they’ve lost.  They sim­ply don’t rec­og­nize how much bet­ter they would feel if they were truly well.

The sim­ple point is that patients who feel bad are moti­vated to get bet­ter.  Can­cer patients want to get off the toxic chemother­apy to get their appetites and energy back.

I was moti­vated to rest, drink flu­ids and take care of myself last week­end.  I wanted to get back to feel­ing great.

Unfor­tu­nately, I don’t see this same moti­va­tion in many indi­vid­u­als with lifestyle ill­nesses.  The frog doesn’t know he is being boiled until it’s too late.  Don’t let this be you!

If you’re gain­ing weight, have type II dia­betes or another lifestyle con­di­tion — the water is heat­ing up and it’s not a Jacuzzi!  You may feel “fine,” but it won’t last.

And really, you prob­a­bly can feel much bet­ter than you do right now.  You can enjoy robust good health, but you have to rec­og­nize the prob­lem and hop out of the pot.

It’s sad, but most peo­ple in Amer­ica won’t do it.  Instead, like the frog, they’ll slowly die from and with their unhealthy lifestyles.

Be dif­fer­ent!  You can do it!

If you’ve been fol­low­ing devel­op­ments in health­care (and who hasn’t?), then you’ll be aware of the big move to cre­ate “account­abil­ity” for providers. 

Pay­ors, espe­cially the fed­eral gov­ern­ment in the form of Medicare, are demand­ing that physi­cians and hos­pi­tals be account­able for patient out­comes.  Pay­ment poli­cies are being changed to reward bet­ter out­comes and penal­ize worse ones.

Unin­tended reten­tion of a for­eign object in a patient after surgery or other pro­ce­dure is on the Never Event list.

The idea is to force prac­tice improve­ments and thereby improve the health of patients.

In it’s most severe form the National Qual­ity Forum has des­ig­nated a list of “never events.” 

The idea is that these bad out­comes should never hap­pen in health­care and when they do, pay­ors should not pay.  Medicare was prob­a­bly the first to imple­ment such a pol­icy and many states and pri­vate pay­ors have since fol­lowed suit.

Now this isn’t nec­es­sar­ily a bad idea, and I’m not dis­agree­ing with it.  Never events rep­re­sent mis­takes or out­comes that are largely pre­ventable.  Take a look at the list and you’ll agree.

Most of us won’t pay for oth­ers’ mis­takes in our pri­vate eco­nomic life.  Why should insur­ance be any dif­fer­ent?

Ah, but here’s the thing.  Shouldn’t patients be account­able too?  Type II dia­betes, coro­nary artery dis­ease, and chronic obstruc­tive pul­monary dis­ease (COPD) are also almost com­pletely pre­ventable.

Only it’s the patient that has to do the pre­vent­ing.

How about a “never event” list for patients?  What if Medicare didn’t cover self-induced ill­nesses such as lung can­cer in smok­ers, type II dia­betes, and most heart dis­ease and strokes?  Too harsh?  Maybe, but it makes you think doesn’t it?

The truth is that over 75 per­cent of health­care spend­ing is for pre­ventable con­di­tions — ill­nesses that patients cause with their own behav­ior.

Where is the call for patient account­abil­ity?  Yes, our physi­cians and hos­pi­tals can stand to improve, but they aren’t the sole cause of our health­care prob­lem.

Want to see health­care “fixed?”  How about start­ing with get­ting healthy your­self.

You can do it.

My last post was an attempt to con­vince those of you who “don’t like veg­eta­bles” that there may be some that you do like or might enjoy. 

Hon­estly, I really believe that this is the case for most peo­ple.  Just loosen up a lit­tle, get out there and try some new things.  You can do it.

But I know that some of you are think­ing, “No, really, I don’t like veg­eta­bles!”  This post is for you.

You would know bet­ter than me about your taste for veg­gies, but let me sug­gest that you can learn to like them.

You would know bet­ter than me about your taste for veg­gies, but let me sug­gest that you can LEARN to like them.  Check it out for your­self.

Per­form an inter­net search on “learn­ing to like new foods” and see what comes up.  You’ll find all kinds of advice.

My sug­ges­tion is a sim­ple one — just keep eat­ing the things you know are good for you but may not be the most enjoy­able.

If you per­sist you will learn to like them.  Grad­u­ally your taste pref­er­ences will adjust.  Soon you’ll be think­ing, “this isn’t so bad” and then it’ll be a short step to your actu­ally lik­ing it.

Don’t believe me?  Con­sider beer.  I admit beer is not a veg­etable, but very few peo­ple like beer the first time they taste it.

Yet they keep try­ing it because they like how it makes them feel.  Even­tu­ally most adults learn to enjoy the taste of beer.  Often, the very same bit­ter­ness that turned them off at first becomes part of what they seek in a good beer.

Sim­i­larly, if you eat more veg­eta­bles (and less of the bad stuff), you will like how it makes you feel — healthy and alive with energy.

Of course it will take longer to feel the ben­e­fi­cial effects of veg­eta­bles than the effects of beer.  So give it some time.  Eat your veg­gies.  You really will feel bet­ter, and soon you’ll enjoy the fla­vor.

Veg­gies: less calo­ries, tastes great!

You can do it!

Pretty much every­one knows that eat­ing more veg­eta­bles and less meat and processed food would be health­ier. 

It’s just hard to do it, and when we don’t want to try some­thing, we often turn to excuses.  A com­mon one is, “I don’t like veg­eta­bles.”

When I hear some­one say that I spring into action.

“Really,” I ask in return, “which ones?”

“Oh, ALL of them,” is the typ­i­cal reply.

Then I ask the indi­vid­ual to list all of the veg­eta­bles they have eaten more than once which they don’t like.

“Please, write them down,” I ask.

So they start writ­ing — car­rots, beets, onions, cel­ery, cucum­bers, pep­pers, sweet pota­toes, etc.  By the time they’ve iden­ti­fied about 10 or so they’re run­ning out of steam.

With prod­ding many can eke out another five or ten.  So that makes maybe twenty veg­eta­bles that they “don’t like.”

Then I ask them to take a look at this list of about 200 veg­eta­bles.  After that we cover ways of prepa­ra­tion — raw, steamed, roasted, etc.

What ways haven’t they tried?  Have they tried stir-fry, or veg­etable stews or soups?  How about Indian or Mid­dle East­ern veg­etable dishes?  And so on.

Two things gen­er­ally hap­pen:

1) they real­ize how much vari­ety is avail­able, and agree that per­haps there are some indi­vid­ual veg­eta­bles and dishes which will appeal to them, and

2) we usu­ally stum­ble over one or more things that they do like — per­haps hum­mus, mine­strone, or corn.

Aha!  We’ve got some­thing to build on.

Now they’re ready to end the “I don’t like veg­eta­bles” mantra and begin a jour­ney of dis­cov­ery for healthy and tasty foods.

If this sounds like you, a good place to start your jour­ney of veg­etable dis­cov­ery is at my friend Nancy Walker’s web­site.

You can do it.

In the last few weeks I’ve been div­ing back into what’s hap­pen­ing with health­care reform. 

Presently, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment is issu­ing rules and pro­posed rules about how health­care exchanges and other pro­vi­sions of the Afford­able Care Act are sup­posed to work.

If you think the actual law is long and com­pli­cated, just wait until you read the rules.  It’s not for the faint of heart.

As passed, health­care reform may or may not work out, but it cer­tainly is BIG, COMPLEX, HARD, and EXPENSIVE.

Mean­while, the states, health plans and oth­ers affected are scram­bling to under­stand what’s required of them and begin the process to com­ply with the fed­eral man­dates.

A small army of con­sul­tants is mak­ing a good liv­ing advis­ing health­care firms.  (Not that the con­sul­tants have the answers.)

Read­ing the rules and lis­ten­ing to con­sul­tants, I’m again struck by the sheer com­plex­ity and vast scale of the changes in store for health­care.

As passed, health­care reform may or may not work out, but it cer­tainly is BIG, COMPLEX, HARD, and EXPENSIVE.

The next time you cross paths with any local health­care pro­fes­sion­als, you may wish to give them a word of encour­age­ment.  They’re going to need it.  Espe­cially the admin­is­tra­tors.

But what does it mean to you? 

Know­ing me as you do, (and from the title of this post) you know I’m going to sug­gest that you just get healthy and avoid care in the first place.  That’s what I always rec­om­mend, and it IS good advice.

What lessons can we learn from the Afford­able Care Act?  I think the gov­ern­ment has given us a great exam­ple of how not to go about our per­sonal reform.

The Pres­i­dent and Con­gress decided to make sweep­ing changes to the health­care indus­try in a very short time frame.  The health­care sys­tem will become more com­plex and more reg­u­lated.

Admin­is­tra­tive costs are going up.  The exact pay­off is unclear at best.  Will care actu­ally improve?  Will health actu­ally improve?

No one is really cer­tain how any of this will per­form in the long run.  It’s an expen­sive gam­ble.

As you think about your own health reform, don’t do that.  Why not keep it sim­ple first?  You don’t have to change every­thing.  What can you do that’s easy?

Avoid finan­cially and emo­tional tax­ing changes.  Iden­tify some­thing that’s low risk but high reward.  Small changes can cre­ate big results.

Per­haps you might decide to eat less meat, and you’ll have a large salad for din­ner twice a week.  Excel­lent!  Just start with that.  See how it goes.

Adjust if needed and then take another step in the right direc­tion.  Get­ting healthy can be sim­ple and easy.

No one’s ask­ing me, but I think health­care reform could be sim­ple and easy too — if we could take this approach.

As the Chi­nese proverb states,  “It is bet­ter to take many small steps in the right direc­tion than to make a great leap for­ward only to stum­ble back­ward.”

Keep tak­ing those small steps to health.

You can do it!

“Your Co-workers Might Be Killing You,” read the head­line in a recent Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle about stress in the work­place and its rela­tion to health. 

You prob­a­bly won’t be sur­prised at the report that hav­ing “less-kind” co-workers and no con­trol over your work­flow is asso­ci­ated with and increased risk of death.

You prob­a­bly won’t be sur­prised at the report that hav­ing “less-kind” co-workers and no con­trol over your work­flow is asso­ci­ated with and increased risk of death.

Yes stress can kill you, but what can you do about it?

I see two main alter­na­tives, the first being to change the sit­u­a­tion.  If you’re in a truly toxic work­place, per­haps you should quit and find some­thing more whole­some.  Unfor­tu­nately jobs are scarce these days; it’s not so easy to up and leave.

Of course, feel­ing trapped in a place you don’t want to be only increases your neg­a­tive stress.

Another way of chang­ing the sit­u­a­tion would be to address the prob­lem with your boss and cowork­ers.  Per­haps you can work together to cre­ate a pos­i­tive change in the work envi­ron­ment. But, given the mind­set of the top lead­ers who have cre­ated the tension-filled milieu to begin with, this is often not too real­is­tic.

In fact, it may be an easy way to find your­self inad­ver­tently tak­ing the “up and leave” approach.

The alter­na­tive to chang­ing the sit­u­a­tion is chang­ing your­self.  Is there a way for you to detach and de-stress despite the ugli­ness going on around you?

Can you feel in con­trol of your­self, despite your lack of con­trol over the work?  Yes there is, although many peo­ple never find it.

It begins with accep­tance of things as they are.

The­olo­gian Rein­hold Niebuhr cap­tured it won­der­fully in the words of the Seren­ity Prayer: “God, grant me the seren­ity to accept the things I can­not change, Courage to change the things I can, And wis­dom to know the dif­fer­ence.”

We can find accep­tance and peace within our­selves, even in the most stress­ful and threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tions.  But, as the prayer sug­gests, we may need God’s help.

When you’re fac­ing a stress­ful sit­u­a­tion, at work or else­where, that basic out­line is a good one.  What can you change?

Is it fea­si­ble to leave for another job?  Can you improve the cul­ture where you are?  Or should you accept the sit­u­a­tion and work to develop seren­ity for your­self?  Once you decide, you can cre­ate action steps and get started.

There is one other option, but I can’t rec­om­mend it.

Stay where you are, be chron­i­cally angry and tense, develop resent­ments, and per­haps you’ll die early as the arti­cle sug­gests might hap­pen.

Don’t do that!

I’m happy to announce that the More Health Less Care Alliance is now More Health Less Care: Find­ing Well­ness in Jesus Christ.   

If you’ve been fol­low­ing my blog, you know that we’re tak­ing this action because God has impressed upon us the huge need for spir­i­tual well­ness today.

He’s led us to address spir­i­tual health in and through Jesus in con­nec­tion with the epi­demic of lifestyle dis­ease rag­ing in today’s world.  Only when we’re spir­i­tu­ally well, will we be ready and able to make the dif­fi­cult changes in our habits needed to main­tain our phys­i­cal health.

Our mis­sion is help­ing indi­vid­u­als to phys­i­cal, emo­tional and spir­i­tual well­ness.   

We believe that:

• The cur­rent “med­ical approach” to health and well­ness isn’t work­ing.  In fact, our reliance on health­care for lifestyle ill­nesses is hurt­ing us.
• Spir­i­tual and emo­tional issues are often at the root of our phys­i­cal ill­nesses.
• Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life.  By address­ing our spir­i­tual and emo­tional issues in Christ we may find heal­ing for our phys­i­cal bod­ies too.
• We can take charge of our well­be­ing.  With the grace of God, we can make wise choices and help each other to improve our health.
• We seek only to encour­age and assist.  We do not crit­i­cize or blame.
• Know­ing that pride pre­vents change, we humbly seek and accept help to improve our health and our lives.
• Ordi­nary peo­ple, trust­ing in God and work­ing together, can achieve extra­or­di­nary results.
• With Jesus, we are tak­ing back our health!

On a prac­ti­cal basis we will con­tinue to pro­vide use­ful infor­ma­tion on diet, exer­cise and other well­ness top­ics along with arti­cles on spir­i­tual health and Jesus.

And some­times we’ll be con­nect­ing the two as we try to help indi­vid­u­als under­stand the link­age between spir­i­tual well­ness in Christ and effec­tive con­trol of their lifestyles and good health.

Will we change the world?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But we’re doing what we feel God is call­ing us to do and leav­ing the results up to him.  (See my prior post on obe­di­ence).

Like the story of the boy at the beach who is throw­ing starfish back into the ocean, we will help whom we can.  Peo­ple need help to be well.  Peo­ple need Jesus.

If all of this sounds like a good idea to you, please join us as a con­tribut­ing author, e-mail sub­scriber or finan­cial spon­sor — or all three!

We grate­fully accept all help.  Also, please let us know how we can help you — per­son­ally or in your business/ministry.  We would love to assist you.

Cur­rently, we’re oper­at­ing on a VERY low bud­get and any finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion you wish to make will go directly to enhancing/operating our web­site or pub­lish­ing our bimonthly mag­a­zine.

A lit­tle can go a long way.  Pat Robert­son started the 700 Club with 700 peo­ple agree­ing to give just $10/month, and look what hap­pened.

CLICK HERE to find out more about how you can help.

Thanks for being here and thanks for your encour­age­ment!

Dr. Pete

“With man this is impos­si­ble, but with God all things are pos­si­ble.”

Matthew 19:26 (NIV)

Recently a friend asked me why my email newslet­ter seemed to have a new focus on reli­gious sto­ries. 

Good ques­tion.  Obe­di­ence is the answer.

As you know, for some years I’ve been com­mit­ted to help­ing peo­ple become well.  Last March I received a very clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Holy Spirit to talk more about Jesus in my work as a well­ness evan­ge­list, and now I’m try­ing to be obe­di­ent.

For what­ever rea­son, the Holy Spirit didn’t give me a lot of spe­cific instruc­tions on this.  Just “talk about Jesus more” was all I got.

Since I already had a blog, a newslet­ter and a pub­lic well­ness web­site, it seemed only nat­ural that each of these should be a venue for “talk­ing about Jesus more.”  I started with this blog.

Next came the newslet­ter, and soon the well­ness web­site presently known as the “More Health Less Care Alliance” will become “More Health Less Care: Find­ing Well­ness in Jesus Christ.” 

Those of you who know me will know that obe­di­ence is not the eas­i­est thing for me, but I know that it’s vital that I obey God in this mat­ter.  Cer­tainly God has my best inter­ests at heart and I can trust His direc­tion in my life.

I know that obey­ing here will deepen my rela­tion­ship with God, just as an obe­di­ent child will have a deeper rela­tion­ship with lov­ing par­ents.

I also know that, although God has noth­ing to prove to me, I do need to demon­strate my trust­wor­thi­ness to Him.

From Luke 16:10 (NLT) we read, “If you are faith­ful in lit­tle things, you will be faith­ful in large ones. But if you are dis­hon­est in lit­tle things, you won’t be hon­est with greater respon­si­bil­i­ties.” 

How can God trust me with greater respon­si­bil­ity if I can’t bring myself to fol­low through in the small things?

Now talk­ing about Jesus is not a “small thing” in the sense of being unim­por­tant, but, as a task, it isn’t a severe one.  I’m not risk­ing my life for doing so as I would be in cer­tain Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries.

But it was a lit­tle uncom­fort­able when I got the mes­sage a few months ago, and it is a small mat­ter to be “a lit­tle uncom­fort­able” for God.  In any event, I’m fol­low­ing through and evan­ge­lism is get­ting more nat­ural every day.

So that’s what’s going on with me and my var­i­ous activ­i­ties.

How about you?  What’s God call­ing you to do?  Are you obey­ing?  Yes or no, you can be assured that God loves you com­pletely, but it’s hard for Him to help you if you’re going off in your own direc­tion (as many peo­ple are).

I’ve done that too, but now I’m ask­ing, lis­ten­ing, and obey­ing God the best I can.  Take it from me; it’s never to late to start.

You can do it.  Let me know if I can help.

I’m sure you’ve heard the expres­sion “there is no free lunch” mean­ing that every­thing has a cost or price, although it may be well hid­den. 

You prob­a­bly agree with it too.  It’s hard to find peo­ple that don’t.

But agree­ing is one thing.  Liv­ing dif­fer­ently is another.  As a soci­ety we con­tinue to believe that health­care is an excep­tion to the rule.

As Hol­man Jenk­ins, Jr., describ­ing the Afford­able Care Act, put it in the Wall Street Jour­nal this week, “…instead of reforms to encour­age com­pe­tent con­sumers not to treat health care as a free lunch, we got a dou­bling down on health­care free lun­chism.”

“Health­care free lun­chism.”  I like how he put that, and frankly, I agree.

Health­care reform won’t solve the under­ly­ing issues of poor health and moral haz­ard.

We’re throw­ing more money at the sys­tem while telling peo­ple the prob­lem is that they aren’t get­ting enough health­care.

The truth is we all could use a lot more health and a lot less care.  For that we need to be more finan­cially invested at an indi­vid­ual level.

Appar­ently, good health in itself is not enough of a reward to moti­vate us.

We sim­ply can’t have it all.  I am reminded of the rule of trade-offs in project man­age­ment that goes some­thing like “High qual­ity, Fast, Cheap — pick any two.”

The gov­ern­ment is sug­gest­ing we pick three.  It ain’t going to hap­pen.  And we’re get­ting sicker every year to boot!

How will it end?  Will health­care reform be over­turned in the Supreme Court?  Will a Repub­li­can Con­gress repeal it in 2013?

Or will it move ahead as planned?  No one knows.  I’m fol­low­ing the action with inter­est, but it’s like watch­ing a train wreck in slow motion — mor­bidly fas­ci­nat­ing.  What I do know is that it’s not going to make us healthy.

Why not get healthy now.

Don’t wait until our col­lec­tive exper­i­ment with health­care free lun­chism ends badly.  Take action now.  Have more health and less care.

You can do it.

What good is an “annual phys­i­cal” any­way? 

More and more experts are ask­ing that ques­tion accord­ing to a recent report from the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Physi­cians, the pre­mier spe­cialty orga­ni­za­tion for internists like myself.

The arti­cle sug­gests that there is likely very lit­tle ben­e­fit to the gen­eral phys­i­cal exam­i­na­tion part of the annual visit, and that the two main ben­e­fits may be:

1) Ensur­ing rec­om­mended screen­ing tests get done and

2) Coun­sel­ing patients on improv­ing their lifestyles.

I’m not sur­prised – our daily habits are the fac­tor most respon­si­ble for our health, or our lack of it.

Many patients could use some help to live a health­ier lifestyle, and, as I dis­cuss in “More Health Less Care,” new behav­iors begin in the mind.  It’s our think­ing that cre­ates our actions.  Change your mind and you can change your life.

I’m glad that many experts are begin­ning to real­ize that the value of the annual visit lies in the talk­ing, not the exam­in­ing.  Let’s do more of it.

I’d like to see a lot more coun­sel­ing, coach­ing, inspir­ing, and encour­ag­ing, which would likely lead to a lot less “treat­ing.”

How will we know when we physi­cians are doing enough to inspire and sup­port behav­ior change for our patients?

I’m not sure, but call­ing it an “annual men­tal” would be a good sign. 

Thanks to John Rein­hold, III, Direc­tor of Health Ini­tia­tives at Chris­t­ian Care Min­istry, for sug­gest­ing this post.

I’m not sure how much most peo­ple think, but I won­der if they might ben­e­fit if they did more of it. 

In my var­i­ous roles I seem to wind up think­ing a lot.  This week I’ve spent hours con­sid­er­ing lead­er­ship and man­age­ment issues at the Chris­t­ian Care Min­istry where I work.  How can we make our prod­uct bet­ter?

Most peo­ple might ben­e­fit if they did more think­ing.

How do we improve ser­vice to mem­bers and providers?  How do I help my sub­or­di­nates grow into larger man­age­ment roles?  Over my career I’ve become a pretty good leader and man­ager by seek­ing answers to these and other ques­tions.

On the health front, it seems that I never stop think­ing about how to help oth­ers to well­be­ing.

What inspires peo­ple to take action?  What pre­vents most peo­ple from help­ing them­selves?  Which orga­ni­za­tions have truly helped their employ­ees to be well?  How did they do it?  How can I help indi­vid­u­als change before a health cri­sis?

On and on I go search­ing for bet­ter answers; answers that will help me accom­plish my goals as a well­ness evan­ge­list.

But enough about me.  What about you?  Are you a learner, a ques­tioner, a thinker when it comes to your health?  If not and if you’re not healthy, I sug­gest you get started.

Here are some ques­tions to ask your­self: 

• Why am I sick?
• Am I will­ing to live like this for­ever?
• What does the future hold if I don’t change my habits?
• Why can’t I change my lifestyle?
• What both­ers me about what I know I should do?
• How can I over­come my fear/inertia/laziness?
• What have oth­ers done to make last­ing pos­i­tive lifestyle changes?
• What could I do dif­fer­ently?
• Who can I ask to help me?
• What am I wait­ing for?

You can prob­a­bly think of more ques­tions, and more spe­cific ques­tions as you reflect on your own sit­u­a­tion.

Try it.  Ques­tion­ing and think­ing is the first step to break­ing free of your harm­ful lifestyle habits.

Since you are read­ing this blog I’ll bet that you’re an intel­li­gent and accom­plished per­son.

You’re likely suc­cess­ful in many areas of your life, but per­haps not in your per­sonal health.  That’s a com­mon sit­u­a­tion in today’s world.  But you can be well.

If you apply your­self, you can improve your health.  Start by think­ing, ask­ing and learn­ing.

You can do it!

A recent “USA Today” story caught my eye when it hit my home­town paper this week.

The piece, titled “Opti­mism May Lower Stroke Risk,” reported on a pub­lished study show­ing that opti­mistic indi­vid­u­als had a lower risk for stroke, which was inde­pen­dent of other pos­si­ble asso­ci­a­tions.

Fur­ther­more, the effect was described as “robust.”

Author Dr. Eric Kim appar­ently wasn’t sur­prised.  He pos­tu­lated a bio­log­i­cal effect and noted that prior stud­ies have shown sim­i­lar pos­i­tive asso­ci­a­tions for opti­mism in other aspects of health.

Some men­tioned in the arti­cle are a bet­ter immune sys­tem, more rapid wound heal­ing, and less heart dis­ease.

This shouldn’t sur­prise any­one. 

Mind, body spirit — there is no sep­a­ra­tion.  Your thoughts and men­tal out­look do affect you phys­i­cally, for good or for ill.  So I sug­gest you choose to be an opti­mistic, mostly happy per­son.

Yes, it can be done.  If you’re won­der­ing how, you might try start­ing with the work of Mar­tin Selig­man in the field of pos­i­tive psy­chol­ogy.  I like his ideas.

Or you could try start­ing with Jesus.  It’s much eas­ier to be pos­i­tive and opti­mistic if you are spir­i­tu­ally well and have faith in God.

One basic mes­sage of Jesus is for us not to worry because we can trust in God to take good care of us.

Here are two of my favorite say­ings of his: 

Are not two spar­rows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all num­bered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many spar­rows. 

                  - Matthew 10:29–31 

Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scor­pion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your chil­dren, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! 

                  - Luke 11:11–13 

Of course there are many more of Jesus’ teach­ings rein­forc­ing the same points — too many to print here. So, Jesus brought us a mes­sage that should make us opti­mistic, and it does do that for peo­ple that get it.

Take a look at what hap­pened to the early apos­tles.  They became the most opti­mistic, turned-on, happy-despite-their-troubles peo­ple that the world has ever seen, all because of the impact of Jesus.

Paul is a prime exam­ple, and he left us many let­ters by which we can under­stand how he felt about Jesus and life with Jesus.

Now, he wasn’t opti­mistic because life was easy.  Paul actu­ally had a pretty rough time once he began fol­low­ing Jesus.

Here he describes some of the per­ils of being an early evan­ge­list in hos­tile ter­ri­tory:

Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was ship­wrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been con­stantly on the move. I have been in dan­ger from rivers, in dan­ger from ban­dits, in dan­ger from my own coun­try­men, in dan­ger from Gen­tiles; in dan­ger in the city, in dan­ger in the coun­try, in dan­ger at sea; and in dan­ger from false broth­ers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone with­out sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone with­out food; I have been cold and naked.

                  - 2 Corinthi­ans 11:24–27 

Wow!  That makes my prob­lems seem pretty small.

Yet, despite all of his tri­als and tribu­la­tions, Paul had a pos­i­tive out­look.  Much of his writ­ing con­sists of encour­ag­ing to oth­ers to have the same opti­mism and trust in God.

Again, here are just a cou­ple of exam­ples: 

…we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him…

                  - Romans 8:28 

For I am con­vinced that nei­ther death nor life, nei­ther angels nor demons,neither the present nor the future, nor any pow­ers, nei­ther height nor depth, nor any­thing else in all cre­ation, will be able to sep­a­rate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

                  - Romans 8:38–9 

So how is it dif­fer­ent for us today?

Really, it isn’t any dif­fer­ent.  Yes our prob­lems are new, but the solu­tion is still Jesus.  With Jesus we can be opti­mistic despite the U.S. debt limit cri­sis, two wars, ter­ror­ist attacks, the bad econ­omy, the dys­func­tional health­care sys­tem, and “any­thing else in all cre­ation.”

And, as “USA Today” has reported, opti­mism is good for your health.

Why not get healthy, get opti­mistic, and get Jesus?

You can do it. Let me know if I can help.

It’s Polit­i­cal Sea­son Again. 

Actu­ally it seems like we’ve had one long elec­tion cam­paign since 2008 argu­ing over the future of our nation.  Yes, some­times it gets a lit­tle too nasty and it’s very easy to get tired of the con­stant back and forth, but the issues are too impor­tant for any­one to ignore.

Like many Repub­li­cans, I’m pay­ing close atten­tion to Mitt Rom­ney, Michelle Bach­man, Rick Perry and the rest of the GOP pres­i­den­tial field. 

Michelle Bach­man

Polls are a con­stant reminder of the upcom­ing elec­tions and one of the most asked ques­tions is “Do you think the coun­try is on the right track?”

A recent poll had 71 per­cent of respon­dents say­ing that Amer­ica was on the wrong track.  I agree, for a lot of rea­sons, but let me stick to health and well­ness.

No one should need to tell you that obe­sity rates con­tinue to rise.  Lifestyle dis­eases are ram­pant in Amer­ica and get­ting worse.  Health­care costs are spi­ral­ing out of con­trol and our government’s response fails to address the root issue.

What’s the Root Issue? 

Plain and sim­ple, the prob­lem is how we live.  Obe­sity, dia­betes, hyper­ten­sion, heart dis­ease and more of the chronic ill­nesses plagu­ing us come from how we live.  Yes, how we live.  No amount of health­care is going to fix that.

So yes, we are on the wrong track health-wise.  But we have cho­sen that track.  Who decides how we live?  Does the gov­ern­ment?  Can the Pres­i­dent make you work out?

Can Con­gress get you to eat bet­ter?  Of course not, but they can indulge us in our denial and pre­tend that the health­care sys­tem is the prob­lem.  Of course health­care does have its share of prob­lems, but lack of health­care isn’t THE prob­lem.  We are the prob­lem.

Until we change, expect things to get worse.

Why are we liv­ing this way?  Why would we choose to live a lifestyle that kills?  Good ques­tions.  For some it may be out of igno­rance.  They just don’t know any bet­ter, but mostly I think it’s because we’re bro­ken.

There’s some­thing about us that isn’t right.  We’re not emo­tion­ally well inside and we can’t seem to get bet­ter.  We med­icate our­selves with junk food, TV, alco­hol and cig­a­rettes.  Let’s face it — we need help!

Jesus is that help.  When we know that we are loved and accepted by God we can admit our bro­ken­ness and ask for help.  When we fol­low Jesus and address our phys­i­cal, emo­tional and spir­i­tual prob­lems, we can get bet­ter.

We aren’t just off track with our national finances or our health in Amer­ica; we’re off track spir­i­tu­ally.  Way off.

The good news is that when it comes to God, it’s easy to get back on track.  Admit your faults, ask God for for­give­ness and for help and you’ll get it.

Will Amer­ica do that?  Prob­a­bly not, but as indi­vid­u­als, we can do it any­time we like.

I know, because I’ve done it.  I’m still doing it.  You can too.

Let me know if I can help.

Who chooses our lifestyles for us? 

Are we not in charge of our own behav­ior?  Cer­tainly we are in charge of our­selves.  We do choose our lifestyles and, there­fore, we choose to have any ill­nesses that arise from them.

Per­haps you dis­agree.  Maybe you would sug­gest that indi­vid­u­als with lifestyle ill­nesses are “vic­tims” of igno­rance, soci­ety, bad par­ent­ing, or their imme­di­ate envi­ron­ment.

Many do sug­gest that.  Yes, we are all dealt dif­fer­ent hands in life, some worse than oth­ers, but how you “play what you’re dealt” reflects your under­ly­ing spir­i­tual health.

Jesus did not come and die for us so that we could get our emo­tional sup­port from choco­late ice cream.

Try answer­ing these ques­tions:  How is your own behav­ior influ­enc­ing your health and well­ness?  What’s ben­e­fi­cial and what’s harm­ful about how you’re behav­ing?

Why are you act­ing like this?  What aren’t you doing that wish you were?  Why?

Here’s what I think.

Ulti­mately everyone’s behav­ior is in ser­vice of their core val­ues and phi­los­o­phy of life, which, taken together, can serve as a pretty fair def­i­n­i­tion of spir­i­tu­al­ity.

If you’ve been hav­ing a hard time chang­ing your behav­ior, per­haps you should delve deeper into your spir­i­tual life.

What is the phi­los­o­phy by which you live?  What are your core val­ues?  Do you believe in just get­ting by, liv­ing for the moment, and going with the crowd?  Are you will­ing to life dif­fer­ently?  Why or why not?

Where is God in your phi­los­o­phy and val­ues?  Do you know Jesus?  These ques­tions can help you clar­ify the ori­gins of you behav­ior and why some habits may be hard to break.

A Chris­t­ian coun­selor told me recently that a (pre­sum­ably Chris­t­ian) client was not will­ing to give up an unhealthy food addic­tion because in her words, “it’s the only emo­tional sup­port I have.”  My first thought was “how sad.”

Despite her faith, this per­son has a spir­i­tual prob­lem.  Jesus did not come and die for us so that we could get our emo­tional sup­port from choco­late ice cream.

Too many of us have this prob­lem.  Myself included.  I am not immune to com­fort foods and the siren song of mod­ern lifestyles.

I can also strug­gle some­times to live in a healthy man­ner but my phi­los­o­phy of life sug­gests that I call on God to help me.

My core value is fol­low­ing Jesus.  It’s not easy, but it’s work­ing.  He is help­ing me to become more spir­i­tu­ally and emo­tion­ally healthy — not per­fect, just bet­ter.

What’s your phi­los­o­phy of life?  What are your core val­ues?  Are they work­ing for you?  Do you know Jesus?  Are you fol­low­ing him?

You can do it.

I’m a reg­u­lar reader of Seth Godin.  For those of you who aren’t aware, Seth is a best sell­ing author, entre­pre­neur, and busi­ness and mar­ket­ing expert.  His blog comes reg­u­larly and is always insight­ful. 

A few days ago his blog, “The Arro­gance of Will­ful Igno­rance,” made the point that too often we don’t even make the attempt to learn what we should.  Here’s how he put it in a busi­ness con­text.

Peo­ple have come before us, failed, learned, writ­ten it down.  Sci­en­tists have fig­ured out what works, and proven it.  Econ­o­mists have gained sig­nif­i­cant under­stand­ing about the long-term impacts of short-term deci­sions.  And his­to­ri­ans have seen it all before.

How dare we, then, decide to just wing it?  To skip class.  To make up his­tory.  To imag­ine that sci­ence is a mat­ter of opin­ion, some­thing optional, a diver­sion for the leisure classes…  How can we work in the mar­ket­ing tech field, for exam­ple, with­out know­ing about David Ogilvy and Lester Wun­der­man and Claude Hop­kins?  Or Kaushik and Shirky?

He’s right of course.  Our pride can blind us to learn­ing from oth­ers, espe­cially when we might have to change a strongly held opin­ion.  Sim­ple lazi­ness can also cause us to be will­fully igno­rant.

As in, “Don’t tell me. If I don’t know, I don’t have to do any­thing.”  So we choose not to inves­ti­gate.  Not to learn and grow.  And we pre­tend that it’s okay.

Frankly, a lot of Amer­i­cans appear happy to remain will­fully igno­rant about their health, includ­ing the causes and solu­tions for their self-induced ill­nesses.

Bet­ter not to know.  Bet­ter to pre­tend that lifestyle ill­nesses are unavoid­able.  That there’s noth­ing they can do.  That it’s just part of life.

Of course, that’s their choice, but it’s a sad one.  They will get only worse, and, unfor­tu­nately, we’ll all pay higher health insur­ance pre­mi­ums because of it.

The truth is lifestyle ill­nesses can and do get bet­ter or resolve when the lifestyle is changed.  Believe it.  Research it for your­self.  Learn about Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Joel Furhman and Dr. Ken­neth Cooper.

The truth will set you free.

“Jesus came to save us.”

All Chris­tians would agree with that state­ment, but too often it stops there.  A Chris­t­ian might say, “I’m saved,” mean­ing that through their faith in Jesus they expect to go to heaven, but what about their prob­lems here on earth?

What about their sin­ful desires and actions, their bad habits?  Jesus also came to change us here and now.  He came to give us a rich, reward­ing and mean­ing­ful life — now!

Dal­las Willard has described the change we are to make in fol­low­ing Jesus as “regen­er­a­tion.” The idea is that we should be chang­ing for the bet­ter, here and now, in all aspects of our lives.

Dal­las Willard has described the change we are to make in fol­low­ing Jesus as “regen­er­a­tion.”  The idea is that we should be chang­ing for the bet­ter, here and now, in all aspects of our lives.

Here’s how Dr. Willard expressed it, “Faith in the liv­ing Christ raises us above merely being deliv­ered from the con­se­quences of sin.

We need a doc­trine not only of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion but of regen­er­a­tion. We need a pic­ture of our life in God that does not leave most of our life untouched.”

The point is that Jesus wants us to change.

The love of God makes it okay to admit our prob­lems, faults and sins, but we are not to just stay stuck with them.

We are sup­posed to get bet­ter — not per­fect, but bet­ter.  We do that by becom­ing “dis­ci­ples” of Jesus or “fol­low­ing” Him.  Obvi­ously “fol­low­ing” some­one is not a pas­sive process.

Again, here’s how Dr. Willard explains dis­ci­ple­ship, “A dis­ci­ple is a per­son who has decided that the most impor­tant thing in their life is to learn how to do what Jesus said to do.

A dis­ci­ple is not a per­son who has things under con­trol, or knows a lot of things. Dis­ci­ples sim­ply are peo­ple who are con­stantly revis­ing their affairs to carry through on their deci­sion to fol­low Jesus.”

I believe that, as you fol­low Jesus, you develop an increas­ing love and respect for your­self — not pride, but accep­tance and grat­i­tude mixed with a desire to be a bet­ter per­son.  You begin to feel a pow­er­ful urge for good stew­ard­ship over your own phys­i­cal and emo­tional health.

You come to real­ize how much of “the world” is anti­thet­i­cal to Jesus, God and your own per­sonal health and well­ness.

A desire to live dif­fer­ently builds inside you.  As you con­tinue fol­low­ing Jesus you build the inner strength to make pos­i­tive changes.  The world pulls at you, but you learn to sep­a­rate your­self from those who will drag you down.

Slowly at first, and not with­out some set­backs, you start to become a dif­fer­ent per­son in mind, body and spirit.  Now you’re on your way to becom­ing the per­son that God wants you to be, and I don’t think he wants you to have a lifestyle dis­ease.

Fol­low Jesus to health and well­ness in mind, body and spirit.

You can do it.

What is the “One Thing” you should do to be well?  If you can only change one habit, change what you eat.

Other fac­tors are cer­tainly impor­tant aspects of well­ness, but what you choose to con­sume (and not to con­sume) is the crit­i­cal issue.  The old adage, “you are what you eat,” is true in many respects.

Actu­ally it’s a lit­tle more com­pli­cated than that.  I like to think of two essen­tial roles for our food.  One is mak­ing up the actual sub­stance of our bod­ies.

Foods are trans­formed into the phys­i­cal build­ing blocks of our organs and tis­sues — blood, brain, mus­cle, fat and so on.

The other aspect of food is that it con­trols the phys­i­ol­ogy or chem­istry of our bod­ies — that is, the run­ning of “the fac­tory” by which the phys­i­cal build­ing blocks are pro­duced and main­tained.  This lat­ter role is all-important.

Many of us are get­ting famil­iar with holis­tic think­ing as we are con­fronted with the dif­fi­cult envi­ron­men­tal issues of our day. We are increas­ingly aware that the com­plex inter­re­la­tion­ships of nature are not appar­ent to us, and that we often cause unwit­ting dam­age with well-intentioned inter­ven­tions.

Too often we over­sim­plify our mar­velously com­plex bod­ies.  Dis­sect­ing our inte­grated phys­i­ol­ogy into parts, we try to con­trol com­plex rela­tion­ships with one or two pow­er­ful med­ica­tions.

Our cho­les­terol is high and so we “solve” the prob­lem with a statin drug.  But it doesn’t work.  In fact it causes more harm than good as we dis­rupt other inter­re­lated processes.  Own­ing a ham­mer doesn’t make every­thing a nail.

We must think more holis­ti­cally about our health.

Many of us are get­ting famil­iar with holis­tic think­ing as we are con­fronted with the dif­fi­cult envi­ron­men­tal issues of our day.  We are increas­ingly aware that the com­plex inter­re­la­tion­ships of nature are not appar­ent to us, and that we often cause unwit­ting dam­age with well-intentioned inter­ven­tions.

Surely farm­ers in the Mid­west didn’t intend to cre­ate the large oxy­gen deprived “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mex­ico, but they did through their use of fer­til­izer.  When the chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­ers, intended for a good pur­pose — increas­ing food pro­duc­tion, run off into the rivers we harm the larger world.

As we wake up to the envi­ron­men­tal threats pro­duced by our own col­lec­tive behav­ior, we are begin­ning to hear talk of “sus­tain­abil­ity.”

The thrust of this grow­ing move­ment is to help soci­ety main­tain a healthy planet over the long term.  How do we heal the dam­age we’ve caused and avoid fur­ther envi­ron­men­tal harm? The answer begins with humil­ity.

We acknowl­edge the inher­ent wis­dom in nature and our own igno­rance about its com­plex­ity.  We no longer seek to mas­ter nature but rather to coop­er­ate with it.

And so it is with our bod­ies.  You are an ecosys­tem unto your­self.  What does it take to have per­sonal sus­tain­abil­ity?  Sci­en­tists and physi­cians have made great strides in under­stand­ing how the var­i­ous aspects of our inter­nal phys­i­ol­ogy work together, but we are still a long way off from know­ing it all.

As a holis­tic physi­cian I’ve been edu­cat­ing myself, and frankly, it’s daunt­ing.  There is a lot to learn.  Let me sum­ma­rize by say­ing, “it’s com­pli­cated.”

The good news is that we don’t need to under­stand every­thing.  Our phys­i­ol­ogy is also “smart.”  There is a deep wis­dom built into us down to the cel­lu­lar level.  Our bod­ies know how to be well.  When prob­lems and issues arise, our phys­i­ol­ogy and bod­ies are to a large extent self-correcting.

The body can and does heal itself as long as we are sup­port­ive.  All we need to know is how to be help­ful.  Under­stand­ing what’s good and what’s bad at the macro level, we can allow the innate intel­li­gence of our bod­ies to lead us to health and well­ness.

The basics of eat­ing a more healthy diet are sim­ple.  Eat more whole foods, more fruits and veg­eta­bles, and less meat.  Say yes to whole grains, but no to ground flour.  Avoid processed foods of all kinds.  Eat nat­ural foods, foods that spoil.  No fast food, snack food, or junk food! Drink more water.  Cut out the soda and alco­hol. Cof­fee and tea are okay, but water is what you need.

Eat and drink like this and your body will heal.

Now, I’m not unre­al­is­tic.  I know this isn’t easy to do in today’s world.  It’s not nor­mal.  Most peo­ple aren’t liv­ing a sus­tain­able life from the per­sonal health per­spec­tive, and per­haps they never will.

It okay for you to be dif­fer­ent.  What you eat and drink mat­ters for your health — pos­si­bly more than any­thing else.

Eat well to be well.  You can do it!

At my church, last weekend’s ser­mon was on the impor­tance of truth, and it’s still on my mind.

The Bible sure has a lot to say on the impor­tance of know­ing the truth and being truth­ful.  Jesus even referred to him­self as the truth.  Here are a few verses on this topic that I like:

There­fore each of you must put off false­hood and speak truth­fully to his neigh­bor, for we are all mem­bers of one body.

- Eph­esians 4:25

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

- John 8:32

A false wit­ness will per­ish, and who­ever lis­tens to him will be destroyed for­ever.

- Proverbs 21:28

Your favorites might be dif­fer­ent than mine, but I’m cer­tain that they too will sup­port the main idea — the truth helps us to a bet­ter life with God; lies and lying do just the oppo­site.

Our pas­tor talked about how ordi­nary lying is in every­day life and gave a few exam­ples.  Some instances dealt with seri­ous issues and oth­ers less so, but I could see that in each instance the lie kept the indi­vid­ual from chang­ing for the bet­ter.

“What is the most com­mon lie?” I won­dered as he spoke.

Who knows for sure, but I think the sin­gle most com­mon lie is “I’m fine.”  You know what I mean.  Some­one asks, “How are you?” and you say “fine.”  Don’t lie.

Okay, per­haps it’s not a lie for you.  If not you’re either at a great place right now in life, or you’re prob­a­bly not like most peo­ple, because I don’t think that most peo­ple are “fine” most of the time.

Most of us have prob­lems, seri­ous prob­lems — phys­i­cal ill­nesses, addic­tions, emo­tional strug­gles, mar­i­tal dis­cord, finan­cial insuf­fi­ciency, job stress, and par­ent­ing chal­lenges are some exam­ples.  That’s life.

I’ve faced some of these prob­lems in my life and I’m sure more will be com­ing along all too soon, hope­fully not all at once.  When they do I will not be fine.  I may be con­fused, sad, hurt, scared, lonely or a host of other things but I won’t be fine.

And I’ll try not to lie about it either.  If you ask, “How are you?” I’ll tell you how I’m feel­ing for real.  If you don’t want to know, don’t ask me.

It’s not easy for us to be hon­est and truth­ful about our trou­bles, but I’ve learned it’s the only way I can get the help I need to get bet­ter.  Many peo­ple would rather just answer “fine.”

Too embar­rassed to dis­close their prob­lems to oth­ers, maybe even to them­selves, they lie.  And the lying keeps them trapped.  As the proverb above sug­gests, their sit­u­a­tions often go from bad to worse until the truth can finally set them free.

So let me ask, “How are you?”  Be hon­est with your­self.  If you have a lifestyle ill­ness, you’re not fine.  If you’re anx­ious and wor­ried all of the time, you’re not fine.

Ditto if you’re stressed and angry.  If you’re fight­ing with your spouse, you’re not fine.  If you’re drift­ing through life with­out a pur­pose, you’re not fine.

Relax.  It’s okay not to be fine.  The truth will set you free. If you can con­front a painful truth about your­self, you can begin to get bet­ter.  It can be done.  Peo­ple all around you are fac­ing the pain and improv­ing their lives.  I’ve done it too.  Sure it hurts, but it’s the first step on the road to free­dom.

Take the first step.  You can do it!

Peo­ple like tech­nol­ogy.  Tech­nol­ogy is sexy.

Who doesn’t want to be the first one on their block with the lat­est gad­get from the news­pa­per head­lines?  Tech­nol­ogy also promises us that, what­ever your issue, it will become easy with our new solu­tion.  We have the answer to your frus­tra­tion.  As the say­ing goes, “There’s an app for that!”

Accord­ing to a recent Fox News story, health-related smart phone apps are big busi­ness.  Of course no one knows if they work.  Accord­ing to the arti­cle “there haven’t been any stud­ies of the effi­cacy of apps.”

And I bet there’s none com­ing any­time soon.

I liken these apps to fad diet books.  The app sell­ers aren’t sell­ing solu­tions, they’re sell­ing hope – hope for an easy way to make a hard change.

“Look here is a brand new high-tech ‘sil­ver bul­let’ to slay the mon­ster of bad lifestyle habits,” they say.  And we want to believe, “With this app I will now be able to get well!”

OK, back to real­ity we go.

If the diet book didn’t help you, the app prob­a­bly isn’t going to help you.  What else hasn’t helped you make a last­ing change in the past?

It could be that many things haven’t helped. Did the Dr. Oz Show help you?  Did the gym mem­ber­ship help?

What, you say that noth­ing has helped?  Oh.  Hmmm.

Well…perhaps you’re the prob­lem.

I don’t mean to be harsh, but the truth is that when peo­ple are ready to change, they do.  Sure they might ben­e­fit from some help, per­haps even an app.  But they change because they’ve become ready — they’re now com­mit­ted.

If you’re not ready, all of the apps in the world aren’t going to help.  So don’t waste your money on false hope in the lat­est app.  Instead make a com­mit­ment to be well.  Then get started.

You can do it.

The U.S. court­room fights over health­care reform go on and on.

One of the Obama administration’s main argu­ments in sup­port of the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act is the “inevitabil­ity” of health­care con­sump­tion by Amer­i­cans.

Although this is true to a cer­tain extent, our col­lec­tive think­ing on the “inevitabil­ity” of health­care con­sump­tion has been dis­torted by the cur­rent health­care sys­tem, which encour­ages the demand for pro­gres­sively more care.

Mul­ti­ple stud­ies and experts attest to the fact that 70–75 per­cent of health­care is ren­dered for pre­ventable con­di­tions and 30–40 per­cent of care is use­less and/or harm­ful.

Your own per­sonal physi­cian, or any provider “in the trenches,” will cer­tainly con­firm this for you if you are skep­ti­cal.  Taken together, these sta­tis­tics sug­gest that at least 80 per­cent of health­care would be unnec­es­sary for those indi­vid­u­als who choose to live a healthy lifestyle and con­sume only that health­care known to be effec­tive.

Unfor­tu­nately this is not com­mon prac­tice.  Yet some Amer­i­cans are choos­ing this approach and reap­ing the rewards of great health and low health­care expenses.

Yes, it can be done, but the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act is sim­ply not help­ful in this regard.  The gov­ern­ment can’t fix our prob­lem with more com­plex­ity and reg­u­la­tion.

Health­care uti­liza­tion and expenses can­not be “con­trolled” in the cur­rent third party reim­burse­ment sys­tem or by the unwork­able “reform” we’re fight­ing over now.

Our ulti­mate “fix” will come from get­ting well.  No gov­ern­ment, insur­ance com­pany or physi­cian can give us health.

They may help us along the way, but the ini­tia­tive to be well rests on us as indi­vid­u­als.  What kind of sys­tem could fos­ter that?  You won’t like the answer.

What I rec­om­mend is a freer and more trans­par­ent mar­ket for health­care ser­vices where indi­vid­u­als are spend­ing much more of their own money.

It’s the bad tast­ing med­i­cine that’s always the most effec­tive.

Be well.  You can do it.

Most Amer­i­cans seem to think that lifestyle dis­eases just arise by them­selves, but of course that’s sim­ply false, as we’ve cov­ered in the last few posts.

Most patients have cre­ated their own med­ical prob­lems through unhealthy habits.  Actu­ally they’ve prob­a­bly had to work very hard to get their ill­nesses.

Most patients have cre­ated their own med­ical prob­lems through unhealthy habits.

Please under­stand, your body wants to be well.  All of us have a mar­velous built-in phys­i­ol­ogy, which works to pro­mote our health and well­ness, heal­ing us when needed.

All we need do to be healthy is to work with it not against it.  Just eat the foods that nature pro­vides, move nat­u­rally and rest when you’re tired.  Your body will largely take care of itself.

Instead many Amer­i­cans actively work against their bod­ies — stuff­ing them­selves with harm­ful, arti­fi­cial foods, never exer­cis­ing in the slight­est, yet refus­ing to sleep when tired.

Not to men­tion abuse of alco­hol, tobacco or drugs.  Of course their bod­ies com­plain.  Per­haps they feel tired and run-down.  Or they seem to have no energy but an awful lot of aches and pains.

Their bod­ies cry out for a change, but no change comes.

For a while, the body fights back as com­pen­satory mech­a­nisms kick in.

In the case of pre– dia­betes, insulin secre­tion goes up, and through­out the body indi­vid­ual cells are called to action to stem the incom­ing tide of sugar and fat.

Unfor­tu­nately, many peo­ple con­tinue in a relent­less assault on their own bod­ies, even­tu­ally crush­ing the resis­tance.    Con­grat­u­la­tions to them. They’ve finally achieved the type II dia­betes that they’ve been work­ing so hard to get.

Of course their work isn’t over.  Their bod­ies still want to be well.

The resis­tance isn’t elim­i­nated; it’s just gone under­ground.  If they ever relax their aggres­sive pro-diabetes lifestyle, their phys­i­ol­ogy will start improv­ing again and any progress made will be rapidly lost.

Hav­ing achieved their reward of dia­betes, they must now do the work to main­tain it.

Does this sound far­fetched?  It depends on how you look at it.

Type II dia­betes can and does go away when indi­vid­u­als change their habits.  Peo­ple can recover.  If you want to be well, start work­ing with your body instead of poi­son­ing it.

You can do it.  Let me know if I can help.

The idea for this post was sug­gested by Dr. Michel Cas­saro.  Dr. Cas­saro, a spe­cial­ist in func­tional med­i­cine and reliev­ing chronic pain, is the host of the Pain­less Liv­ing Radio Show and prac­tices in Louisville, Ken­tucky.