Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Nine out of 10 Amer­i­cans think their health is good, very good or excel­lent!

Really?

Appar­ently that’s what a Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) study found, at least accord­ing to this story from ABC News that caught my eye this morn­ing.

Nine out of ten Amer­i­cans think their health is good, very good or excel­lent accord­ing to a Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion study.

How can this be?  The report also iden­ti­fies the obe­sity rate as over 28% and dia­betes above 8%.  What about the rest of the lifestyle related con­di­tions rag­ing in Amer­ica today?

The story doesn’t cover them all, but high blood pres­sure, knee and hip arthri­tis, low back pain, heart dis­ease, can­cer, and oth­ers are also at epi­demic lev­els.

Look around and see for your­self.  Do you think that 90% of Amer­i­cans are in “good” or bet­ter health?  I just don’t think that’s real­ity.

My first thought is that many peo­ple might be in denial.  It’s eas­ier to refuse to see your prob­lem.

To say things are fine because you are, per­haps even uncon­sciously, unwill­ing to admit that you’re not per­fect.  Denial is real.  I’ve been there myself.

The best way to break out of denial is to accept an outsider’s opin­ion.

So if you think your health is good, try ask­ing your doc­tor.  If he or she says the same — great!  But if your physi­cian dis­agrees, then you should lis­ten and reeval­u­ate your own opin­ion.

Another idea that occurred to me was that per­haps peo­ple don’t know what good health is.  Maybe they have never been phys­i­cally fit and emo­tion­ally well.  So they have no abil­ity to com­pare their health with what it could be.

I believe this is a real issue for a lot of Amer­i­cans.

My rec­om­men­da­tion to you is that, if you have never tried to become health­ier, you work on it a lit­tle before judg­ing the qual­ity of your health.  Per­haps with just a bit of walk­ing and a bet­ter diet, you will begin to feel the dif­fer­ence.

s you begin to expe­ri­ence greater vital­ity, you will be in a bet­ter posi­tion to decide how healthy is healthy enough for you.

The most wor­ri­some thought I had on this dis­con­nect was, “Uh-oh, what if this means that peo­ple are giv­ing up?”  In fact, at Dic​tio​nary​.com the sec­ond def­i­n­i­tion of good is “sat­is­fac­tory in qual­ity, quan­tity, or degree.”

Per­haps many are just decid­ing that their cur­rent health is “sat­is­fac­tory.”  They are sat­is­fied — sat­is­fied with being over­weight, out of shape, hav­ing low energy, drink­ing to much, depressed… I’ll stop there, because this idea is too depress­ing to me.

If you’re not vibrantly healthy and alive with energy, then please don’t be sat­is­fied!

What I want for you is that you would expe­ri­ence excel­lent health, exu­ber­ant health — mind, body and spirit!  Health that you can cel­e­brate!  That’s why I’m here.  Don’t set­tle for less.  Your life shouldn’t be about “set­tling.”

So maybe your health isn’t that good.  Don’t blame your­self.  Don’t stress out about the work ahead.  Just get started and things will get bet­ter.

If you don’t know what to do, do this — read the ear­lier posts, get a copy of More Health Less Care and call a friend to talk with you about it.

Believe me, it will work and you can do it!