Dr. Peter J. Weiss

It’s time to change your lifestyle for the bet­ter.

After the last two posts, you know that.  And you’re com­mit­ted.  Yes, it will be hard.  But yes, you can do it.  There is a method that can help you suc­ceed.  But I’m not going to write about it here.

Why not? Sim­ple. I’ve already writ­ten to you about the method.  In fact, I wrote an entire book for you.

My book, More Health Less Care is designed to help you be well.  And yes, if you have a lifestyle ill­ness, I really did write the book for you.

Buy a copy.  Do it. More Health Less Care costs less than most insur­ance copay­ments, and you’ll only need to buy it once.

Then read it, and reread it, and read it again.  Find a friend to help you start to work the book and you can be well.  Really.

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

Hope­fully you read my last post and by now you’ve come to grips with the idea that you have a lifestyle ill­ness — per­haps type II dia­betes.

“Now what,” you say?  Relax, it’s very sim­ple, CHANGE YOUR LIFESTYLE!

Yes, change your lifestyle.  Really.  It can be done.  Peo­ple all around you are doing it.

Not every­one of course, but a few com­mit­ted souls are show­ing you the way.  Some alco­holics are learn­ing how to stay sober.  Some cig­a­rette smok­ers are giv­ing up the can­cer sticks.  Oth­ers are adopt­ing healthy dietary and exer­cise habits.

For most peo­ple this degree of change is hard.  No mat­ter, you’ve done hard things in your life before now.

You can do it again here, if you’re com­mit­ted.  Being com­mit­ted doesn’t mean that you’ll be an overnight suc­cess.  What it does mean no turn­ing back, no quit­ting.  And truly, if you just keep at it, you will even­tu­ally reach your goal.

So your home­work exer­cise for now is to inter­nal­ize these three state­ments:

• I CAN change my lifestyle.
• I WILL change my lifestyle
• I am COMMITTED to becom­ing healthy — no turn­ing back.

Once again, med­i­tate on them, speak them and write them until they’re firmly embed­ded in your con­scious­ness.

Noth­ing is more impor­tant than get­ting your thoughts in line with the changes you wish to make.  Even if you don’t believe these state­ments at first, just keep repeat­ing them to your­self.

“Fake it to you make it,” as they say.  With time you will believe them.

You can do it.

A lot of peo­ple I meet seem con­fused about their dia­betes, obe­sity, high cho­les­terol and other “lifestyle dis­eases.”

They won­der, “How did I get this?” and  “Where did it come from?”  Well, let me clear up any con­fu­sion.

If you have one or more of the lifestyle dis­eases, in all prob­a­bil­ity THEY COME FROM YOUR LIFESTYLE!

I’m sorry to shout and I’m not try­ing to blame you, but if you’re ever going to get bet­ter you will need to look at your own role in the sit­u­a­tion.

Know that you’re not alone; col­lec­tively, we Amer­i­cans have cre­ated a national lifestyle that’s lit­er­ally killing us.  As Walt Kelly wrote, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

I don’t want you to berate your­self, but please don’t fight the idea that you’re play­ing a role in your own health prob­lems.  Most of us are too.

Get­ting bet­ter starts with real­iz­ing that you are in con­trol.  So until my next post, I just want you to con­cen­trate on the fol­low­ing two state­ments:

• I don’t have to be sick.
• My lifestyle is caus­ing me prob­lems.

Med­i­tate on these ideas.  Write them down over and over again until you believe them, until they really sink in.  Talk about them with sup­port­ive friends.

Resist the temp­ta­tion to blame your­self, but get it through your head that these are true.  Own your ill­nesses and your lifestyle.

You can do it.

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

- Jesus, John 8:36

My pur­pose is to give them [us] a rich and sat­is­fy­ing life.

- Jesus, John 10:10

In the last post I talked about find­ing the “king­dom of God” that Jesus intro­duced to the world.

As we dis­cussed, noth­ing is more impor­tant in life than hav­ing that deep rela­tion­ship with God that Jesus intends for us.  When we enter the king­dom of God, we will find the free­dom and the rich and sat­is­fy­ing life that Jesus promises.  So how do we get there?

We start by call­ing upon Jesus through prayer to help us, and of course he will.  But most of us could use a lit­tle help from other peo­ple too.

In fact, Jesus did ask his dis­ci­ples to spread the good news and help oth­ers to the king­dom, and those fol­low­ing Jesus today are still doing that.  Great — there’s help avail­able!

But wait.  Unfor­tu­nately, not every­one who claims to fol­low Jesus may actu­ally be doing so.  Jesus warned us to beware of deceit­ful or just plain mis­guided peo­ple that would speak in his name.

This shouldn’t be too sur­pris­ing.  Just as you wouldn’t trust every doc­tor with your health and any old lawyer with your trial, you can’t trust all Chris­tians or min­is­ters to help you grow in your rela­tion­ship with God.  Bum­mer.

How are you going to find peo­ple to help you?  In my last post, I talked about how Jesus implied that “guides” and “gar­den­ers” might be help­ful here.

So let’s exam­ine some of the char­ac­ter­is­tics that would help to make a good guide or gar­dener.

Imag­ine you are select­ing a guide to help you hike through a for­est to see a spec­tac­u­lar water­fall.  First, the obvi­ous — the best guide to help you should have actu­ally been to the fall before.

Only then can you be com­pletely sure that he or she knows the way.  Beyond that, you would want your guide to be friendly and patient with you, as per­haps you’re not as phys­i­cally fit as he is.

Will he slow down and give you a hand to help you over the rough ter­ri­tory, or will he berate you for not being able to keep up?  Will he be able to keep you safe?  Is he wise and does he have good judg­ment?

Gar­den­ers must also be wise and patient with good judg­ment.  Gar­den­ing is a mat­ter of tend­ing to a plant’s nat­ural desire to grow; of under­stand­ing its basic biol­ogy; and of pro­vid­ing just the right amount of light, water and food at just the right time.

Fer­til­iz­ing too much or too soon, can kill a young plant.  In both cases, guides and gar­den­ers, they should be more focused on how to help (either the client or the plant) than how to force results.

This sounds a lot like what the apos­tle Paul had to say about peo­ple that have matured in their rela­tion­ship with God.  In his words:

“…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kind­ness, good­ness,
faith­ful­ness, gen­tle­ness and self-control.”

- Paul, Gala­tians 5:22–3

I think what you’re look­ing for is becom­ing clear.  You should look for a kind, lov­ing,  patient and gen­tle per­son to help you grow spir­i­tu­ally.

Don’t fol­low the arro­gant, rude, mean, or unhappy guide no mat­ter how well he or she claims to know the ter­ri­tory.  Best wishes on your jour­ney.

Let me know if I can help.

I often hear Chris­tians talk­ing about, or read their writ­ings on, “build­ing the king­dom of God.”

They sug­gest that we Chris­tians are sup­posed to be “king­dom builders,” by which they seem to mean doing things on God’s behalf. You know advanc­ing God’s plan here on earth; get­ting stuff accom­plished for Him; tak­ing care of His earthly busi­ness, and the like.

What kind of things?  Min­is­ter­ing to the sick, donat­ing time and money to wor­thy causes, and serv­ing their church might be some exam­ples.  Now these are clearly good works, but are we mis­guided by focus­ing on these works as “build­ing the king­dom” rather than see­ing them as a result of the Holy Spirit work­ing in us?

Jesus taught a lot about the “king­dom of God” and peo­ple are still dis­cussing exactly what He meant by that phrase.  It’s com­pli­cated by the fact that He var­i­ously taught that God’s King­dom was already here and advanc­ing by His own pres­ence -  that it was “among” the dis­ci­ples, but also that it was to come in the future.

As for me, I under­stand the “king­dom of God” to mean God’s involve­ment in our own per­sonal lives right now.  Some believe that it means a future time when the entire world will be ordered accord­ing the will of God.  Either way, as near as I can tell, Jesus never spoke about “build­ing” the king­dom.

In fact, when he talked about the king­dom he said things like this:

“What is the king­dom of God like? What shall I com­pare it to?  It is like a mus­tard seed, which a man took and planted in his gar­den.  It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air perched in its branches.”

(Luke 13:18–19)

“What shall I com­pare the king­dom of God to?  It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.” (Luke 13:20–21)

Hmm… two inter­est­ing analo­gies here.  So the king­dom of God is like the liv­ing plants that grow, seem­ingly almost by them­selves.  Grow­ing trees and bak­ing bread are very dif­fer­ent processes than “build­ing” some­thing.  You can’t build a tree.  The wise gar­dener and baker are helpers, or stew­ards, of the nat­ural process that cause the tree or the yeast to grow.  They do not cre­ate the growth, but rather sow the seeds (or acti­vate the yeast) and then nur­ture the plants as they grow.

In con­trast, Jesus also said this:

“The king­dom of heaven [God] is like trea­sure hid­den in a field.  When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” (Matthew 13:44)

“Again, the king­dom of heaven [God] is like a mer­chant look­ing for fine pearls.  When he found one of great value, he went away and sold every­thing he had and bought it.” (Matthew 13:45–46)

Here Jesus sug­gests the king­dom of God is some­thing that we must dis­cover or find.  For find­ing or dis­cov­er­ing, we might need a guide as opposed to a builder.  Jesus appears to be say­ing that we don’t cre­ate the king­dom.  Instead we search for it.  More­over, seek­ing and actu­ally find­ing the king­dom is worth any price we need pay.

This is how I have expe­ri­enced God work­ing in my life.  Com­bin­ing Jesus’ var­i­ous expla­na­tions, here’s how I would describe the process.  First we must seek God.  The great news is that when we do, we find Him!  We also come to learn that noth­ing is more impor­tant than our rela­tion­ship with God.  Now the seed is planted in our hearts.  If we are good stew­ards of our rela­tion­ship with God, doing our part to nur­ture it, it grows deeper and even more sig­nif­i­cant in our lives.

Even­tu­ally, the matur­ing rela­tion­ship we have with God will show up in some of those “good works” that we talked about ear­lier, but the deeds are not build­ing the king­dom.  Rather, all of our lov­ing actions are the result of the grow­ing king­dom of God in us. Just as a mature tree releases new seeds, our good works may in turn help to plant the seed in some­one else.

So I don’t do “king­dom build­ing.”   But I do fol­low Jesus, and Jesus did ask his fol­low­ers to do some things.  The most impor­tant one was to spread the “good news” that He brought to the world — God is here for you!  I do that.

Let me know how I can help you to find the trea­sure.

Recently it seems I’m doing a lot of new things — things that I’m not espe­cially com­fort­able with yet.

I just took a posi­tion as Med­ical Direc­tor at Chris­t­ian Care Min­istry and I’m still get­ting acquainted with the team and under­stand­ing how things work.

Last Fri­day, I trav­eled to Tampa to speak to the mas­ter coaches of the Tampa Bay Pro­fes­sional Coaches Asso­ci­a­tion, and tonight I’m teach­ing health coach­ing in an on-line course.

Sounds excit­ing, doesn’t it?  Of course I do find all that excit­ing, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a lit­tle stress­ful too.

All of those activ­i­ties are good for me, but they’re also a lit­tle bit scary.  For­tu­nately, so far I’ve been able to acknowl­edge my fears, get out of my com­fort zone and push ahead.  In busi­ness they say, “Noth­ing ven­tured, noth­ing gained.”

How about you and your health?  Your jour­ney to well­ness may well require you to get out­side your com­fort zone — to learn some new ideas and adopt new behav­iors.  Per­haps it seems scary or hard to you.  That’s okay.

You’re not so dif­fer­ent from other peo­ple in that regard.  Just accept your dis­com­fort and keep mov­ing for­ward any­way.

Many of the best things that you will ever do for your­self will be uncom­fort­able.

In the gym we express it as, “No pain, no gain.”  The very fact that you’re out­side of your com­fort zone is a sign that you are mak­ing progress.  Keep up the good work.

You can do it!

This week­end, my wife and I enjoyed the movie, “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” about a sui­ci­dal 16-year-old who checks him­self into a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal.

As you might guess by the title it’s a com­edy that deals with seri­ous sub­jects.  Star­ring Keir Gilchrist, Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis and Emma Roberts, a lot of fun comes along with the mes­sage.  Get it.  You’ll like it.

Movies tend to make me think.

Some­times days later, I’m still won­der­ing why a char­ac­ter did this or that.  I’ll catch myself think­ing about what he or she could have done dif­fer­ently, and I’ll have to remind myself that it wasn’t real.

How­ever, although a film’s story may be fic­tional, the issues it raises are often real for many of us.  That’s what keeps our inter­est.

In this case, I won’t fill you in any more on this movie in case you want to rent it your­self.  I’ll just tell you that it struck a chord with me about the pres­sures of life, and how I deal with them.

We all face stress; the ques­tion is do we break or do we bend under it?

My view is that it’s not the prob­lems that break you.  It’s your abil­ity to respond.  Can you admit your issues, face them squarely, under­stand your own role in the sit­u­a­tion, and ask for and accept help from oth­ers?

If so, you’ll do fine.  But if you keep all the stress inside, avoid fac­ing the issues, and repress your emo­tions, even­tu­ally it’s all going to blow up.

I believe that, in fac­ing your prob­lems, it’s really help­ful to know that every­one suf­fers, often from sim­i­lar issues.  Most do it silently.

When we “com­pare our insides to their out­sides,” we feel we come up short.  But it’s not so.  We all have prob­lems.

When you real­ize you’re a lot like other peo­ple, you can give your­self per­mis­sion not to be per­fect and start deal­ing with life’s dif­fi­cul­ties.

So find a small group of friends.  Open up about your prob­lems and your feel­ings.  Lis­ten to them as they open up about theirs.

That’s the first step to get­ting bet­ter.

You can do it.

Do you ever wish God would com­mu­ni­cate with you more directly — per­haps a through a burn­ing bush?

Or maybe that He would just appear, sit down on your couch, and talk to you?  I do — all the time.  It seems that I’m con­stantly wish­ing I could dis­cern God’s inten­tions for me more clearly.

Why is this so hard some­times?  God knows.  I don’t.  Today I thought, “Wouldn’t it be eas­ier for God to just send me an e-mail?  That would be nice.  But what would he say, any­way?”

Here’s how I imag­ined it:

From:  God@Creator.God

Sub­ject:  Your issues

To: pete@​drpeterjweiss.​com

CC:  Jesus@Creator.God

_________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Pete,

Thanks for pray­ing about your prob­lems.  I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know that I get the pic­ture, and I’ve got a plan.  It’s not time for you to know all the details just yet, but rest assured, every­thing will be fine in the end.

In the mean­time, I’d like you to work directly with my Son, Jesus.  Jesus spe­cial­izes in assist­ing peo­ple with trou­bles, large and small.  He’s got years of expe­ri­ence, and I’ve never seen Him fail.

You can trust Jesus as you would me.  I’ve copied Him in, and He’ll be in touch.

Love,

Your Heav­enly Father

From:  Jesus@Creator.God

Sub­ject:  Fol­low up on Dad’s email

To: pete@​drpeterjweiss.​com

____________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Pete,

I’m fol­low­ing up on my dad’s recent email regard­ing your issues.  He’s brought me up to speed on the details, and I can see why you’re so upset.  That’s some heavy stuff you’ve got going on, but don’t worry; I’ve seen it before and we’ll get through it together.

Here’s what I need you to do:  trust me and keep doing the best that you can.  I know it can be hard to let go of the out­come and admit that you’re not in con­trol, but let’s face it — you’re not.  If you can just relax a lit­tle and focus on the tasks in front of you, I’ll han­dle the rest.

Of course your atti­tude is impor­tant too.  Please try to get over your­self.  You’re very dear to dad and to me, but, really, life isn’t all about you.  Try to be a lit­tle more grate­ful for what you have, and lend a help­ing hand to those around you.  They’ve got prob­lems too — some much worse than yours.  If you can shift your focus to the pos­i­tive, it will help a lot.

Pray­ing and talk­ing it out helps most peo­ple.  So let’s plan on talk­ing every day.  I’ve blocked out plenty of time on my sched­ule for you to unbur­den your­self.  I’ll lis­ten and I’ll show you where I’ve been work­ing on the issues.  We’ll just take it one day at a time, together.  It’s a sim­ple plan, but sim­pler is usu­ally bet­ter — isn’t it?

In clos­ing, let me remind you — don’t worry!  I’ve got your back.  Feel bet­ter.  Get some rest, and I’ll talk with you tomor­row.

Love,

Jesus

Are you famil­iar with the con­cept of “tough love?”

Per­haps you know par­ents who’ve cho­sen to cut off sup­port to a drug or alco­hol addicted child.  They might refuse to bail their child out of jail or send money despite their con­tin­u­ing love for him or her.

What’s with that?

The basic idea is that, some­times in our love for another per­son, we enable him or her to con­tinue harm­ful behav­iors.

Our exces­sive sup­port pre­vents the indi­vid­ual from expe­ri­enc­ing the full neg­a­tive con­se­quences of his or her behav­ior, fore­stalling the need for change.

The idea of tough love is that it may be more help­ful (and more lov­ing) to with­hold assis­tance and let the indi­vid­ual “hit bot­tom” which may result in a new atti­tude and real change for the bet­ter.

But it’s awfully hard to do.

I think that’s where we’re at in Amer­ica on health­care.  Our mas­sive fund­ing of health­care has only enabled us to live more coun­ter­pro­duc­tively.

We call on soci­ety to fund the con­se­quences of our own fail­ure to take action to help our­selves.  More insur­ance is not going to help us be well or to help the cost of health­care come down.

We will be well as indi­vid­u­als and col­lec­tively when we come to grips with our own fail­ure to accept respon­si­bil­ity for our health.

What does tough love look like?  For pre­ventable, lifestyle-induced ill­nesses I would sug­gest it looks like higher deductibles, more out-of-pocket expense, and more med­ical under­writ­ing.

Pretty much the oppo­site of what’s hap­pen­ing with health­care reform.  Yes we need insur­ance, but unless it rewards per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity and penal­izes harm­ful lifestyles, I don’t see that peo­ple are going to get health­ier.

Wake up Amer­ica!

To a large extent you can con­trol your per­sonal health and your indi­vid­ual health­care spend­ing, but why try when it’s on some­one else’s dime?

Can we get real and admin­is­ter tough love to our­selves?  It starts with each one of us per­son­ally.

Are you healthy?  If not, are you even try­ing to be?  No one can do it for you, and no one will.

Sooner or later most par­ents will get tough with the way­ward child who refuses to change.

Don’t think it won’t hap­pen in Amer­i­can health­care.

I have a friend, Bill D., who likes to say that life is a gift, which he means lit­er­ally.

Our very lives are gifts from God.  Basi­cally I agree with him, but then why is life so hard for so many peo­ple?

Almost by def­i­n­i­tion a gift is some­thing to be enjoyed or to bring hap­pi­ness.  I’m sure that you’re not in the habit of giv­ing unpleas­ant gifts by which to tor­ment your friends.  Surely God means for us to enjoy His gift of life.

Noth­ing is quite like being the par­ent of young chil­dren on Christ­mas morn­ing.

Now when I think of gifts, I think of Christ­mas.  Noth­ing is quite like being the par­ent of young chil­dren on Christ­mas morn­ing.  Quite a few Christ­mases ago, when my kids were young­sters, my wife and I gave each of them a radio-controlled car.

What a great present!  (So great that I gave one to myself too.)  You can cer­tainly have a lot of fun rac­ing those lit­tle cars around the house and the yard.

But like many elec­tronic Christ­mas presents, “bat­ter­ies are not included” with the car.  You’ve got to add them your­self.

Frankly, with­out bat­ter­ies the cars just aren’t much fun.  Yes, you can still play with them despite the lack of power.

You can push them man­u­ally; or set up an incline to roll them pas­sively; or attach strings and pull them.  What­ever.  But it’s not great fun com­pared to how the cars are designed to work.  Noth­ing else is as good as get­ting the right bat­ter­ies into the toy.

I think life is like that.  Humans come with “bat­ter­ies not included.”  Yet we require power.  Not elec­tric power — God’s power.

That’s why life isn’t work­ing right for many peo­ple. They’re miss­ing the “God power” we’re meant to run on.

Like a child try­ing to forcibly push the unpow­ered elec­tric car, these folks try to power their lives with alter­nate sources.  Sources like drugs, sex, money, achieve­ment, and fame.  But noth­ing they try can com­pare to God.

How about you?  Are you using the wrong power source?  Why not power up with God.  Call upon Jesus.  Jesus is “the bat­ter­ies.”

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

Recently I met a woman in remark­able health, espe­cially spir­i­tu­ally and emo­tion­ally.

As it turns out, she fol­lows a 12-step pro­gram and attrib­uted her well­be­ing to “keep­ing it sim­ple” and “work­ing the steps” of the pro­gram.

After a while she com­mented, “It’s a sim­ple pro­gram — so sim­ple that you need help to screw it up,” by which she meant that some over­com­pli­cate the process and, in so doing, ham­per oth­ers too.

This struck a chord in me.  I believe that adding unnec­es­sary com­plex­ity is a big prob­lem for a lot of us in my two areas of inter­est — well­ness and God.

Of course, some things in life are com­pli­cated.  Quan­tum physics is com­pli­cated.  The U.S. Tax Code is com­pli­cated.  Today, even health­care is com­pli­cated, but well­ness is sim­ple.

Want to be well?

Eat more plants and fewer ani­mals.  Avoid processed food and sugar.  Don’t smoke or drink to excess.  Exer­cise.  Wear seat belts.  Learn to man­age your emo­tions.  Get enough sleep.  Don’t for­get to relax.  Seek mean­ing and pur­pose in your life.  Keep at it.

It really is that sim­ple.  Beware of those who want to make it more com­pli­cated.

You don’t need every new blood test, and you don’t have to read the med­ical jour­nals.  Just do a lit­tle learn­ing; cre­ate your plan, and then fol­low your own sim­ple steps.  And keep at it.  Avoid the well-intentioned offers of “expert help” that could screw it up for you.  Keep it sim­ple.

Sim­ple works in your spir­i­tual life too.  Find­ing God doesn’t require a divin­ity degree or under­stand­ing a com­plex the­ol­ogy.

Seek and you will find.  It’s reli­gion that has been made overly com­plex — by we humans — not by God.  How do you think we arrived at so many Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions?  Did Jesus come to estab­lish hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent sects?  No he came to con­nect us with God and his mes­sage was a sim­ple one.

Doesn’t this make sense to you?  Imag­ine for a minute that you’re God and you’re about to make humankind.

Will you make it hard or easy for humans to main­tain their bod­ies and to be well?  Will you make it com­plex or sim­ple for peo­ple to have a rela­tion­ship with you?  Remem­ber, you love these peo­ple.  So of course you will make it easy for the right thing to hap­pen.

And that’s exactly what God did.  Ask any holis­tic prac­ti­tioner about the innate wis­dom of the body and it’s abil­ity to heal itself.

Ask a min­is­ter about how easy it is to con­nect with Jesus.  Bet­ter yet, just try it for your­self.  Start seek­ing well­ness.  Ask Jesus to help you.  It is sim­ple, but noth­ing hap­pens until you start.

Get going.  You can do it.

A friend called recently look­ing for some health­care advice.

A local physi­cian had just rec­om­mended that he have an inva­sive pro­ce­dure and my friend was ner­vous about it.  As he began to share the med­ical details, I focused my mind and began to recall all the facts I could about his prob­lem.  (Since I’ve been out of prac­tice a while this can be hard some­times.)

The fear of “offend­ing the doc­tor” remains an all too com­mon sit­u­a­tion in health­care today.

Towards the end of his expla­na­tion I was begin­ning to for­mu­late my reply, and he star­tled me by ask­ing this ques­tion, “So, how do I go about get­ting a sec­ond opin­ion with­out offend­ing Dr. X?”

He didn’t want my advice on his medial care!  He wanted advice on how to fig­ure out what was best for him with­out offend­ing his doc­tor, and he was pretty ner­vous about it!  I had mixed feel­ings.

Truth­fully, I wasn’t really qual­i­fied to give him any advice on his health con­di­tion any­way.  So I was happy about not being asked to do so, but I was sad that he was so wor­ried about upset­ting the doc­tor.

I don’t like it but many peo­ple are like my friend.  This fear of “offend­ing the doc­tor” remains an all too com­mon sit­u­a­tion in health­care today.

Yes doc­tors have feel­ings and we should all be polite, but let’s get over the idea that ask­ing for a sec­ond opin­ion is being a trou­ble­some patient.  I’ll put it to you straight — any physi­cian that would get offended by a rea­son­able request for a sec­ond opin­ion is not a physi­cian you want.

I believe most doc­tors will agree with me on that.

But, as they say, “it takes two to tango,” and physi­cians aren’t the only par­tic­i­pants in this dys­func­tional dynamic.  Was my friend’s dis­com­fort jus­ti­fied?

I know his doc­tor to be a kind and even-tempered man, and I don’t think he would take offense at a polite but direct request for another opin­ion.  Yet my friend was still ner­vous.

How about you?  What fears do you have about being in charge of your own health and health­care?  The doc­tors work for you.

How can you get com­fort­able express­ing your­self and doing what’s right for you regard­less of their advice?  Like it or not, you are respon­si­ble for your own health and health­care.

Don’t be afraid to be in charge.

You can do it!

Socrates said, “The unex­am­ined life is not worth liv­ing.”

A pretty bold state­ment, don’t you think?  It appears to mean that the value of our very lives comes from our own exam­i­na­tion of them.  No exam­i­na­tion, not much value.  Might as well be dead.

Well…maybe, maybe not.

Socrates was a clas­si­cal Greek Athen­ian philoso­pher and is cred­ited as one of the founders of West­ern phi­los­o­phy.

Per­son­ally, I don’t think our intrin­sic value depends on our own self-examination; how­ever, great value can come from exam­in­ing your life and mak­ing changes for the bet­ter.  That’s the sub­ject of my post today.

I’m not sug­gest­ing that we all turn into philoso­phers, but I am sug­gest­ing that you seek to deter­mine the mean­ing of events in your life.

I believe every­thing that comes about in your life — peo­ple, places, and events — has a mean­ing, and that you are the only one who can deter­mine it.  Sound duant­ing?  Don’t worry, you can do it.

The mean­ing is out there wait­ing for you to grab hold of it, but you’ve got to look.

Seek and you will find.  Instead of just react­ing to events, how about ask­ing some ques­tions?  Ques­tions like:  Why is this hap­pen­ing?  How did it come about?  Did I cre­ate it?  Is it just bad luck?  What does it mean?  What can I learn from this expe­ri­ence?

Unfor­tu­nately too many peo­ple don’t want to ask them­selves the hard ques­tions, ques­tions to which they might not like the answers.

Per­haps they have become seri­ously over­weight and also have a seden­tary lifestyle.  Then they develop dia­betes or angina.

What ques­tions do they ask?  What mean­ing do they ascribe?  Usu­ally noth­ing sig­nif­i­cant except that they are aging and need to see the doc­tor.

But some oth­ers are will­ing to ask the hard ques­tions to dis­cover the hard truths.

Truths like this: Yes, I did cre­ate these ill­nesses through my behav­ior.  It’s hap­pen­ing because I have been liv­ing an unhealthy lifestyle.  This is a wake up call.  It means I need to change for the bet­ter — now while I have the chance!

Do you see the dif­fer­ence?  The lat­ter per­son has a chance to become well, while the for­mer spi­rals down­ward with ever increas­ing chronic ill­ness.

This con­cept isn’t lim­ited to phys­i­cal well­be­ing as in our exam­ple, but rather is crit­i­cal for your total health — phys­i­cal emo­tional and spir­i­tual.

Every­thing in your life — job stress, acci­dents, injuries, finan­cial rever­sals, to name a few — can have a mean­ing that helps you respond and grow in total health.  But you have to seek it.  You have to find it.  And you have to respond.

Seek the mean­ing of events.  Ask your­self the hard ques­tions.  Make the changes you know you should.

You can do it!

As we go about our lives, we make choices.

In fact, you can think of your life as a con­stant stream of choices.  We face many oppor­tu­ni­ties each day to choose our actions.

Think­ing about your health, you might focus on choices such as, “Should I have the cookie or not?”  “Do I get up early to work out, or sleep in?”  You can prob­a­bly think of many such exam­ples.

But your total health is much larger than you may be imag­in­ing.

I’ve writ­ten before about the inte­gra­tion of mind, body and spirit.  As human beings, each of us exists in whole­ness or total­ity.  These sup­posed “parts” are sim­ply ways of look­ing at dif­fer­ent aspects of who we are.

We are whole peo­ple and the choices we make regard­ing any one “part” influ­ences the oth­ers, for bet­ter or for worse.

I believe that, in regard to your total health, all of your choices make a dif­fer­ence.  There is noth­ing that you do that doesn’t impact your body, mind or spirit in some way.

The food you eat, the movies you watch, the friends you hang out with, and the mag­a­zines you read are all impact­ing your total health.  Every­thing mat­ters.

It’s a pretty sober­ing thought.

In the “total health” con­cept, this also means that every choice affects each com­po­nent of your well­be­ing.  So the deci­sion to eat a health­ier diet can be seen as a good emo­tional or spir­i­tual choice, not just the right thing to do for your body.

Unfor­tu­nately in today’s world, there are many ordi­nary and “nor­mal” activ­i­ties that may rep­re­sent bad phys­i­cal, emo­tional and spir­i­tual choices.  Why do you think we as a group are so unwell?

Wake up to this idea that every­thing mat­ters.  Per­haps you’ve been mak­ing some harm­ful deci­sions with your mind on autopi­lot.  Begin pay­ing atten­tion.

What changes would you make if — before you eat, before you shop, before you view, before you talk and before you lis­ten — you were ask your­self, “Is this a healthy emo­tional choice?” “What kind of spir­i­tual deci­sion am I mak­ing?” and “How will this affect my body?”

Per­haps that sounds a lit­tle imprac­ti­cal.

I cer­tainly don’t ask these ques­tions about every deci­sion that I need to make.  Yes, every­thing mat­ters to your health, but some things mat­ter more than oth­ers.

The choice between an eat­ing and apple or eat­ing a peach is not as sig­nif­i­cant as the choice between watch­ing a vio­lent movie or med­i­tat­ing.  Start with the choices that you feel are most impor­tant and work your way down to smaller items, but don’t for­get that every­thing mat­ters.

You can do it!

God is call­ing me to spread His mes­sage, but what should I say and how should I say it?

Have you looked at the diver­sity of opin­ion out there about Jesus, His mes­sage and how to “get it right” in Chris­tian­ity? That’s not even to men­tion other reli­gions.

A lot of peo­ple claim they have “the truth” and may be quick to cor­rect you if you ven­ture another opin­ion. Maybe they’re right. Maybe not. I don’t want to argue, but I’d like to share my views with you.

In some respects the vari­ety in reli­gion reminds me of the many opin­ions in the health and well­ness com­mu­nity.

A cer­tain group argues for the Atkins diet. Oth­ers say to eat the Mediter­ranean diet. Still oth­ers pro­mote eat­ing any­thing you like, but watch­ing the calo­ries.

There is just as much diver­sity in exer­cise reg­i­mens and rec­om­men­da­tions. And what about vit­a­mins and sup­ple­ments? It can be pretty con­fus­ing try­ing to cre­ate an indi­vid­ual plan for healthy liv­ing.

Nev­er­the­less it can be done. That’s what my book, “More Health Less Care” is all about.

It’s just not real­is­tic to think that any­body else’s way of liv­ing will be per­fect for you. You must and you can fig­ure it out for your­self, and to do so I sug­gest start­ing with the basics.

When you’ve grasped the basic prin­ci­ples behind well­ness (on which there is much more gen­eral agree­ment) you have a foun­da­tion upon which to build your plan.

Your spir­i­tual life is no dif­fer­ent.

You must and you can decide for your­self what to believe and how to inte­grate your beliefs into your life. As with well­ness, start by search­ing for basic prin­ci­ples rather than a fully formed ide­ol­ogy.

Most of us could use some expert help along the way. Don’t be reluc­tant to seek out advi­sors. (I will address select­ing advi­sors in a future post)

Some­times it seems that the more I learn in life, the less sure I am about details while becom­ing more cer­tain about the under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples.

So please allow me to share the basic prin­ci­ples of Chris­tian­ity:

• God is real. He loves us and will help us if we ask.
• Jesus came to con­nect us to God.
• Jesus’ life and teach­ings show us how to live in con­nec­tion to God.
• Through Jesus we have direct access to God.

If you are look­ing for God, try start­ing with those prin­ci­ples.

More than that you may not need right now. Don’t get caught up in com­plex issues of the­ol­ogy for which you are not ready. It’s okay to set those aside and stick with the basics.

Call on Jesus to help you. He will. Now, just like find­ing your way to health and well­ness, it may not be instan­ta­neous. You may have to work at it some, but if you truly seek God, you will find Him. Let me know if I can help.

You can do it!

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For every­one who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.  – Jesus

Let’s talk about health, well­ness and your per­sonal finances.

How are these con­nected? Before we get to that, I would like to remind you of the con­cept of total health. The idea of total health is that you exist as an insep­a­ra­ble com­bi­na­tion of mind, body, and spirit.

Total health focuses on the “whole you.” Actions you take that are good for any one of these components–mind, body or spirit–lift the other two, and your total health is improved. Sim­i­larly, any­thing that is harm­ful to one of these parts, neg­a­tively affects the oth­ers, and adversely affects your total health.

This is an impor­tant con­cept because, for many, per­sonal finances are a major cause for con­cern. And, worry is harm­ful not just to your emo­tional health, but to your phys­i­cal and spir­i­tual health as well.

When you are wor­ried, anx­ious, and under a great deal of stress, you become tense, and a cas­cade of neg­a­tive health con­se­quences fol­lows.

You do not get the proper amount of sleep your body needs, your cor­ti­sol lev­els rise and a vari­ety of other hor­monal and chem­i­cal changes occur in your body–all of which neg­a­tively effect the “whole you.”

Chronic stress makes you want to eat “com­fort foods,” prompt­ing harm­ful bio­chem­i­cal changes to occur in the body, and things begin to com­pound on all levels–physically, emo­tion­ally and spir­i­tu­ally.

Per­sonal finances cre­ate a lot of stress and anx­i­ety in today’s world. We have been through tur­bu­lent finan­cial times and we are not out of the woods yet.

Many peo­ple are wor­ried about their future and strug­gle to man­age their every­day finances. This finan­cial anx­i­ety is not lost on wealthy indi­vid­u­als either.

Stress arises from the fear of not hav­ing enough money, the money not last­ing, or monies being mis­used by ben­e­fi­cia­ries or the gov­ern­ment.

The news media helps to fuel this fire.

Most media pro­gram­ming is designed to sell adver­tis­ing, and through that, ulti­mately sell a prod­uct.

The typ­i­cal approach cap­i­tal­izes on fear. Per­haps you have had some of these thoughts:  “I will not have enough money… Do I have enough to send the kids to col­lege? Will I have enough money to retire? Will I be able to travel?”

These fears make you an easy mark for the pitch­men: “Buy this stock. Invest in bonds, Invest in mutual funds.” Finan­cial pro­pa­ganda hooks your atten­tion by play­ing on your emo­tions.

Some find them­selves con­sumed by greed.

“Get rich quick! Retire early!” So we see the twin emo­tions of greed and fear, but mostly fear, that the media plays on to sell their prod­uct.

When bom­barded with con­flict­ing finan­cial advice, it’s easy to wind up in a con­stant state of fear about your finan­cial future. Many feel inad­e­quate try­ing to fig­ure it out, and the fear increases.

They lie awake at night won­der­ing if they will have enough money and begin to work harder and harder to man­age their finances. It is a vicious cycle, and it is harm­ful to your health.

The way to break free and cre­ate a vir­tu­ous cycle in your life is to develop an inte­grated finan­cial plan, a plan that allows you to sleep well at night know­ing you are on the path to finan­cial well­ness.

To do this you need to iden­tify your finan­cial goals.

Your finan­cial plan should begin by address­ing the spir­i­tual aspects of your money. What are your goals in life?

What do you want to spend your money on? How much money is enough? Are there cer­tain ways of earn­ing money that are bet­ter than oth­ers? What are your per­sonal ethics sur­round­ing the ways you earn or invest your money?

All these ques­tions need to be answered before you can set clear goals and decide how you want to achieve them. So begin with the spir­i­tual aspects of money.

Only when your val­ues are clear can you under­stand what you want to achieve and develop an inte­grated finan­cial plan, a plan that will allow you to relax, sleep well at night, and improve your phys­i­cal health and well­ness.

And, per­haps, part of your plan might be to ignore the finan­cial media, but instead invest in a mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship with a trusted finan­cial advi­sor. Get your per­sonal finances in order and be well.

You can do it!

Most peo­ple aren’t healthy in mind, body or spirit.

Most peo­ple aren’t focused on what’s truly impor­tant.

Most peo­ple aren’t able to admit their frail­ties.

Most peo­ple aren’t exam­in­ing how their own behav­ior con­tributes to prob­lems in their lives.

Most peo­ple aren’t will­ing to accept respon­si­bil­ity.

Most peo­ple aren’t able ask for help when they need it.

Most peo­ple aren’t ready to con­sider a dif­fer­ent point of view.

Most peo­ple aren’t flex­i­ble enough to change their minds.

Most peo­ple aren’t learn­ing.

Most peo­ple aren’t going to find the relief they seek.

Most peo­ple aren’t inclined to change.

Most peo­ple aren’t happy inside.

Most peo­ple aren’t get­ting bet­ter

Most peo­ple aren’t hav­ing fun.

But… Some peo­ple are!

Be that kind of per­son.

You can do it!

What pur­pose does God have for you in your present cir­cum­stances?

What does God seek to accom­plish through you now?  Two good ques­tions.  I’ve been reflect­ing on them since my pas­tor ended last weekend’s church ser­vice with these words:

“Wher­ever you go, God is send­ing you, wher­ever you are, God has put you there; He has a pur­pose in your being there. Christ who indwells you has some­thing He wants to do through you where you are. Believe this and go in His grace and love and power.”

Richard C. Halver­son

This is known as the Halver­son Bene­dic­tion in honor of its orig­i­na­tor, Richard C. Halver­son, for­mer Chap­lain to the United States Con­gress.

Now I’ve been hear­ing this bene­dic­tion or some­thing close for years, but I also mis­un­der­stood it for quite a few of those years.

For a long time the ques­tion I asked myself after hear­ing this was, “What does God want me to do?”

Mean­ing, what exactly does He want me to do in this job, in this fam­ily, in this town, etc.?

This line of ques­tion­ing didn’t work out so well.

For exam­ple, as CEO of a health insur­ance com­pany, I felt God’s pur­pose to be help­ing our mem­bers become phys­i­cally, emo­tion­ally and spir­i­tu­ally healthy.

How­ever, I found myself over­whelmed with the demands of sim­ply run­ning the firm and unable to imple­ment my desired well­ness pro­grams.  It was so frus­trat­ing!

One evening, hear­ing the preacher speak those words yet another time, I had a sud­den flash of insight!

Wait a minute; he’s not say­ing that God wants me to do some­thing.  He’s say­ing God wants to do some­thing through me!  Imme­di­ately, I felt that God’s “some­thing” was chang­ing my char­ac­ter.

Wow!  All of a sud­den it made sense.  Frus­tra­tion can be very help­ful in chang­ing char­ac­ters.

I began to see God’s pur­pose in my sit­u­a­tion as help­ing me to develop love, patience, tol­er­ance and peace.  I learned that life isn’t all about climb­ing the cor­po­rate lad­der to have greater author­ity and a big­ger salary.

And I had a chance to clar­ify my val­ues and solid­ify my com­mit­ment to them and to God.

I’m sure I made a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion to the firm, but as I look back now, I truly believe that my own emo­tional and spir­i­tual growth were the main pur­poses of my being there.

Per­haps this rings a bell.  Maybe, like me, you’ve been try­ing to dis­cern a God-given mis­sion to “do some­thing” when, in fact, God sim­ply wants to change you on the inside.

I believe that this is what God wants most for every­one, because when you change on the inside, the follow-on pur­poses will take care of them­selves.

It does require real effort to grow emo­tion­ally and spir­i­tu­ally, but few things are more impor­tant.

I don’t know if your min­is­ter uses the Halver­son Bene­dic­tion, but I really like it now. You might say it speaks to me.  Hon­estly though, I’m not sure about the “wher­ever you are, God has put you there” part.

Some peo­ple are in some pretty bad places.

Did God put them there?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But I do believe “that in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28), and some ben­e­fit can come out of even the most dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions.

Med­i­tate on Halvorson’s words.  Ask God to show you how good can come from your sit­u­a­tion, and don’t for­get that God’s good may well come from you work­ing on your­self.

You can do it.

The weather here in Florida has been beau­ti­ful over the cou­ple of days, and I’ve been watch­ing sail­boats cruise the Indian River Lagoon near my home.

It’s been windy, but (within rea­son) the stronger the wind, the bet­ter the sail­ing.  It sure looks like they’re hav­ing a good time out there!

I remem­ber a lit­tle about the prin­ci­ples of sail­ing hav­ing learned to sail small boats as a kid.  I still find the con­cepts inter­est­ing, and I enjoy watch­ing the boats and the wind­surfers range far and wide over the water no mat­ter which direc­tion the wind is blow­ing.

They’re able to go where they want despite the wind by using the water as resis­tance to help them steer.

With a keel and rud­der, the sailor is able steer, keep the boat safe, enjoy the jour­ney, and get where she wants to go.

With­out some means of resis­tance, a sail­boat is just blown along to what­ever waits where the water ends — per­haps a sandy beach or per­haps a vicious reef.  Either way, the boat can be lost as it crashes to shore.

But with a keel and rud­der the sailor is able steer, keep the boat safe, enjoy the jour­ney, and get where she wants to go.  The abil­ity to resist the wind with the keel and the rud­der is the key to mak­ing it hap­pen.

How well do we steer our­selves on the ocean of life?

Are we able to keep our­selves safe, enjoy the jour­ney and get where we want to go?  Let’s be hon­est.  The winds of our Amer­i­can cul­ture blow straight to the reefs of ill­ness, and too many of us are just drift­ing along offer­ing no resis­tance.

Mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, liv­ing a typ­i­cal lifestyle, are blown before the wind like a crip­pled sail­boat in a storm.  They crash hard against the rocks of obe­sity, dia­betes, arthri­tis and other seri­ous dis­eases.

Unable to free them­selves from their habits, many are trapped and destroyed by the relent­less pound­ing of the wind and waves of ill­ness.

But not every­one.  Some wake up and see the dan­ger before it’s too late.  They spot the reef and decide to sail upwind to safe waters.  Some­how, they are able to resist the wind that destroys so many oth­ers.

They find and use tools that work for them as keel and rud­der.  It can be done.  It is being done.  You can do it.

Begin by under­stand­ing that just being blown by the wind of our cul­ture will destroy your health — mind body and spirit.  If you want to sur­vive and thrive, you need to sep­a­rate your­self from the pack.

Find the help you need to take a dif­fer­ent direc­tion.  Chart a course upwind, start sail­ing and enjoy the jour­ney.

You can do it!

Have you ever heard the expres­sion, “Pray to God, row to shore?”

I use it some­times as I try to help indi­vid­u­als take respon­si­bil­ity for their phys­i­cal, emo­tional and spir­i­tual health.  For me, it brings up an image of pas­sen­gers and crew launch­ing a lifeboat as their ship sinks.

They know that the open ocean is a dan­ger­ous place and they call upon God for help as they work hard to save them­selves.

It’s a sim­ple con­cept — work for what you want, ask God for help and trust Him to come through.  Yet too often we get it wrong.  Some peo­ple never think of turn­ing to God for help in their lives.

Per­haps they visu­al­ize God as dis­tant or angry and not likely to be inter­ested in them.  Or per­haps they deny God, unwill­ing seri­ously explore the idea that, behind real­ity, an ulti­mate cre­ator exists.  That was me once.

Rely­ing on their own strength, these indi­vid­u­als may work very hard for “the good life.”

Some­times the effort sees them through to their goals, but not always.  Sooner or later they come up short, or they achieve their goals only to find that they don’t have “the good life” despite their achieve­ments.  That was also my expe­ri­ence.

Other make the oppo­site mis­take.

They call upon God to solve their prob­lems with­out tak­ing any con­crete action to help them­selves.  In my expe­ri­ence, that’s not how God usu­ally works.  Just pray­ing for phys­i­cal, emo­tional and spir­i­tual health alone won’t make you healthy.  You’ve got to do some work.

Take a look at just about any mirac­u­lous story from the Bible and you will see that there was some sort of indi­vid­ual or group action involved beyond prayer.

In short God did his part, but the indi­vid­u­als also did their part.  And that’s how it is with our health and well­be­ing.  We do our part and He does his.

I believe that God wants us all to be healthy in mind, body and spirit.

“What does that look like,” you ask?  Try this:  Your body is lean and mus­cu­lar.  You’re filled with energy, you sleep well and noth­ing hurts.  It feels good to exer­cise.

You are gen­er­ally happy and rarely angry, depressed or frus­trated.  Oth­ers are attracted to you because of your patience, kind­ness and the love you radi­ate.  You feel the lov­ing pres­ence of God and know that He is work­ing in your life.

That’s the degree of good health that I’d like you to have.  If you’re not mov­ing in that direc­tion what’s hold­ing you back?

Of course it takes effort but wouldn’t you like to have the good health that God intends for you?  Will you work for it?  Will you ask God to help and step out in the faith that He will?

Trust me.  God loves you and wants to help you, but you have to take the first steps your­self.  You’ve got to ask and you’ve got to start.

Go for it. You can do it.

“…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kind­ness, good­ness, faith­ful­ness, gen­tle­ness and self-control.”- Paul, Gala­tians 5:22–23

I remem­ber being very intim­i­dated as I began the first few inter­nal med­i­cine out­pa­tient clin­ics of my res­i­dency.

It seemed that almost all of the patients that I’d inher­ited from the grad­u­at­ing res­i­dent had more than one med­ical prob­lem.  Way more.  As I recall, five or more was the norm.

Peter J. Weiss, MD, FACP, is a physi­cian, health­care exec­u­tive, author, speaker and health coach with a pas­sion for help­ing oth­ers to health and well­ness. Rec­og­niz­ing that tra­di­tional med­ical care isn’t help­ing many peo­ple to become well, Dr. Pete’s per­sonal mis­sion is empow­er­ing indi­vid­u­als to man­age their own health.

How was I ever going to take care of some­one with obe­sity, hyper­ten­sion, dia­betes, hyper­lipi­demia, coro­nary artery dis­ease, con­ges­tive health fail­ure, chronic renal insuf­fi­ciency and degen­er­a­tive arthri­tis in a 15-minute or even 30-minute visit?

Grad­u­ally I learned to man­age the jig­saw puz­zle of ill­ness and med­i­cines com­mon to older adults in Amer­ica today.  Being an internist is a lot like being a sym­phony con­duc­tor.

The con­duc­tor can’t just lis­ten to the vio­lins or the horns.  He’s got to take in all the sound at once, focus­ing on the total musi­cal expe­ri­ence, while still giv­ing the indi­vid­ual instru­ment sec­tions the atten­tion they require.

Even as I grew in my abil­ity to help these com­pli­cated patients, I was still mys­ti­fied by the lop­sided nature of my new prac­tice.  Hon­estly, it was true that about 90 per­cent of my patients had many med­ical prob­lems.

I’d esti­mate that 10 per­cent or less had only one or two diag­noses.  It was pure joy when some­one would walk in with a sim­ple case of hypothy­roidism or another iso­lated con­di­tion.

What was going on?

To me it felt like the ill­nesses or dis­eases were “gang­ing up” on the poor patients.  And the patients seem to feel that too.

They largely seemed over­whelmed by their mul­ti­ple con­di­tions; beaten down by sick­nesses they were unable to con­trol.  Most just got worse every year despite treat­ment.

At first I fig­ured it was because of the select nature of a res­i­dent clinic where the sick­est peo­ple would accu­mu­late.  I was sure that much more healthy patients existed some­where else.

Then I noticed that my attend­ing physi­cians’ clin­ics were like­wise filled with patients hav­ing mul­ti­ple chronic ill­nesses.  “Per­haps it’s just the nature of a teach­ing hos­pi­tal,” I thought until I met a doc­tor prac­tic­ing in town.  Same thing.

How could this be?

Per­haps you are more per­cep­tive than I was back then and have fig­ured this out already, but it took me quite a while.  Even­tu­ally I grasped the sim­ple fact that chronic dis­eases are not ran­dom events!

They travel together.  The same lifestyle fac­tors that cause one dis­ease cause oth­ers.  A par­tic­u­lar dis­ease itself will often cause other con­di­tions as com­pli­ca­tions.

It hap­pens like this:  A man doesn’t exer­cise and eats a low-nutrient, high-calorie diet.  Years pass.  He becomes over­weight and then obese.  Along with the fat come hyper­ten­sion, hyper­lipi­demia and type II dia­betes.

In turn, these three ill­nesses cause ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis through­out his body and he even­tu­ally suf­fers from strokes, heart attacks and kid­ney dam­age.

Even after that, things get relent­lessly worse as he accu­mu­lates other con­di­tions until finally suc­cumb­ing with a med­ical prob­lem list two pages long.

Oh, I finally get it!

It felt good to under­stand the sit­u­a­tion, but it was (and still is) some­what depress­ing to real­ize that, for the most part, your patients have cre­ated their own ill­nesses.

Now please don’t get me wrong.  I’m not blam­ing the vic­tim or deny­ing ran­dom­ness.  I’m show­ing you real­ity.

Yes, some ill­nesses are, for all prac­ti­cal pur­poses, ran­dom.  But in the United States in 2011 it’s a small frac­tion of them.  Even the Amer­ica Can­cer Soci­ety has said that two-thirds of all can­cer deaths are due to our lifestyles.

Believe me when I tell you that the vast major­ity of our health and health­care prob­lems are self-induced.

This is not con­ven­tional wis­dom.  When is the last time some­one spoke to you about pre­vent­ing can­cer through los­ing weight, eat­ing a healthy diet and exer­cis­ing?

Per­son­ally, I notice lot more press about us need­ing addi­tional “research for the cure” than about the sim­ple steps we can take to be well.

I want you to know that you can avoid the gang attack of mul­ti­ple chronic ill­nesses.  You can be well.  You can choose to be in the 10 per­cent that will make your doc­tor smile when she sees you.

Take con­trol of your lifestyle.  It’s worth the work.

You can do it!

It’s Lent again, the time that many Chris­tians use to reflect on Jesus death and res­ur­rec­tion and draw closer to God.

Now, I’m no expert on Lent and the views and prac­tices of this pre-Easter sea­son vary across Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions, but the idea is to have a period of repen­tance, sim­plic­ity and devo­tion.

Some fast, pray more or fol­low spe­cial devo­tions, and a com­mon prac­tice is that of “giv­ing up” some­thing for Lent.  The idea here is that by relin­quish­ing an activ­ity or pos­ses­sion, the per­son is able to free their mind a bit more to con­cen­trate on God.

Let’s talk about that giv­ing up process.  I believe that, in prac­tice, indi­vid­u­als often give up some­thing that may rep­re­sent a minor “vice” for them.  Per­haps some­thing that’s a lit­tle out of con­trol in their lives.

Com­mon exam­ples might be:

• Tele­vi­sion view­ing
• Online com­puter gam­ing
• Rich desserts or candy

I’m sure you can think of oth­ers.  Per­haps you’ve given up some­thing along these lines.

It makes sense that by relin­quish­ing a habit that’s promi­nent in your life, and that you know is at least a lit­tle harm­ful, you will cre­ate an oppor­tu­nity to grow spir­i­tu­ally.

How­ever, after Easter life gets back to nor­mal for almost every­one as they resume their pre-Lenten habits.

My ques­tion is why?

If it’s true that peo­ple tend to gave up the things that they know are issues for them (even if minor ones), and if it’s true that by doing so they are improv­ing spir­i­tu­ally, then why would they want to go back to their usual habits?

Let’s just take TV as an exam­ple.  The aver­age Amer­i­can watches over 30 hours of TV per week.  That is sim­ply bad for your health — phys­i­cal, emo­tional and spir­i­tual.

Some­where down deep I think many peo­ple know this but can’t face turn­ing it off, except per­haps dur­ing Lent.

Now since I don’t know you, I will have to ask you to judge for your­self.  Is this you?  Take a close look at what habit you gave up this year.

Why did you make that par­tic­u­lar choice?  Do you have an issue with this habit in your life?  It’s okay to admit it if you do.  Most of us have habits that are at least some­what harm­ful for us.

Also assess how you feel — phys­i­cally emo­tion­ally and spir­i­tu­ally when Easter comes.

Did your choice help to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in any or all of these com­po­nents of your health?  How much of a dif­fer­ence?  Is it enough that maybe you shouldn’t just go back to nor­mal this year?

What would be bet­ter alter­na­tive for you?

Make a plan and don’t go back to the old lifestyle.  Choose the health­ier way.

You can do it!

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!

“A Well­ness Evan­ge­list, what’s that?”

When I tell peo­ple about my career it always causes a reac­tion, usu­ally a pos­i­tive reac­tion but some­times just the oppo­site.  A few peo­ple are a lit­tle put off by the “evan­ge­list” part.

Maybe they had a “toxic expo­sure” to reli­gion at some point in their life.   Sadly, there are many peo­ple, even reli­gious author­i­ties, who cloak them­selves in the man­tle of reli­gion while harm­ing oth­ers emo­tion­ally, spir­i­tu­ally and even phys­i­cally.  Trust me when I say that I don’t want to be like that.

What I want to do is invite indi­vid­u­als to be well and invite them to con­nect with God.  I’ll tell you a bit about my per­sonal faith below, but for the pur­pose of evan­ge­lism I’m not too dog­matic.  So you can relax.

Only you can know what’s right for you, and fur­ther, it’s your respon­si­bil­ity to decide it for your­self.

My role is to help you start seek­ing.

Seek­ing well­ness — phys­i­cal, emo­tional and spir­i­tual — and seek­ing God.  If you seek, you will find.  You will find your way to well­ness and to your own beliefs on spir­i­tual mat­ters.

Per­haps it will help if I sum­ma­rize my own story.  As a physi­cian, I’ve always been con­cerned about help­ing indi­vid­u­als to be well.  But I was not well myself, at least on an emo­tional and spir­i­tual basis.  I had no inter­est in God.

A per­sonal cri­sis woke me up to the fact that my way of liv­ing wasn’t work­ing, and I turned to God for help.  You don’t need to know the details; let’s just say it wasn’t a happy time.

The first step, admit­ting I was wrong and ini­ti­at­ing a change, was scary and painful, but I knew that not to do so would be worse.  I sought the help of friends, joined a church, con­nected with a small men’s group and started work­ing on myself.

It was hard at first, but as I learned, trusted God and kept at it, I grad­u­ally became well.  Not per­fect of course, but truly healthy — phys­i­cally, emo­tion­ally and spir­i­tu­ally.

Around the time I really became healthy in all respects, I felt God call­ing me to pass along what I had learned to oth­ers, and the book More Health Less Care was born.

At that time, I thought that God had placed me at the head of a health insur­ance com­pany to help oth­ers to well­ness, but He was to show me a dif­fer­ent path.

As the book’s pub­li­ca­tion neared, it was becom­ing clearer to me that God had other plans in the works.  A lit­tle over a year ago He abruptly called me to leave health­care to become a Well­ness Evan­ge­list.

Over the last year I have been speak­ing, blog­ging, and teach­ing on well­ness, and I’ve also launched two well­ness busi­nesses.

I’ve been try­ing and will always strive to “meet peo­ple where they are” with respect to their health, and many peo­ple aren’t look­ing for God; they’re just look­ing to lose weight.

Con­se­quently, up until now I’ve focused my mes­sages mostly on phys­i­cal well­ness, mod­er­ately on emo­tional well­ness, and a lit­tle on spir­i­tual well­ness.

In the last few weeks I feel God call­ing me to change that, to talk more about Him, Jesus, my faith and their con­nec­tion to whole-person well­ness.  So that’s what I’m going to do.

I hope that you’ll come along with me regard­less of your par­tic­u­lar faith or lack thereof.  This blog is for all who are inter­ested, not just for Chris­tians.  I don’t claim to know it all, and your thoughts are always wel­come.

I don’t bite and I try not to bark.

Whether you agree or dis­agree, I’m happy to talk — not shout — about it.

Who knows what our jour­ney will be like?  I’m not sure myself.  Some of my posts might even look more like those of a cler­gy­man than those of a doc­tor.

Let’s just go with it and find out.  Where Jesus leads, I will fol­low.