Health
Self-Care and the Teach Program
The secret to better health is much more than “eat better and exercise.”
Health is about getting restorative sleep, eating well, and exercising, but it is also about having a positive attitude, healthy thoughts, and being emotionally resilient in stressful situations. It is about getting “unstuck” when the going gets rough and letting go when we overfocus on negative things. It is about having enough energy for the day, but it is also about enjoying the day through connections and relationships and living a fulfilling life of health, meaning, and purpose.
This means that any program for self-care must go beyond basic habits that are foundational for wellness and address the whole person within the context in which they live. This is the approach of the TEACH Program, which at the macro level addresses Thoughts, Emotions, Attention, Connections, and Health, and at the micro level, it addresses Tiny, Easy, Attractive, Consistent, Habits. So, this section takes a deep dive into the tiny habits of self-care with an eye on incorporating daily health habits into a total system of caring for yourself. We have organized the information according to the following topics:
1. Exercise
2. Nutrition
3. Sleep
4. Breathing
Effects of Good Health
Most of us are far less healthy than we could be. According to the CDC, six out of ten people live with at least one chronic disease. Four in ten people have two or more conditions. Chronic conditions like heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes take a heavy toll on our collective health and productivity.
In 2018, researchers from Harvard reported that people who practiced five specific lifestyle habits dramatically reduced their risks of heart disease and cancer compared with those who did none. The five healthy habits were:
Eat a diet high in fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and unsaturated fatty acids and low in red and processed meats, sugary drinks, trans fats, and sodium
Don’t smoke
Get at least three-and-a-half hours of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each week
Drink only moderate amounts of alcohol (no more than one drink per day for women and two drinks or less per day for men)
Maintain a healthy body mass index (BMI) from 18.5 to 24.9.
How effective were these habits?
The researchers found that practicing all five habits from age 50 onward extended life by over a decade compared to people who practiced none. Women who didn't adopt any habits lived on average to age 79, while those who did all five lived to 93. Similarly, men who did not practice these five habits lived to 75 on average, while those who did lived to nearly 88.
Self-Care Habits
These five habits fall in the realm of self-care—an evidence-based approach to disease prevention and treatment that focuses on adopting healthy habits. Some people call this lifestyle medicine. It does not replace traditional medicine, but it is a powerful complement to it.
Dr. Peter Attia is an advocate for self-care. He has studied changes in medicine over time and argues that we cannot expect medical care to “save us” when we fail to do the helpful things we can to take better care for ourselves.
Medicine 1.0: Dr. Attia distinguishes between stages of advancement in medicine. Medicine 1.0 (up to the mid-19th century) was characterized by observing, guesting, and guessing. Around the mid-19th century, germ theory came into play, as did the use of the microscope, and Medicine 2.0 began.
Medicine 2.0: This era of medicine is reactive to infections, broken bones, and various diseases. Medicine 2.0. is characterized by antibiotics, antivirals, and vaccines, which eradicated diseases such as polio, smallpox, and recently, HIV and AIDS. Medicine 2.0 is what most of us get today, and it is a disease-based model of care in which people must be assigned a diagnostic code to receive care. Treatment algorithms are generally followed to treat these codes; try step #1, and if it doesn’t work, try step #2, and so on. The human being is reduced to groups of numbers, and the natural causes of illness are ignored or poorly understood.
Medicine 3.0. is a new medical era involving intertwining self-care into your daily lifestyle. In Medicine 2.0. we are all passengers on the ship of medicine; in 3.0, we're active and engaged in our care. We cannot ignore our health and count on medicine to “save us” when we get sick; instead, we become informed and willing to change our behavior, get out of our comfort zone, and work toward increasing our health span, which will also increase our lifespan. This takes us into the area of not just stopping behaviors that are bad for us but also starting behaviors that are known scientifically to be healthy. Medicine 3.0 takes us squarely into the relationship between physical health and mental and emotional health. It recognizes the human side of the equation, addressing how the person functions overall and the causes and preventable (treatable) issues before they damage a person to the point of disease. This requires a collaborative whole-person analysis in which the patient assumes a level of responsibility for self and does not place the entire burden of care on the healthcare system.
Dr. Attia makes the point that if we do not die from accident or injury, we are likely to die in the 80s or 90s from one of the four “Horsemen of the Apocalypse”: Cancer, Heart Disease, Gastrointestinal-Digestive or Neuro-Cognitive Diseases. With Medicine 3.0, it's possible to die later and without going through as long a period of destructive cognitive, physical, or emotional pain before death. This focuses on healthspan, the amount of time we are healthy and capable of enjoying life. This brings us back to the field of mental and emotional health; why would you want to live longer if you are unhappy? Why take care of yourself if you can’t find purpose in life? Why fight if you are in constant pain? Life takes on new meaning when mental health becomes a part of health care. The more you enjoy or care about life, the more effort you will put forth to care for yourself.
We will all die, but we can plan and improve the chances that we stay healthy longer and die well. This means taking responsibility for our health and health care earlier, by our 40s if you are tuned in to your total health and at the very least by our 50s and 60s. The sooner, the better, and it is never too late.
When it comes to self-care, habits that foster a healthy body are an excellent place to start. However, scientists have learned that the mind and body are inextricably linked over time. Thoughts and emotions influence health in many ways. For example, stressful events spike blood pressure. Depression lowers your pain tolerance, making pain feel worse. Loneliness appears to be a cause of premature death. These are just a few examples of the many connections between mental and physical health. This leads us into the world of TEACH.
