Bhakti Wellness Center August 2013 Newsletter – Featured Article
By Nathan Horek, ND
Whenever I see an advertisement for yogurt touting probiotics for digestive support, a nutrition shake providing nutrients for your children or a breakfast cereal being good for your dad’s heart, I get a little agitated. While I am happy that we are now having a conversation about the importance of probiotics, fiber or omega-3 fatty acids in our diet, I’m disappointed at the misinformation still guiding people’s lifestyle and health care decisions. What these advertisements don’t mention is that the fiber in breakfast cereals is not really fiber and of no use to your body or that commercial yogurts pasteurize all of their products killing off any beneficial bacteria that at one time may have been present. These advertisements are using the “good for you” health myth to sell their products, at the expense of your actual health.
While I want people eating fiber and healthy fats, clearly there are better sources than these over-processed industrial products. But my problem with this runs deeper. The “good for you” health myth perpetuates a type of thinking about health and health care that prevents us from understanding, owning and lobbying for what is best for us, as individuals with individual needs. It allows us to be out of tune with our individual needs and how to respond accordingly. This limits the discussion of health and disease to the product, ignoring the person that needs empowering and, more importantly, the process that creates this empowerment. For me and my patients, this is the most important part of health care that is often overlooked.
What is Health?
My definition of health is the ability to flexibly respond to one’s environment. Health is not a packaged product but a goal-oriented process. It is a garden that needs daily nurturing. This means that as your environment changes, your “health” or “vitality” is able to respond appropriately to preserve your physical, mental and emotional integrity.
If you get chilled, your nervous system, hormones, veins, and arteries should respond a certain way to keep you warm. If your life is threatened, adrenaline in your bloodstream should create a physical landscape for your body to respond appropriately – with energy and veracity. And if a virus enters a cell of your body, your immune system should create a chain reaction of events to make sure it doesn’t spread. These are all examples of health. It is the inability to respond appropriately that creates disease.
What is the “Good For You” Health Myth?
The “good for you” health myth is a branding process that emphasizes the what (i.e. drug, nutrient, herb, food) over the why. This continues to leave health out of health care. And left out along with it are well educated choices that guide you and your family’s health. As a result we are left with a piecemeal wellness plan cobbled together from various media sources. While some of this might be bad advice, some of it might be good. But how do we make sense of this? How do we fit this information together for our individual needs?
It is as if someone handed you a new brake caliper for your car because it was due to be replaced. Maybe it is old, maybe it is new. Maybe it is for a different make or model. Even if it is right for your car, you might let it sit in your trunk until you can figure out where it really belongs. While it is in your car now what good is it doing in your trunk? It isn’t in the right place at the right time. Similarly, understanding your body and using natural medicine to heal it is all about making sure the right pieces are in the right place at the right time. It is about understanding the why before we jump to what we are going to do about it.
The Information Age
In our present time we gobble up information at an unprecedented rate. And health advice has the fastest flowing stream. What good is it to travel foreign terrain without a guide that knows the river like the back of her hand? You are bound to get lost or fall into a dangerous situation. And the “good for you” health myth gives us a false sense of health security. It insulates us with the false idea that all we have to do is occasionally eat kale, and we will be fine. Not because we are in tune with our body and can read its signals like the facial expressions of our own children. But because we allowed ourselves to believe the “good for you” health myth by anyone that wanted to purport it – in conversation, commercials, health food stores and on Facebook.
We are at a critical time in health care transformation, and seeing the changes before us. Throughout the last half of a century we have seen the “good for you” health myths tell us what to eat or what not to eat, often with conflicting information. Margarine, saturated fat, meat, soy, corn, sugar, dairy, wheat – these are all products of an industry usurped by the “good for you” health myth at the expense of our actual health. Throughout this roller coaster, in an attempt to lobby for our own health, we have allowed health to become more recreational and less personal. How did we get to this place where we trust the health advice of self-proclaimed healers, natural food store employees or advertisements, more than that of our own doctors and health care professionals? And, what do we do about it?
Health Empowerment
Let’s create a silver lining from this cloud. As the novelist C.S. Lewis once wrote: “Mere change is not growth. Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity.” Let’s look to history to continue the tried and true methods of health care, rather than just be swept up by the latest “good for you” health myths.
Here are my 7 rules for health empowerment.
1. Practice moderation: Meat may not be bad for your diet, but eating more of it than the amount of vegetables you eat at each meal, will be. No food is a single panacea. Food was meant to be rotated in our diets, grown in nature and minimally processed. This gives our digestive systems more work to do, and more opportunity to function optimally. That means chewing your food, sitting at a table for a meal, and in good company. Just like your grandparents did.
2. Listen to your body: I have tremendous faith and confidence in the human body to heal, as long as we know how to listen to its distress signals and how to answer accordingly. We spend so much time thinking, strategizing, and on social media, we are often disconnected from what our bodies are telling us. Every media device, food advertisement or over-the-counter medication encourages us to stop paying attention to our bodies. If you want to be more empowered for your own health, this needs to be addressed. Start with 10 minutes a day of intentional belly breathing, mindfulness meditation, walking meditation or mindful eating. Focus 100% of your attention on that single task: your breath, every bite of a carrot or walking slowly. As your attention wanders, notice it, and bring it back to your task or object. This will help get you in the practice of listening to your body, rather than ignoring its signals.
3. Decide for yourself: Decide for yourself what works for you and what doesn’t. Health is a continuous running experiment. Once you are paying attention and listening to your body, decide for yourself if the health advice you are following works for you. Does it make you feel better or help you reach any of your health goals? You are the only one that can answer this for yourself. But don’t just take someone else’s word for it, even mine. Advice is good to try it on for size, but sustained change requires you to decide for yourself what you really want.
4. Look to nature: Nature has countless examples of balance and harmony. The more time we spend in awe, learning from our environment, the more in tune we will be with the forces that determine our health and wellness.
5. Seek support: Health and health care is all about using the right resources at the right time. And while we love to buy the latest product or use the fanciest device, there is no greater resource than that of another person. We were meant to connect, not disconnect. If you are looking to change a habit, reach a health goal or just know something needs to change, reach out and ask for support. From a friend, family member or professional, it is the tried and true method we all too often ignore.
6. Practice self-care, everyday: We all need some time to tend to ourselves every day. Move your body, sit quietly, read, take a bath, ride your bike – as long as it doesn’t promote distraction, it is for yourself and no one else, and you can get lost in the experience, we’ve hit the mark. This will create balance in your body and mind and will make you better at everything else you do.
7. Use a qualified healthcare professional (QHP): Have a QHP on your team that you feel you can trust, understands and supports you, and is willing to play their role in helping you achieve your health goals. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water by ignoring all the important things conventional providers have to offer like lab tests, physical exams and endless research data. I’m partial to the Naturopathic Doctor myself, but the point is they have to feel right for you. But ND, MD, DC, NP, LP, just get someone recognized by the state on your team that understands the system, will refer when necessary, looks out for your best interest and communicates across healthcare profession lines. We need to strengthen the connections that create a more integrated, coherent health care system as a whole.
This is the best medicine for all of us, because all of us are health care patients at one time or another. And if you need a place to start, I think I know a good place to look.
Be well and be in touch.
Dr. Nathan Horek
Bio – Nathan Horek, ND
Naturopathic Doctor
Dr. Nathan Horek is a Minnesota state registered Naturopathic Doctor and graduate of the National College of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Horek specializes in treating adults and children with digestive, immune, hormonal, neurological and mental/emotional health conditions.