The Four Pillars of a Healthy Lifestyle

I recently moved my work to the Palm Springs area of California. I am the Vice President for Primary Care at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, California. My duties include starting a new primary care practice where I also work as a family physician. This week I developed a preventive medicine presentation I will be giving to groups of people, mostly seniors, in our area. I would like to share my key messages here.

Balance is the key to health in many ways. Our lifestyle choices play the major role in whether we are healthy or sick, outweighing our genetics and the bad luck of getting a disease for no apparent reason. There are four areas where lifestyle play a major role in our health. Do these four things and you are likely to be healthy:

Eat Right: We are what we eat, so what goes in our body is vital to our health. The mainstay of our nutrition should be vegetables and grains. We should avoid the saturated fats found in many animal meats and dairy, and the trans fats found in many fried foods and pastries. Eat healthy fats like those found in nuts and quality vegetable oils, such as canola and olive oil. We should avoid simple sugars that make us hungry and have protein at every meal (Nuts, low fat dairy, lean meats and fish). We should avoid excess salt. Do not eat many more than your body needs to maintain a healthy weight. See my other blogs since I write here about nutrition every month.

Be Active: Use it or lose it is a good rule for keeping our bodies healthy. Look for opportunities in your daily life to walk more, climb stairs and be active. Then, devote 5 of the of the 168 hours in a week to one or more physical activities of your choice. Being physically active is the best long term predictor of living a long and healthy life.

Sleep Well: We trained our children in how to sleep, but many of us forgot the lessons. Prepare for a good night's sleep by winding down our daily activities, turn down the lights, and leave the problems of our day behind. Imagination is ok for adults to use to enter the world of sleep. As adults, 6 to 8 hours of refreshing sleep is usually enough to replenish our bodies.

Manage Stress: Stress can wear down even the healthiest body. Be aware of our stress levels at home and at work, and seek ways to reduce the stressors. Some of us thrive on a certain amount of stress, that is fine. We know when we are distressed because we are not at ease and not smiling as much. I like these three rules for handling stress: 1. Don't sweat the small stuff, 2. Everything (just about) is small stuff, and 3. If you cannot fight, and you cannot flee, then flow.

Take a moment to reflect on these four "pillars" in your life and see what adjustments you can make to preserve your health.

Do You Live Your Life in Bullets?

You’ve seen bullet formatting - they show up everywhere; those little abbreviated lines creating a quick and easily skimmed list of the most important highlights of information. But are we living our lives in this abbreviated form as well? Are we losing the ability to stop and smell the roses?

We tend to live our lives in the fast lane, squeezing as much in a day as we can. We power walk, power lunch, have power meetings, and power our way through the day until we collapse and have to power nap before moving on to the next item on our busy agenda.

My blogs recently have revolved around the recession and how it has affected our general mental health. With these added stressors of layoffs, rising prices, and dwindling opportunities it is more important than ever to protect the mental health of ourselves and our loved ones.
This is often hard to do when we feel the need to push ourselves even harder to beat out the next round of layoffs or take on that second job to keep the house out of foreclosure. Patience flies out the window. When we speed up our own personal production, we tend to get frustrated by those who are still running at normal speed.

Here are a few warning signs of living life in bullet format:

You find yourself getting short with coworkers who take their time in getting to the point

You grumble as you speed around people in the “slow lane” of hallways just as you do on the roadways as you calculate which would be faster, the elevator or the stairs

Everyone but you is working in slow motion

You are moving at such a fast pace that quality work takes a back seat to just getting the job done so that you can move on to the next four or five jobs on your list

You begin to lose the ability to successfully multitask and prioritize, and feel the need to speed up even more to compensate

You take this sped-up version of yourself home to your family and expect them to bullet their time with you as well

You find it hard to unwind and let go of the hyper speed you have achieved

You forget to smile

Your caffeine consumption skyrockets; at the end of the day you always feel you need one more drink

What can you do if too many of these examples describe you? A friend or loved one shouting, “slow down” seems too simple a fix, but it may be just that simple. Slowing down won’t fix the amount of work you have to do and it won’t pay the mortgage. But it could save your life.
We all know behavioral and physical health are linked. Unhappy, over-stressed people tend to live shorter lives than their counterparts. So in the midst of the hyper-fast, bulleted life you lead, don’t forget to schedule time for you.

Ways to rewrite the bullets of your life:

Take time to notice those around you. Are you wearing that same pinched look of stress you see in others? Relax your face and try on a smile. Compliment that person and watch as they startle out of hyper speed.

Schedule time for meditation. You don’t need a special place or special equipment to get started. Just close your eyes and breathe deeply and evenly for 2 minutes. Concentrate on how far you can expand your lungs, and how slowly you can inhale and exhale. Steal a few of these moments for yourself throughout the day. If you prefer guided instructions, check out Soft Belly Meditation, a free four minute guided breathing relaxation meditation exercise available over the internet.

Pause for a moment to appreciate the little things in your life: You may find the little things are really what’s important to you! BE in the moment. Stop and just do one thing at a time!

After work, take the time to reconnect with the special people in your life. Say “Hi” to your neighbor across the backyard fence. Reconnect with the lost art of the long-winded yarn Grandpa’s across the country made famous. And above all, take time to smell the roses while they are still in bloom.

The Last Lecture of a Lifetime: Confronting Brick Walls

The Last Lecture of a Lifetime: Confronting Brick Walls

At times during the Holiday Season, and certainly at other times as well, we can benefit from looking beyond ourselves and personal circumstances. I stumbled upon something that I think is truly fascinating. If you have ever confronted a brick wall, or even if you have not, this is a must see!

Please review Jeff Zaslow's moving account in the “Wall Street Journal” of 46-year-old Carnegie-Mellon professor Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture". I will not spoil it by making additional comments. I leave that to you! Professor Pausch gives a fascinating lecture, filled with humor and psychological wisdom, about what he has learned from life. Trust me; this is no ordinary lecture, and this is no ordinary professor. If this doesn’t stimulate your thinking, have someone check your pulse!

I enthusiastically recommend watching the complete video of his presentation. The link to the Google video is:
http://tinyurl.com/2dwtzw.

If like me, you find yourself wanting to learn more about this Professor Pausch after watching the video, view his home page at:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch.

All comments welcome....