I have to admit—I was expecting a compliment from the doctor! [vanity, such vanity] I’d have settled for a modest tribute, something like, “You’re in pretty good shape, for an old guy.” It was not to be. When the tests were done and results compiled and assessed, the doctor came over, confirmed my identity, looked at the test results, then at me, and said: “Well, I couldn’t find anything wrong. You seem medically uninteresting.”

I thanked him, paid the bill and departed. I wondered about his conclusion all the way home—“medically uninteresting…hmm”.

Does medically uninteresting mean I’m healthy? Are these the signs of health?

• No pain
• No symptoms
• Not sick
• Not always sore/tired
• No life-threatening disease
• Not unconscious
• Still alive

Of course not—there IS more. There truly is a great deal more to health than the absence of illness or the presence of medical non-interest. For today, simply acknowledge that the term ‘health’ is not often used in the best and fullest sense of the word. You can truly do much better than “medically uninteresting”—aim for wellness.

Wellness vs Health

Well over half a century ago, a physician named Halbert L. Dunn began talking and writing about “high level” wellness. Though I used the “high level” phrase for a while, I gave it up after a few years, thinking it a bit redundant. After all, wellness is by nature and definition “high level” compared with just an ordinary lifestyle.

I was attracted to the word “wellness” because it is an alternative to the common word so poorly understood, namely, “health.” People usually think of health as a state of non-sickness or absence of pain or injury. Health, in short, was then, and still is, viewed as the absence of something.

This perspective is not only inaccurate—it’s also hazardous to health! If you think you’re well just because you’re not experiencing sickness, you might be less motivated to take steps to advance beyond that state. There is, in such case, too little incentive or vision for something more. You might settle on taking the minimal steps for maintaining the sub-level normalcy of a low-standard normal health.

The alternative, which wellness invites, is to view health in a variety of positive dimensions. This includes recognizing levels and degrees of wellbeing, stages and positions along a continuum of functioning. In this way, quite specific images of optimal existence come into sight.

So What Is Wellness?

Wellness embodies new parameters and expectations of wellbeing. Here are a few of them.

Wellness is multi-dimensional

A wellness lifestyle has multiple dimensions. Let me outline to you my first model that has five dimensions. Each dimension was used as a chapter in my 1977 Rodale book entitled, High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs and Disease. Maybe it will appeal to you, and be helpful as a starter way of organizing things

1. Self-responsibility
2. Nutritional awareness
3. Stress management
4. Environmental sensitivity
5. Physical fitness

Self-responsibility entails a conscious recognition that you are in charge of your health and the quality of your life. Without an awareness and full commitment to the idea that you are the prime cause for what goes well or poorly, you are not likely to invest the time and energy to pursue excellence in the other dimensions.

Wellness Is Positive

The reasons for pursuing wellness are always related to satisfaction, payoffs and pleasures, not sickness avoidance or life extension. It’s likely, of course, that wellness will lead to less illness and probably a longer life, but these are welcome side effects!

Negative appeals to behave sensibly, such as “don’t do X [often something appealing, like drinking, dancing and carousing] or else Y [something unpleasant, like inebriation, fatigue or accusations of moral turpitude] will happen, are not effective and they certainly are not much fun. People often look for ways to outwit negative admonitions. In wellness, the emphasis is on short-term pleasures gained from choosing positive path, not on long-term penalties or negative-reinforcement. This is why wellness is so much more pleasant than traditional health education.

Wellness Is About You

Wellness lifestyles must be shaped in a manner unique to each person. No guru or other expert can tell you what to do or how to do it. Your style, opportunities, situation and resources are unlike those of anyone else so you must adapt all advice to your situation and circumstances. That’s another reason why self-responsibility is a foundation for this concept.

Wellness Is Beyond Body

Wellness includes physical health and emotional/mental wellbeing. The physical element is equally important as the mental, but the two are actually inseparable. One always affects the other. Physical fitness is a pathway to psychological and emotional equanimity and if the latter is going for you, you will realize the necessity of daily physical exercise “devotionals”.

Wellness Is An Attitude

You can practice wellness at any point in the life-cycle. A great lifestyle is as important to the old as the young, the poor as the affluent, the sick as the well. This is about an attitude and a mindset, a context by which to perceive what matters and what to do about matters large and small affecting your life and purpose. It is not a stagnant position to take on one thing or another.

What Wellness Isn’t

Wellness is not the same as holistic health, complementary medicine, prevention or medical self-care. There are sometimes common themes, but more often there are not. Most important of all, wellness is almost certainly not about wellness! That is, not about the misrepresented nature of so-called wellness by pushers of products and services who have borrowed or rather hijacked the word. Many shysters and mountebanks and just plain hustlers have taken the word and shaped it into forms unrecognizable to those of us who view wellness along the lines described here.

Complementary medicine and holistic health are often oriented toward treatment; the terms are most often employed by healers, usually by persons who are not licensed medical doctors and others who practice standard, evidence-based care. Prevention and health education are terms used by healthcare professionals who dispense illness and disease avoidance advice. Medical self-care is primarily focused on teaching you how to accurately, economically and efficaciously identify and attend to emergencies, injuries or relatively minor medical problems. This kind of care-giving and teaching is fine and desirable, if done properly. However, they are different from what is herein described as wellness. Such distinctions enable an appreciation that lifestyle choices affecting quality of life are not matters administered by others and directed at problem areas.

Wellness is that which is up to you, with the focus upon becoming “weller” and happier, not less troubled or to suffer less. The latter happens as a pleasant side-effect as you advance toward or succeed in remaining at or near a dynamic high level wellness state of being.

The everyday experience of a lifelong quest for attainable but challenging peaks of optimal life quality is its own reward.

Make Your Journey Joyful

It might be fun to think of wellness as a game, especially if you want to have fun while getting serious about a more ambitious lifestyle. Wellness is not complicated. Imagine a game about boosting your quality of life. Why not? Games are enjoyable and often effective as a learning tool. A wellness lifestyle game might be an attractive way to approach a higher quality of life. To play what could be called “The Wellness Game” [TWG], you first decide to participate. A wellness lifestyle usually does not come about accidentally. Instead, it is a choice. Like any game, you play TWG best if you know and abide by the “rules.” Here are a few basics.

• Decide to play
• Make a commitment to try to win
• Recognize The Wellness Game is something you want to do—nobody is pressuring you to play
• Don’t put it off till tomorrow or next week—get started now.

You are already abiding by these basic rules: you are reading this article. The next step is to follow a rule not included in most games, but helpful for TWG—express your commitment to play. Do it in writing.

Use a sheet of paper to write these words or words of your own choosing along the same lines: I am committed to playing the Wellness Game. Sign your name to this agreement.

“I, _______________, agree to learn the rules and play The Wellness Game.”

To make The Wellness Game fun, feel free to add your own rules. After all, it’s YOUR lifestyle that is to be won or lost.

OK, if you put your name in the blank or wrote a note to this effect as suggested, you are on your way. You are committed to learn about and shape a wellness lifestyle. Games, though associated with frivolity and play, are hardly frivolous when they have a long-lasting positive impact on your life.

Follow the kind of rules [or guidelines, traditions or principles] that seem most likely to complement your circumstances and ambitions. Remember, this process is about enjoying and winning TWG. The bottom line is to identify, create and sustain a lifestyle that boosts your well-being, particularly your happiness and capabilities to live well.

A key rule in The Wellness Game is to take your lifestyle choices seriously without being grim or rigid about it. Find the balance that works for you—that’s what the best lifestyle players do. You can learn to play as well as anyone else.

What Counts As Lifestyle?

Lifestyle includes the entire range of actions that are or could be brought under your control, including but not limited to:

• How and what you eat. In the course of playing The Wellness Game, you will discover that it is less important to think in terms of specific foods being “good” or “bad” for you as it is to eat wisely most of the time. Nobody is, or needs to be, perfect. If a certain food is a big treat for you, enjoy it now and then, but not so often if it’s the kind of item that might give the average dietician a heart attack to look at, let alone consume.
• How often, how long and how intensively you exercise.
• Your ability to enjoy some aspects of everyday life, find rewarding work that is of interest and maintain friendships and community support. A game? Yes, we can think of it that way, but the stakes are higher than any game you might play in Las Vegas, Monaco, Mumbai or elsewhere.
• Your understanding of the medical system, particularly its limits and how little it can do, under the best of circumstances, beyond diagnosis and treatment of injuries, illness and disease. Becoming healthier is entirely up to you—based on the lifestyle you create.

A Key Variable

For TWG, the environment is important. You can’t exert as much influence on the environment as you can on your own lifestyle. Yet, you must pay attention to the nature and influence of your surroundings. To the extent possible, rearrange it to your favor, at least at home and in your work setting and friendship circles.

Because only your lifestyle is under your direct influence, the emphasis in The Wellness Game will be on elements that fit the lifestyle category. But, the culture is important. An environment or a culture that belittles certain qualities needed for happiness or hope, optimism or, in our case, a wellness lifestyle, will make success at TWG difficult, no matter how outstanding an individual plays TWG. An individual can only do so much.

The efforts you make to succeed at TWG and enjoy wellbeing and joy in life, happiness, a positive outlook and multiple levels of meaning and purpose are shaped by the quality of the physical, emotional and mental surroundings.

When you think of wellness as a game, the pursuit of advanced well-being becomes a lifelong no-lose contest in which you get to win every day, find continuing meaning and experience recurring satisfaction. Good luck.

Where Are You on the Wellness Scale?

All lifestyles patterns fall into one of four categories [called the Ardell’s Four Lifestyle Patterns]. They portray a range from the highest level of wellness to the minimal level of functioning. Occasionally, we all behave in ways that fit each category. However, for the most part we follow a certain pattern, one of the four described below:

Low level worseness

A few examples of egregious choices that diminish life quality and personal effectiveness:

• Insufficient exercise
• Poor food choices
• Alcohol and/or other substance abuse
• Use of nicotine
• Reliance on caffeine
• Severe weight issues and attendant poor body image
• Misuse of medications
• Unrealistic expectations for medical care
• Uncritical acceptance of information

Middle-level mediocrity

A few examples of choices that reflect mediocrity. This is “absence of illness” level of health. It does not so much diminish life quality as it fails to advance it. It’s a form of being stuck nowhere in particular, a boring and uneventful place of being.

• Non-sickness associated with good health
• Apathy
• Low energy levels
• Lack of commitment
• Poor self-image
• Unaware of negative norms and their influence.

Intermediate-level omnibus tinkering

This level entails sporadic efforts toward better health and advanced functioning. A beginning, but still missing is the conscious, determined commitment to sustain an all-out wellness lifestyle. A few examples:

• Non-systematic health initiatives
• Cyclical efforts to change
• Experiments with short-term fixes and programs [e.g. the rhythm method of girth control]
• Illness-avoidance motivation
• Excessive faith in experts with all the answers, not to mention products and services on offer

High-level wellness

A systematic and pleasure-based understanding of what to do and how to sustain a deliberate commitment to a high quality of life. Examples might be:

• Embracing personal responsibility
• Initiating efforts at shaping supportive environment
• Balancing positive initiatives in different dimensions of living
• Resolving to adopt and utilize healthy skepticism and initial doubt while looking for objective data to assess choices
• Conscious commitment to excellence
• Developing a personal wellness plan

Which one would you guess, at this stage describes your lifestyle pattern? Are you closer to one of these broad-brush stages than another? Most people are likely to have features of all the patterns in their lifestyles, but one usually stands out as most representative of an overall pattern. Not to be concerned—this is only of personal historic interest. What matters, is where you want to go next—unless, of course, your pattern is High Level Wellness. In that case, the goal is to keep doing what you’re doing. Things are going great if that’s the case.

Remember, maintaining a wellness lifestyle is rarely done accidentally—it is more likely if done deliberately. To function at the heights is a choice and while satisfying and rewarding, it’s not always easy. That might be the most important “rule” to emphasize in approach to wellness.

Kick-start Your Journey to a Fuller Life

You are ready to begin journey to wellness. Let me send you off with ten simple suggestions for improving prospects for advancing, day after day, until you are better informed, more motivated and well prepared to pursue, achieve, and enjoy a wellness lifestyle.

1. Advice can come from many sources but ultimately you must make the unique decisions for designing and maintaining quality for your health, work, and wellness.
2. It is very difficult to be well and focused on excellence in lifestyle if you can’t express your talents and passions at work, in some manner.
3. Coming to terms with the fact that change is inevitable and happening at a faster pace than ever before will enable you to deal more effectively with its manifestation at home, at work, and at play.
4. Your lifestyle choices, including your attitudes, beliefs, emotional responses, and actions, will have a greater impact on your health and wellness performance than any and all doctors. Such choices also matter more than the economy, the environment, your income level, your age, your employer, your horoscope or your luck.
5. Wellness is too important to be pursued grimly. Whatever your choices, make sure you are having fun.
6. Modern medicine’s a wonderful thing but there are two problems: people expect too much of it and too little of themselves.
7. Balance is a good thing and a worthy goal but there are times when you should forget about it in order to pursue a passion. Passions are not for the moderate or “balanced.” Passions are for lovers of life, paragons of artistry and champions among men and women.
8. It is far better to take up healthy practices than to give up unhealthy habits. This is especially true in the beginning of a change program when you are seeking to enhance the quality of your lifestyle. It is wiser, for instance, to take up a satisfying activity that gives early positive results, such as vigorous daily walking for an hour or more, than to struggle to refrain from smoking. Of course, doing both is best.
9. Lifestyle quality is seldom achieved by accident. You have to make a choice to live and work this way.
10. It’s never too late to start a wellness lifestyle though sooner is always better than later.

This feature is an excerpt from the latest edition of Donald B Ardell’s 14 Days to Wellness. If you enjoyed this excerpt, you might also enjoy Donald’s other book REAL Wellness: It’s What’s New in Wellness Today.

The post Wellness vs Health — You’ve Got It All Wrong! appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Science tells us that human genetics have not significantly changed over the last 200 years, but our ‘lifestyles’ have.

By lifestyle we mean basic personal behaviours that influence health—diet, exercise, sleeping habits and substance use [including nicotine, alcohol], and our stress-management styles among others. Our personal choices are powerful ‘medicine’. To understand how lifestyle can influence our health, let’s examine a few common health problems.

Obesity: a gross concern

We start with obesity, since it often precedes other common medical problems.

Fit to fat

Two generations ago, most people were struggling just to get enough food to survive. They burned thousands of calories toiling for long hours in their farms or in physically demanding conditions as miners, loggers. However, the industrialisation of farming and mechanisation of industry has made food plentiful and physical labour less of a daily necessity. Now, we eat more and move less.

As a result, we continue to grow around the waist-line. Over the last 50 years, in America alone, the consumption of sugar has increased by 39 per cent, salt by 100 per cent, meat by 70 per cent, and dairy by 400 per cent for an average of 3,700 more calories per person per week. As a result, the average American is much heavier now then he was in the 1900s. And this phenomenon is not restricted to America alone; more than 1 billion people worldwide are now overweight.

Problem with fat

Now the problem with extra weight or fat is not that it sits and jiggles, but rather that it remains metabolically active. This means that fat cells—in particular belly fat or visceral fat cells—release hormones. These hormones inhibit insulin from doing its job, dramatically increasing one’s risk of Type 2 Diabetes.

The same hormones increase the risk of heart disease, strokes, erectile dysfunction and some cancers. In fact, being obese increases a person’s risk of a whole list of diseases some of which are: high blood pressure, liver disease, gallstones, acid reflux, hypothyroidism, knee osteoarthritis, gout, and sleep apnoea.

You might think a little fat on your belly can’t be that bad. Unfortunately, studies show that being overweight increases your risk of Type 2 Diabetes by 300 per cent and being obese increases your chance by 900 per cent. When it comes to heart disease, liver disease and certain cancers, the story is similar. The poorer our lifestyle habits, the more belly fat we store and the greater our risk of disease, disability and untimely death.

High blood pressure: a hyper worry

When it comes to high blood pressure the story is the same. The food we eat, the exercise we get, the emotions we manage can either elevate or reduce our blood pressure dramatically. For example, eating more than 2000 mg of salt a day has been shown to increase blood pressure, as has persistent stress, lack of exercise and increased body weight.

As you might guess, eating more whole foods rather than processed foods, staying physically active every day, losing around 7-10 per cent of your body weight [if you are overweight], spending time on stress reduction and other simple lifestyle strategies can help most people avoid medications for high blood pressure and reduce the risk of stroke, heart attacks and kidney injury.

The medicine

The threat is the same for all of the metabolic and inflammatory diseases we mentioned: Type 2 Diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, strokes, obesity and all its related complications. Although their pathology is slightly different, they all respond to what we call ‘lifestyle medicine’. A healthy lifestyle can prevent, reverse or at the least dramatically improve all of these illnesses.

Health: a way of life

So what exactly is a ‘healthy lifestyle’? We believe a healthy lifestyle is a rational, moderate pattern of personal behaviours that promote health and well-being. It is not defined by extremes or expense, but rather by synchrony and purpose.

A healthy lifestyle is not about fad diets, excessive exercise or bizarre cure-alls. Instead, it is characterised by actions that target the key elements of the healthy human in moderation.

These elements include a healthy diet, adequate exercise, emotional/mental poise, good sleep patterns and the avoidance of addictive and/or toxic substances. There are many other sub-categories, which could be addressed, but these are foundational in our model of lifestyle medicine.

The food we eat

Diet is a hotly debated lifestyle modality. It’s easy to see why. Most of us eat 2 – 10 times per day. And during that time, we make hundreds of choices about our foods including what to eat, how much to eat, when to eat it, when to stop and so on.

People have a very personal connection to food on many levels including nutritional, emotional and cultural. We believe that a healthy diet can have several variations but the central theme is the same.

A large percentage of our daily calories should come from whole grains, nuts, beans, fruits and vegetables and a smaller proportion from refined flour, sugar and animal products. Studies across the globe have shown that individuals, who consume such a diet, reduce their burden of disease and improve their quality of life.

How well we sleep

Disordered sleep can play havoc with your health. During a healthy sleep cycle, our body releases hormones to accelerate healing. These include melatonin, certain steroid hormones and growth hormone. Our body also reduces inflammation, and oxidation at the cellular level while double checking any and all new cells formed during that time. The chemical and cellular shift, which occurs at night, is crucial to keeping our cells healthy.

During rest, the body is able to focus its energy on healing damaged tissue and compensating for the wear and tear of daily life. In fact, recent studies report that insufficient sleep increases the risk of several common cancers including breast cancer. So to stay healthy, a restful night of sleep is imperative.

The exercise we get

Physical activity is another key component of a healthy lifestyle. Research shows that moving our bodies regularly has all kinds of benefits; from lowering the risk of diabetes and heart disease to improving mood and enhancing libido.

Check with your doctors before starting an exercise routine. Once cleared, we recommend that you try to get 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity physical activity [such as a brisk walk] and add a couple of sessions of resistance strength training.

No one is the same, and while some people love running, going to the gym or yoga, others hate it. In recognition of the social, cultural and personal norms of each person, we encourage you to find something you enjoy doing that is feasible in your life. We believe a little activity is better than none and daily is better than weekly. It is also never too late to “get off the couch and into the game” as we say in America. Exercise has dramatic benefits for the teenager, the busy executive and the mature grandparent equally.

The stress we take

Do you feel stressed? Perhaps we should re-state that …who doesn’t feel stressed? Stress is an age-old response to perceived threat. It is tightly linked to our sympathetic nervous system, which helps trigger appropriate fear in ‘fight or flight’ situations. In the past, if a tiger was about to pounce on you, the increased heart rate, wide open eyes, chill of fear down your back, helped you move faster and possibly survive. Unfortunately, we have a similar fight or flight response to daily stress in our families, our jobs, on the roads, or in many other common experiences.

This leaves us in a chronically stimulated and stressed state, which in turn slows down digestion, disturbs metabolism, increases fat storage, promotes hyperacidity, accelerates ageing, increases cancer risk and leads to other unwanted disease patterns.

Since our world doesn’t show signs of becoming less stressed, it’s up to us to develop strategies to cope and balance the stress. Spending time developing supportive relationships, engaging in calming behaviours, and developing healthy responses and resilience to stress is key. For example, if you know you might have a long work day, you can schedule short meditation breaks instead of coffee breaks; schedule a mid-day walk, or perhaps a few minutes of laughter yoga with friends around the lunch hour. Perhaps you can learn some breathing exercises to complete at your desk, or if traffic always stresses you, can you choose a different time or route to travel? Simple, thoughtful changes can help reduce stress and promote health. Start today.

The emotions we feel

Effectively managing your stress levels is key to promoting healthy emotions. In fact, the elements of a healthy lifestyle we have discussed either support or undermine our emotional health. In turn, our emotions can influence our personal behaviours. Let’s look at some examples. When we are feeling depressed or anxious, we are more likely to reach for ‘comfort foods’ with lots of fats, sugars and excess calories.

These foods increase the release of the ‘happy hormone,’ dopamine in the brain for a short time, which encourages us to eat more unhealthy foods. If we don’t break the cycle quickly, our unhealthy habits make us feel fatigued and unhealthy. We have less energy, put on more weight and then we reach for more unhealthy foods because we feel depressed or anxious. And so the cycle continues.

Likewise, when we are emotionally unbalanced we are less likely to exercise. Yet, exercise is exactly what we need. Exercise has been shown to be as effective as anti-depressants for mild depression and anxiety, with even longer-lasting effects. Our diet is also powerful. Eating a diet rich in micronutrients, and healthy proteins provides our cells with the building blocks to make plenty of neurotransmitters including dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine, which help keep us balanced and happy.

The relationships we build

Now, very few of us can sustain great habits on our own. For this reason, surrounding ourselves with friends and family members who support our healthy behaviours is important. Healthy relationships in which we feel loved, supported, respected and appreciated are integral to our health. Get out of bad relationships and avoid negativity whenever possible. The ‘happy heart’ complements and inspires the healthy body.

We have more power in being happy than we realise. How you set up your day, negotiate your relationships, develop your habits and perceive your existence—all influence your emotions. We recommend you start by engaging your life, enabling yourself to be healthy through a framework of health-engendering behaviours.

Start slow, and don’t let the stress of change and the challenge of breaking old habits hold you back.

The ‘stuff’ we cling to

Finally, the non-food substances we eat, smoke or inject can have very powerful effect on our body and mind.

Nicotine is a potent vaso-constrictor, which means it makes blood vessels small and reduces blood flow to the skin and other important organs. By doing so, it slows healing and accelerates aging.

Most commercial nicotine products also have toxic chemicals added during processing, which cause problems of their own. Other addictive drugs such as cocaine, marijuana and heroin are even worse for your body and mind on many levels. Some drug-like substances such as alcohol and caffeine can have both good and bad effects depending on how much you use. We encourage limiting their consumption to small amounts and only occasionally, as they can easily lead to abuse anddependence.

Putting the pieces together

So how do you put all the pieces of a healthy lifestyle together? First ask yourself: Am I happy with my health today? Am I creating good health for the future? Are there ways I could be healthier? Next go through the list. Are you eating: nutrient dense/fibre-rich foods or processed, high calorie, low nutrient foods? Are you getting regular physical activity? Do you get sufficient sleep and awaken rested and restored? Do you let stress run your life or are you able to manage your stressors? Do you use any toxic substances like: nicotine, betel nuts, heroin, marijuana, cocaine, or use excess alcohol or caffeine?

Once you have determined where you can improve, then it’s time to set goals and make a plan. We encourage you to make SMART goals.

SMART stands for goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. This means your goal shouldn’t be, “I will get more exercise.” Instead, it should be “I am going to walk for 30 minutes during lunch with my co-worker on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.” With the second approach you know exactly what you are going to do, so you can monitor your progress and change your plan if it is not effective. Use the SMART approach when planning all your lifestyle changes.

You can do it!

The best part about lifestyle medicine is that anyone can apply it to his/her life, anytime and anywhere. No matter how old or how young you are, where you live or what work you do, simple intentional changes can have a dramatic effect on your health today and in the years to come. So we invite you to embrace change, advance your health, experience a healthier, happier tomorrow and lead a vibrant life!

A version of this article was first published in the January 2010 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

The post Lifestyle: your best medicine appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.