Wall Street Medicine vs. Lifestyle Medicine: Real Health Care Reform

Stephanie Raffelock

There is a lot of talk in Washington these days about health care reform. But the label of “health care reform” is a misnomer. What Washington is talking about is insurance reform and it has absolutely nothing to do with health or care. What is amazing to me is that the pundits can talk about cutting health care costs, but they are not talking about disease prevention or “Lifestyle Medicine.” A healthy lifestyle (not just the post holiday crash diet or exercise program that doesn’t last more than a month past our New Year’s Resolutions) can certainly cut our individual health care costs and even more importantly, enhance our enjoyment of life.

Lifestyle Medicine is not rocket science and it could save us billions in health care cost, but we do not train our doctors in that way. Wall Street is a huge part of our health system. Pharmaceutical Companies are traded on the stock exchange and it behooves them to come up with new drugs for new conditions and convince the American public about the need for yet another drug. Americans are already over medicated. We have become a culture of entitled quick fixes, and as the years roll on, many seem to get further and further away from the personal responsibility that is needed to have good health. Don’t get me wrong. I am not anti-drug and I do feel we rely upon drugs far too often to ameliorate the symptom, when we could create the desired healthful result with lifestyle medicine.

There are certain basic things that we know about healthful living and the fact we are not training medical doctors to practice in this way seems a terrible travesty if we are going to talk about health care reform. Here’s what we know:

1. Smoking causes a myriad of disease processes. The cessation of smoking is the number one change that someone can make to create better health and avoid disease.
2. A balanced diet of fresh foods can strengthen the immune system, prevent most types of heart disease and keep you healthy. The diet I propose is one of fresh veggies, fruit, lean protein, and whole-food carbs like yams, whole grains, beans, seeds and nuts (that means “junk foods” like donuts, candies, sodas, cookies, deep fried foods, and chips and crackers in moderation, if at all). Here is that American entitlement thing again: As the pace of our lives have increased we seem to want food to be easy, quick and instant and by doing that we often sacrifice food quality and the kind of relaxation around meals that enhances our digestion. By getting us out of the kitchen into the fast food lane we have created a kind of Spiritual aridity around cooking. Cooking with and for your family can be and should be a time of bonding, fun, creativity and gratitude. And it requires a lifestyle change for most of us. Too, the food industry has a lot to be accountable for. These days corn and corn sugar is in everything. Packaged food has a list of ingredients that boggle the mind. It’s interesting that the folks who yell so loudly that vitamins need more research aren’t up in arms about the list of chemicals in packaged foods! Doesn’t make any sense at all, but once again the food industry is Wall Street, where margins are far more important than your health.
3. Obesity kills. Every year more and more Americans are either overweight or obese. This fact really raises health care costs because along with the extra pounds comes diabetes, heart disease, structural joint inflammation and pain. Good diet and exercise are the greatest cure for health ailments. Avoiding any and all junk food is the other cure. None of us needs potato chips and soft drinks to thrive in the world. Not only do those things make us fat, but they contribute to feelings of lethargy as opposed to vibrancy.
4. Exercise is the fountain of youth! We all know we should exercise for health, yet we spend more and more time in front of the computer and T.V. and less time walking in nature. In recent years we have seen public schools stripped of physical education. Dr. Raffelock is convinced that the more little boys are able to burn off their energy in physical play, the less problems most of them will have sitting still. Your health is the direct result of mitochondrial function. The more muscle mass you have, the more mitochondria in the muscle…daily exercise of brisk walking for 1 hour will make you feel vital; it will prevent weight gain; it will help muscle and joint pain; it helps to prevent heart disease and the blood flow to your brain could help prevent the degenerative diseases of the brain like Alzheimer’s. Plus you just look better when you exercise. Moderate weight lifting 3 times per week is considered the single most important health factor for living a longer life. You look healthy and vibrant!
5. Nutritional Supplementation: we live in stressful times and times of great chemical exposure. Every American should be taking a good, strong multiple vitamin and fish oils. This simple health regime can stave off a lot of health care problems. And the Journal of the American Medical Association half way agrees with me on this one…about the multiple vitamins. They haven’t caught up with the times yet to realize that fish oils are just as important.
6. The forgiveness and gratitude principal. My husband likes to make a point to his patients with high blood pressure. He takes the blood pressure and gets the numbers. Then he asks the patient to breathe deeply, inwardly count some their blessings and say “thank you” silently to themselves. Then he takes the blood pressure again. Blood pressure can drop by as much as 30 points! You can do the same thing whispering forgiveness with your deep breathing to someone with whom you have grit and the blood pressure also drops.
7. The Spiritual Factor: having a daily practice of prayer, inspirational reading, meditation, yoga or deep breathing with a “thank you” attached to it keeps life in perspective. Stress is the precursor to the disease process, so if you have a daily practice and something you can turn to in times of stress, you do keep your immune system healthy.
8. Wall Street health care reform is upon us, but we are not victims. Everyone should have access to medical care and everyone should also take responsibility for our own health care by educating ourselves and implementing lifestyle changes that we know will help us and our families lead healthy, productive lives. Drugs should not be the first course of action, but the last. And as I said, they have a time and a place, but let’s not make them the be-all end-all of health care.

Let me suggest that all of us begin to embrace lifestyle medicine instead of Wall Street medicine and take greater responsibility for our health. And if you doctor isn’t following these recommendations, then it is your job to educate him or her and fully embrace the choices and changes that will keep you and your family healthy. Now that would be REAL health care reform!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 7:37 am and is filed under Lifestyle Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.