Due to my somewhat neurotic love of learning about wellness, I become regularly inspired by various masterminds and experts. I am fueled by listening to webinars and podcasts and by reading my daily articles, blogs, and journals. This exposure eventually transforms into a variety of my own blog topics to share with my BreakFree Medicine friends. If an important news headline doesn’t fit a theme, it ends up in my monthly top reads so you won’t miss out (or I won’t forget).

Over the past few weeks, I have come across vast amounts of information on the Affordable Care Act. Many of my mentors have been expressing their concern with increasing funding for a broken system. This plan does not appear to provide the tools for individuals to become empowered around their health and wellness.

In reality, we are putting more money into a broken health-belief system. It’s focus is on more screening for diseases, yet ignores the means to prevent them. We are combating symptoms using powerful drugs to suppress them, yet not addressing the causes of their manifestation.  The result is that many people are feeling helpless and sick. Not surprisingly, these methods are not producing a nation of healthy people. Our health statistics for efficacy and life expectancy are sadly behind many nations. In fact, a Bloomberg comparison rates us as number 46, yet the United States has the highest percentage of spending on health per person. Yikes! (I provide more specifics in my upcoming book, BreakFree Medicine.)

Doctor as Teacher

Did you know “doctor” stems from the Latin origin of “docere”, to teach?  It is for this reason that my clinic and writing center on the power of prevention and education. For example, regular check-ins through office visits and weekly blogs allow individuals to embrace new research and information. This enables them to optimize their wellness plan and tweak protocols as they grow, heal, or experience changes.

Another key passion of mine is to encourage people to re-think the conventional model of disease control. This was eloquently reinforced in a recent podcast I listened to.

This includes shifting from our current health paradigm that:

-waits until something is broken to intervene, when prevention and lifestyle changes could be a more efficient, gentler, and a less expensive approach

-advocates for fighting disease and killing organisms, when self-compassion and making a body inhospitable to microbes would make one less susceptible to infection to begin with

-profits from keeping people sick and dependent, rather than educating them on how to stay healthy

-views the mind as separate from the body, when in fact, stress and power of belief have a powerful influence on disease processes and can be attributed to or the cause of some chronic illnesses

-separates the individual from the community and views “emotional distance” as important for healing, when in reality the effects of isolation is the number one predictor of heart mortality, the number one cause of death in the United States

Next week, I’m going to go further in exploring this last point with some recent examples that demonstrate how our lack of connection to others is an important, yet often overlooked, “risk factor” to many of our chronic diseases. This includes the recent obesity epidemic.

Video of the Week

A Sense of Purpose

A powerful sense of purpose and your connection to something bigger (whether it’s religion or a passion) can change your life, negative beliefs, relationship patterns, and brain physiology!

Below is a 20 minute TEDx talk by Mark Robert Waldman on how positive thinking can change the brain’s physiology. He is researcher on the neurological correlates of beliefs, morality, compassion, meditation, religious experiences, and spiritual practices.

My latest blog on the power of love and growth in children is also online!