Charting your own journey to better health

PRIME – January, 2014 By Victor Acquista, MD Special to PRIME After the holidays seems to be the perfect time to pause and take stock of your health. If you desire to move from your current place of health (point A) to a place of better health (point B), a navigation plan or strategy is required. I like to think of better health and well- being as a journey we all want to embark upon, but we often lack a clear-cut way to even take the first step. The focus of this column is to assist you in developing your health plan and get you started. What exactly, is health? First of all, we should agree on what we actually mean by health. What does it mean to be healthy? The standard Western conceptualizations about health rely on a disease model. In this model, the presence or absence of disease becomes the measure of an individual's health. Yet, people often do not feel well even though they have not been diagnosed with a particular ailment. Furthermore, the full experience of illness is not captured in the label of a diagnosis. When we focus simply on treating a disease, we tend to ignore social, cultural, emotional, and spiritual aspects of the illness experience. It's much easier to treat a diagnosis than it is to treat a unique human being. The word diagnosis comes from the Greek prefix dia, meaning complete or thorough, and gnosis, or knowledge. The diagnostic process is geared towards gathering and sorting through information and interpreting this information to arrive at a diagnosis. Treatment is determined by what specific diagnoses are determined. A true diagnosis would be based upon a complete and thorough understanding of call the elements that comprise our health. A different approach Instead of conceptualizing health in terms of disease, which is either present or absent, think of health as existing on a continuum. Arbitrarily we label "illness" on one end of this continuum and "wellness" on the other end. In this fashion, the level of our wellness becomes a measure of our health. Continuing this line of analysis, the natural question becomes what determines your level of "wellness?" To answer this requires that we acknowledge different dimensions of ourselves, specifically the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects that make each of us a unique individual. We experience the physical component of our health in our bodies; we experience the mental and emotional components of health in our minds. Scholars debate whether our spiritual self resides in a particular location such as the soul, but location or not is irrelevant as long as you accept that there is a spiritual dimension to who we are as human beings. Each of these components of body, mind, and spirit can be in a lesser or greater state of wellness. Measuring "health" According to this model of health, taking stock of one's health would require a means to assess or to measure the level of wellness in each of these component parts. But there is an additional factor that needs consideration and a means to assess. As individuals we are not like isolated trees, but more like trees existing in a forest. In this sense, our body/mind/spirit exists in a particular environment. Just like a drought or infestation can affect the health of a particular tree in a forest, what is going on around us in terms of our psycho-social environment affects our health and well-being. These environmental factors include such things as our relationships, the community in which we live, our beliefs and values that we share with others, as well as the people we associate with, groups we belong to etc. These environmental influences can either contribute to or detract from our health; they should be recognized as important elements to asses and measure. The wellness assessment A wellness assessment of where you are physically might start with some basic questions about your weight, your nutrition and sleep habits. How do you feel physically tired and achy or energetic? Taking stock of yourself mentally and emotionally requires that you ask yourself questions about whether you are thinking clearly or are otherwise preoccupied. What are the things you think about? Are they mostly worries and concerns or regrets and misgivings? Are you frequently angry or sad? The answers to these questions are indicators that reflect where you currently are with respect to your mind and your level of wellness in this dimension. If you accept the premise that we are spiritual beings, a simple way to assess this is to ask yourself how well connected you feel to spirit. Do you feel in touch or out of touch with your spiritual self? Take stock of your environment by questioning your shared beliefs, values, who you associate with and the strength and character of your relationships. Do you feel a sense of community and if so with what sort of community? Your starting point Once you have honestly assessed yourself in these four domains you essentially are able to locate your present state of health on a map of sorts. This becomes your point A. To get to point B requires that you commit to steps to improve those areas you identified as needing some work. Better yet, even if you are pretty healthy and feeling good in a domain, wouldn't it be great to try and improve further? An action plan to improve your level of wellness is nothing more than a delineation of what you need to do to navigate to your health destination. A map is just a representation of a territory. For those of us who remember the old "trip-tiks" from AAA, you will recall how your journey would be mapped out as well as interesting points of discovery recommended as places to explore along the way. Your journey to better health has many points of interest and discovery for you to explore and experience as you go from A to B. A much more involved explanation of these principles, detailed assessments of the four domains of body, mind, spirit, and environment, as well as mapping tools can be found in my book, "Pathways to Health An Integral Guidebook." However you choose to travel, I encourage you take stock of your health and commit to a plan to take you to a place of better health and well-being. Enjoy the journey! Victor Acquista MD is author of "Pathways To Health: An Integral Guidebook". For more information on Dr. Acquista's book, visit http://pathstohealth.info/