IS YOUR DOCTOR COURAGEOUS OR COMPLACENT?

This is a question that many people never ask themselves when picking a doctor to help improve their quality of life. Is my doctor courageous or is my doctor complacent?

TV has countless shows depicting how heroic and courageous emergency room doctors can be when saving a life, but how does this translate to the number one reason people see doctors? (hint: stress) The sad truth is it doesn’t.  

75-90% of all doctor visits can be attributed to stress and its related problems. Yes, getting in a close to fatal car accident and having a great ER doctor do all the right things to keep you alive is definitely courageous, but what about all the other reasons you are visiting the doctor? Is your doctor courageous when it comes to tackling your stress problem? Or the other health issues related to stress like digestive issues, sleep problems, headaches, high blood pressure, and belly fat. Odds are no.

“In life, everybody faces choices between doing what’s popular, easy, and wrong versus doing what’s lonely, difficult, and right.” –Ben Horowitz

This quote sums up perfectly what it means to be healthy and the decision process it takes for both you and your doctor. Being healthy is popular in social media and TV, but not many people are willing to take the necessary steps to truly be healthy. Being healthy is a process and it takes time and dedication. Doing the bare minimum will yield exactly that. The bare minimum of health.

Before we dive any further into this article, I need to define health and the process to get there. Health is being ideal. It is having a lean body composition with adequate muscle mass and a low, maintainable amount of fat, exercising, eating an abundance of fruits and vegetables, and not smoking. A number of different references reveal an abysmal percentage of the population being optimally healthy (0.7-3.0%). Men can maintain a body fat percentage of 10% and woman between 15-20%. That may or may not sound low, but this is ideal and completely maintainable with a healthy lifestyle. I like to define health in terms of body composition, because it is very hard to maintain an ideal body composition with bad health choices. (Upcoming articles will dive into other aspects of healthy living, stay tuned.)

0.7-3.0% of the US and Mediterranean countries population is considered healthy. 

How do you get there after 40 years of pseudo healthy living? To be honest, it takes dedication. To put it simply, it takes courage. You have to make the decision to clean up your diet, take appropriate supplementation, exercise, drink water and manage stress. This may mean cutting out some “staples” of the diet. Change can be very hard both mentally and physically. Family gatherings and social events may feel a bit awkward in the beginning, but one thing that is never awkward is being lean and healthy. It never gets old having people ask you how you do it or what you did to get lean. Being the healthiest person in the room makes cutting out foods that don't help you live the healthiest lifestyle worth every second. A piece of cake may taste good short term, but long term those pieces of cake add up and make you fat. 

Back to your doctor being courageous. Will your doctor ask you the right questions? Will he demand excellence from you? Will he give you true information? Is she up to date on the research in the field they work in? Do they give bad advice? Do they give advice in fields they know nothing about? This is very common when it comes to nutrition medicine. Your doctor should possess the attributes of a leader.

LEADERSHIP QUALITIES

  1. Ability to articulate
  2. Right kind of ambition
  3. Ability to achieve the vision

These attributes are detailed by Ben Horowitz and his experience running a billion dollar company. They are the attributes he found to be most needed for quality leadership. I found these to be true also, whether they are applied to a fortune 500 CEO or a natural medicine doctor.

ABILITY TO ARTICULATE

Your doctor should have a baseline knowledge of what they are trying to sell you, and the ability to verbalize it. Not all doctors are great story tellers, but they should be smart, as it is very tough to pass medical school. If a doctor is selling health, then he needs to be an expert in what he is selling. One way I like to assess how well a doctor knows his craft (health in this example) is how they look. Do they exhibit the level of health you are looking to achieve? The answer should be a triumphant YES! Remember, healthcare is one of USA’s biggest businesses. According to the World Health Organization, the US spends more healthcare per capita than all other countries in the World.

RIGHT KIND OF AMBITION

What is your doctor looking to accomplish with their career? Is it a noble cause? Is it following passion? One of my mentors has a goal of ending the pharmaceutical drug era. That is the right kind of ambition. My personal ambition is to help create a new normal of health. A system where people can be healthy, remain healthy, and enjoy life to the fullest. This starts with detoxification. Every singly man, woman, plant and animal is toxic. We have toxified the Earth, and to lead the healthiest life possible, we must continually be detoxing. Many methods exist to accomplish this. It starts with proper assessment and a doctor who understands detoxification and how to set realistic and achievable goals.

ABILITY TO ACHIEVE THE VISION

On a smaller, more personal scale your doctor must be able to help you set realistic and exact goals. The next part is they must be able to educate and guide you to meet them. Anyone can have or create goals. The hard part is creating realistic goals with realistic timelines and the processes and know how to accomplish them. In my office we create plans with achievable, exact goals. 

I will leave you with a final quote from Ben Horowitz, the man who inspired this post. I am happy nutritional medicine is becoming the new norm, thus marking the beginning of the end of the pharmaceutical drug era. It is now time to start demanding courage from doctors. We must tackle the extremes of health in this country. You must have courage because there is no room for complacency.

“Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly.”

References:

Horowitz, Ben. “The Hard Things About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers.” 2014 HarperCollins Publishers.

Arch Intern Med. 2005 Apr 25;165(8):854-7.

East Mediterr Health J. 2008 Jul-Aug;14(4):858-68.

http://www.webmd.com/balance/stress-management/effects-of-stress-on-your-bod