Elemental Health

    What is your WHY?

    Many of us start with the how’s and what’s of life, and I was in that same boat.  How am I going to be successful and wealthy?  What job am I going to have to bring that about?  I had some why’s: helping others, living a comfortable life, being happy, but I never spent enough time developing my deep inner WHY.  As a young person, I’m not sure anyone has the life experience to truly answer that question in their teens, twenties or even beyond.  My journey hasn’t been filled with extreme or obvious tragedies or struggles.  Similarly, I am blessed and privileged being born as a white male with strong family and community support.  Just as important, I have a father figure who chooses daily happiness, consummate self-giving and pure joy as an example to live by.  

                     The beginning of my journey seems like the standard one with the cog-in-the-wheel mentality.  I discovered my abilities in school, worked hard to get the grades to pursue higher education, and then I was off to bigger and better things.  However, my 12-year journey into the medical field did require some sacrifice; namely, my health and freedom. As so many Americans do, I focused on health and tried all the typical avenues; new diets, different forms of exercise, and supplements that I willy-nilly took.  While changes to my body occurred over the years of trial-and-error, I never felt amazing; and like many, I started accepting that as life.  

                     Through a series of events that I’m happy to share in further conversation, I busted out and stopped accepting my reality.  It started with exposing myself to BEING UNCOMFORTABLE.  Through seeking knowledge outside the standard medical paradigm, to living in a different country and spending time in nature, to taking on the “millennial” approach to work; I chose to be healthier.  Yes, part of it was a mindset change, but there are a lot of tangible actions that brought me to write this.  There is a fire in me and a passion to push the boundaries.  I’m still putting the puzzle together, but now the journey has feeling and purpose to it.  

                     My WHY: Wake up feeling amazing and living joyfully.  Now this is super selfish, but every day when I was getting up at 5:30 to work out and go to my job, all I wanted was to feel good.  This didn’t just occur overnight; over the last 2 years, my path has gone in a direction I never imagined.  The pillars that I stabilized are nutrition, movement, sleep and demand management (stressed-out, anyone?).  

                     From a nutritional standpoint, I have embraced some of the Weston A. Price Foundation practices, which mostly consist of eating from local farms that produce healthy and clean produce and animal products, and obtaining nature-provided food from local parks and forests with foraging.  A tremendous game changer recently has been focusing on eating one meal daily during the week, while allowing myself to be a bit more lax on the weekends.  The benefits for me have been regulation of my blood sugars, the freedom of not feeling the need to constantly eat, time savings by not preparing food frequently, being out in nature, feeling good about the food I’m putting in my body, and supporting my local community.

                     Movement has also changed.  I used to work out every day, focusing mainly on running or going to the gym.  Now, I prefer to work out 4-5 days per week, focusing on higher intensity activities.  The other difference has been my experience with the MovNat practice.  The idea behind this is to encourage moving like humans were intended, and to develop the skills to move effectively and efficiently in any environment.  For me, this started with simply sitting cross-legged on the floor, and providing nutritious, dynamic inputs.  It has translated to having less stiffness and pain in basic movement patterns and gaining strength I’ve never had before.  

                     Sleep has been a huge game changer for me as well.  Since the new year, I have made drastic changes by making my sleep habits and environment a priority.  First, I started with mouth taping…weird, right?  I have dysfunctional breathing patterns at night, as I tend to breathe through my mouth (deviated septum was likely part of this).  Since mouth taping, I have less frequent awakenings and don’t wake up with a dry mouth.  Also, I made a huge investment in evaluating and mitigating the amount of electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure I had.  I live in a building with many Wi-Fi routers and a huge cell phone tower next door. These things have an impact on sleep and my nervous system health!  The most socially unacceptable change I made was allowing my body to wake when it wants (for the most part)!  This meant making a financial sacrifice for a health gain.  I am fortunate to be in a situation where I can make this work, but it wasn’t an easy decision.  It has made a huge difference in my mornings and influenced my ability to manage stress.   

                     Demand management (STRESS) is a part of health that we know exists but often choose to ignore.  This might be the most difficult one to address in daily life, as there are many moving parts.  Lifestyle, social status, family life, jobs and health are key components of this.  For me, I realized the impact that driving on the highway has on my nervous system.  Again, this pillar can be the hardest to support, but I have the ability to make this a priority.  The last two years have been building up to this; all of the above nutrition, movement and sleep changes have played a critical role in getting my nervous system in a good place.  Similarly, I work for a company that allows for autonomy in work-life balance and I am investing in personal and community relationships (something I ignored for years).  Also, I have developed a prayer/meditation practice that works for me and have utilized tools to assist with hormonal support.   

                     Everyone’s health journey is unique, and as a physician, human physiology frequently leaves my mind blown.  What worked for me, may not work for you; but I’m here to be with you every step to discover opportunities of helping you achieve your goals.  Every day is a chance to learn, and my responsibility is to leave no stone unturned.  I am only human, but by His grace I will use my talents to bring a little piece of heaven to you on earth.  For me that is living my WHY.  

                     My WHY: Guiding others to wake up feeling amazing and living joyfully in an economic and ecologic manner.    

    Elemental Health…The Starting Point

    What is elemental health? Let’s start by breaking it down. “Elemental” is defined as being a basic or essential constituent of something; also, relating to a great force of nature.  “Health” is the condition of being sound in body, mind and soul; similarly, someone or something that is thriving.1   Taken together, “elemental health” refers to the fundamental components needed for our species to thrive.  The importance of these elements, and which are the most crucial, could be the subject of many hours of debate. The modern medical system primarily addresses and makes recommendations on two of these components: nutrition and movement.  While our understanding of nutrition continues to expand, a simple approach is to consume that which our great Earth provides: fresh whole foods and clean water.  Likewise, from a movement perspective, as one famous brand commonly promotes, “Just Do It”.  I realize that reducing these complicated matters into simple statements is not adequate to describe their importance.  That being said, most people do understand these items have a major impact on health (although varying degrees of education and understanding exist).  Nutrition and movement ultimately come down to prioritization in one’s life.  There is much to be said on the preceding topics, but I desire to return to the elements that are essential for human lifer, those which we may have taken for granted, or of which we are simply unaware.

    If we start with the true basics, the elements oxygen (65%), carbon (18%), hydrogen (10%) and nitrogen (3%) are key, as these make up approximately 96% of the human body.  Phosphorous (1%) is a critical component in cellular energy processes; thus, adding this element to the list is prudent.2   While this is a good starting point, there are certainly more tangible considerations for developing health in our daily lives.  The air we breathe, the water we drink, our electromagnetic exposure and the light surrounding us are critical considerations in the pursuit of true health.3  In this series, I’ll be exploring each of these topics by considering their composition, utilization by the body, health effects, current quality and how to incorporate these in a way to help humans survive and thrive.  As alluded to earlier, modern society with all of its technological advances has brought us to a unique place in the continuum of the human species, but at what cost?  

    Advances in medicine brought about a tremendous benefit for acute and emergency care; unfortunately, this does not hold true for chronic disease outcomes.  In the United States, 6 of 10 adults have some form of chronic disease; those diseases are responsible for 7 of 10 deaths.  These include heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, arthritis and chronic kidney disease.  The CDC states that lifestyle factors, such as tobacco use, poor nutrition, lack of physical activity and excessive alcohol use, are key contributors.4   While I agree with these statements, are we ignoring other critical factors that allow the body to self-regulate, heal and maintain health?  Even with the promotion of lifestyle interventions and current medication recommendations, the number of people being affected by chronic disease continues to be problematic.  For example, over 30 million Americans have been diagnosed with heart disease, a leading cause of death.7  Fortunately, medical advances in acute care management have caused the heart attack mortality (death) rate to drop in recent years.4  Similarly, the incidence of new cancer diagnoses has remained relatively flat, and while the overall 5-year death rate has dropped, the lifetime risk of dying from cancer remains alarmingly high.5, 6 We may be getting better at keeping sick people alive longer, but we don’t seem to be getting any better at preventing these problems from occurring in the first place (even though these diseases are strongly related to lifestyle choices).

    Where do we go from here?  Over the course of this series, my goal is to provide knowledge.  What is done with this knowledge is up to each individual.  The human form is complex, having progressed over millions of years through an intimate interaction with the environment.  In the last century, we have been exposed to a rapidly increasing number of chemical compounds and electromagnetic fields about which we have a limited understanding, particularly as it relates to health impacts for living beings.  Can the utilization of basic elements restore our physical, mental and spiritual condition?  I have seen many people struggle with chronic health issues, exhausting the list of commonly prescribed medications as well as the recommended nutritional and physical activity measures with great to minimal success.  My intuition leads me to believe there is more to the story and I intend to explore.  Join me on this journey into elemental health.   

    References:

    1. Merriam-Webster.  “Elemental” “Health”.  https://www.merriam-webster.com
    2. Chang, Raymond.  Chemistry (9th Ed.). McGraw-Hill. 2007
    3. Raffaella Aversa et al.  The Basic Elements of Life.  American Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences 2016, 9 (4): 1189.1197 
    4. CDC.  United States Heart Disease Statistics.  Accessed 7/2019 https://www.cdc.gov/dhdsp/maps/dtm/index.html
    5. CDC.  United States Cancer Statistics. Accessed 7/2019 https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/DataViz.html
    6. American Cancer Society. Lifetime Risk of Developing or Dying from Cancer. Accessed 2/2020. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/lifetime-probability-of-developing-or-dying-from-cancer.html
    7. CDC. National Center for Health Statistics: Heart Disease. Accessed 2/2020. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/heart-disease.htm

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