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The Wellness Paradigm

There seems to be some confusion as to the meaning of “wellness”. Feeling okay isn’t the equivalent to being well. A lack of pain or symptoms doesn’t equate to good health. As a society, we’ve come to accept the absence of disease, injury or pain as a sign that we’re healthy. We’re wrong.

This is a myth we need to confront.

True health and wellness is the positive condition in which we are not just devoid of visible symptoms, but are actually living an optimised physical lifestyle. This means we are fueling our bodies with the right foods, getting a reasonable amount of physical activity and engaging in positive habits and behaviours that contribute to overall well-being. Wellness is about performing at our best.

However, most people perceive ‘wellness’ to be that transient stage between illnesses, injuries and pain. Some liken it to living in a ‘safe zone’ or neutral state, albeit for a fleeting period. Sadly, these paradigms are tragically insufficient when compared with the ideal. Think about how often you can honestly say you feel vibrant and strong. For many, these feelings are brief, sporadic or, at best, may last only weeks. Rarely has anyone learned how to enjoy wellness as a long-term experience.

Instead, we accept “not being sick” as a synonym for wellness. With this approach, it’s only a matter of time until people are once again succumbing to the underlying compromise in their substandard health habits and negative patterns of physical movement. According to our most recent National Health Survey, more than sixteen million Australians have at least one chronic condition¹. The World Health Organisation (WHO) reports that chronic disease is a major cause of death and disability worldwide², and accounts for approximately 80 percent of the deaths in Australia³. In 2011, it was reported that as many as 1 in 3 Australians experience episodes of chronic pain at some stage throughout their life. A staggering 92% of our population is in some way impacted by this, with 61% knowing someone who has a chronic condition and another 20% living with suffers from chronic pain⁴. Almost 900,000 of our fellow neighbours have diabetes, which is leading to an increase in chronic kidney disease. Obesity has become an epidemic ‘Down Under’, with 61 percent of adults and 25 percent of children being classified as overweight or obese. WHO has stated that, globally, at least 80 percent of premature heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes, as well as 40 percent of cancer cases, could be prevented through better nutrition, regular exercise and avoiding tobacco⁵. Healthcare costs in Australia are estimated to represent 10 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product, and in 2010 alone, this figure reached $121.4 billion⁶.

These problems aren’t just national issues, they are global ones. The fast-paced lifestyles of our western culture have a lot to do with it. Countless hours are spent sitting in front of a computer or TV screen every day. Chemical pollutants invade us through the foods we eat and the air we breathe. Our sleep is disturbed because our brains can’t turn off. Put simply; our new modern way of life threatens our health every day.

I’m not suggesting ‘wellness’ is a nice idea if you want a happier life. I believe it’s a ‘life or death’ choice that cannot remain unchallenged. As a nation, we are living longer lives but not better ones. We are adding years with the use of pharmaceuticals and medical intervention rather than assuming personal responsibility for the daily decisions that have direct impact on our lifelong physical health.

“…we are living longer lives but not better ones.”

As a nation, we need to re-think how we spend our healthcare dollar. Let’s challenge the policy that affords lives healthcare services only to prevent specific sickness or treat those with injury and pain. This is proven to be a narrow and ineffective strategy in isolation. Instead, we need to proactively shift our resources and attention to promoting a full scale change in lifestyle activities that encourage the pursuit of true wellness, and so ensure emerging generations will perform at their peak.

Beat the Escalator I’ve often shared with my clients that their state of physical well-being can be likened to riding a downward-moving escalator. Generally speaking, all things organically move from a state of health to a state of disorder (2nd Law of Thermodynamics). If you intentionally eat a lousy diet, refuse to exercise, smoke tobacco, drink excessive amounts of alcohol and form other obvious high-risk habits —then it only gets worse. It’s like actively walking down the steps, at a speed that outpaces the natural rhythm of the escalator, to reach the bottom more quickly where your health is in accelerated decline. Most people would acknowledge this lifestyle choice is a form of self-destruction, however subtle it may feel or look at the time. What is less intuitive, however, is that if you stand still on the same escalator and do nothing - adopting the passive approach to health - then you will still slowly regress to the same end point because the escalator is moving downward. This is the great deception for many.

Unfortunately, true wellness can only be achieved by persistently walking (jogging, skipping, hopping, jumping, running, sprinting, cycling, swimming, dancing) up the escalator at a speed that at least matches, if not outpaces, its inherent downward momentum. It takes discipline and intent to ‘beat the escalator’ - two attributes that deter most of us immediately. However, it can be done.

I’ve watched my 3 boys literally beat the escalator. At the local shopping centre, they raced from me and leaped and giggled all the way to the top of a downward moving belt, only to turn around in preparation to do it all over again. I recall fondly the great horror of the elderly bystanders who muttered something about ‘neglectful parenting’ on the kids’ third lap. I would have probably intervened, but I was too pre-occupied mentally rehearsing my own ascent.

The truth is, a healthy lifestyle is meant to be fun. Make the paradigm shift today and achieve wellness for the long term by actively pursuing it. I will teach you that beating the escalator is much easier than you think, and it doesn’t have to feel like work. Let’s not wait until a medical problem arises to think about your health. Consider it every day from now on. Live with positive intent to move well. It will prevent injury, minimise sickness, reduce lifestyle risks, gear-shift you out of passive health and catapult you onto the journey toward optimal wellness.

The Deception of pain In our busy lives, we learn to selectively ignore many things. Rude drivers. Lazy co-workers. Traffic jams. Telemarketers. Sometimes even our own screeching children! But we can’t ignore nagging pain. It’s too personal. As much as you try to focus on something else, it’s still there. Nudging, poking or viciously stabbing. When the pain gets unbearable or starts to compromise their lifestyle, generally people seek professional help. This is when our practice telephones start to ring.

“The danger with using pain alone as a reliable indicator of injury or sickness, (is that) more often than not it’s a delayed signal, and therefore already too late.”

Pain occurs when the brain gets sensory input from other parts of the body that are damaged or compromised in some way. From wherever the problem originated, an SOS call is made to the brain, triggering the emotive pain response to catch your attention and change what you are doing. Unless you have been involved in acute trauma, pain is generally not a sudden reaction but the result of an enduring problem that gradually builds over time. This phenomenon demonstrates the danger with using pain alone as a reliable indicator of injury or sickness, as more often than not it’s a delayed signal and therefore already too late.

Consider also, that in some severe strains and sprains, it’s not uncommon for the person to feel little or no pain because the nerve endings are completely torn, disconnecting sensory input to the brain. Ironically, the damage may be so bad that it actually requires surgical repair, despite the client feeling very little discomfort.

Pain can also be unreliable when therapists have provided early treatment or medication that has helped to relieve its intensity. Clients can be deceived into thinking that their reduction in pain correlates with recovery of their injury. Whilst therapists all over the world are experts in helping manage or resolve symptoms such as pain, this should never be mistaken for ‘healing’. As a physiotherapist I can influence many things, but the body still has a natural healing process with which I must synchronise and cooperate with.

Different people also have different pain tolerances. From the very stoic to the more sensitive amongst us, we can’t always rely on our feelings of pain to be an accurate interpretation of the extent of trauma or damage. The feeling of pain is also often modulated by unrelated emotions. For instance, pain can feel disproportionately worse when you are tired, disappointed or depressed. Alternatively, those who are highly focused on an activity or excited by some other event can experience a temporary reduction in pain.

I often remind my clients at the end of every consultation that the absence of pain does not equate to an absence of injury. Like a paper-cut to your fingertips, the pain eases long before the skin heals. In the same way, often clients with internal injuries are still recovering long after their pain disappears, and so need to be very careful with their movements to avoid exacerbating their injury. An experienced physiotherapist will factor pain into the overall treatment regime, but not overstate it as the only sign of recovery. They will form a sound diagnosis on the integration of numerous assessments and observations to formulate a comprehensive recovery strategy for optimum results.

“The absence of pain does not equate to an absence of injury”

My clear message is not to wait for pain before you pay attention to your health. Otherwise, you give the insidious nature of declining health and progressive micro-tissue damage an unfair head start that results in far greater deterioration than should ever be tolerated.

Get Behind the Wheel I have a good friend who is fanatical about his car. He uses filtered water to clean it every week and follows every manufacturer guideline for regular maintenance. He is fully invested into getting the most from his beloved vehicle. But when I talk to him about his health, he shrugs me off and tells me he feels fine.

“Fine?”

That’s just another way of him telling me he’s not sick or is living in the passive neutral zone just waiting to hit the health skids.

My friend pays meticulous attention to every sound his car makes, the quality of the tread on each tyre and knows by heart when he last changed the oil. But can he recall when he had his last physical? He knows the correct air pressure for his tyres, but doesn’t know his own blood pressure.

Why is it that so many of us are like this? We invest time and money into maintaining our vehicles — pumping in the right fuel, changing the oil and filters, rotating the tyres, replacing worn wiper blades — but don’t invest the same resources into our health. A car should last you 10 years or so. After this it’s predictable you will need to start funneling money into it to fix the ageing parts. How long do you want your body to run at peak performance? Are you willing to treat your body as well as my friend treats his car? Don’t void your warranty by neglecting proactive lifestyle choices and neglecting the little niggles that arise from time to time. Consider your body a vehicle that is engineered for a long life but needs regular maintenance scheduled to avoid a breakdown.

Measured Steps You’ve possibly heard the cliché, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It’s true. You don’t need to make massive shifts in your life in order to pursue wellness. Incremental changes in strategic areas can make an exponential difference as the years pass by. I invite you to journey with wellness, as opposed to trying to make it happen in one enormous lifestyle change. Read this book, identify some relevant areas for change, and let me map out for you a more healthy future. Don’t think of your health as something on your ‘to do’ list that gets crossed off and concluded. You don’t action it today and never address it again. It doesn’t ever finish. There is no finite end point. If you ever believe you’ve arrived at the ‘end’ of wellness, you’re giving up on the rest of the adventure that awaits you. Good health at least has to be maintained. This journey is a lifelong pursuit, but has massive daily benefits – starting today if you want it to. After 14 years of travelling the world together and living hand-in-hand, my wife has often observed that I am too focused on the destination rather than the journey. Figuratively and literally. My wife is patient enough in our travels to often see things I miss. I tend to want to go full throttle and arrive early, while she experiences a whole other dimension as she counts each moment an important part of the whole trip. Frankly, there are times when I’m flat out disappointed by the destination and all I can salvage from the experience is my wife’s memories of the sights, sounds, people and places we’d passed along the way. These reflections remind me to enjoy the journey, because it’s every bit as important as the place I am going. I’ve got to love every step of the way and embrace it as part of my life experience.

“This journey is a lifelong pursuit, but has massive daily benefits – starting today if you want it to.”

The road to health is no different. Take my wife’s advice. Accept that wellness is a journey to be enjoyed at every milestone and is as simple as just taking the very next step.

Health Secrets

1 Good health is not just the absence of injury, pain or sickness, but rather your ability to move and perform in an optimised physical state.

2 Wellness isn’t a ‘nice idea’. It’s a ‘life and death’ choice that you must confront.

3 Your fast-paced lifestyle threatens good health on a daily basis.

4 Pain in isolation is an unreliable indicator of your injury or sickness.

5 You need to drive and maintain your body like you would a high performance vehicle.

6 Enduring health is a lifelong pursuit, but it responds immediately to your positive daily decisions.

Actions for Optimal Health

 Review the health secrets of this chapter.

 Write down in 30 words or less how you would now define good health or wellness. Rate your measure of personal health on a scale of 1 to 10, where the higher the number the closer you are to your peak performance. Consider the obvious things like current injuries, restrictions, medical conditions and pain. Also include in your assessment your state of fitness, energy levels, body weight, nutrition habits, exercise patterns and general sense of well-being. If you are disappointed with your score (firstly, congratulate yourself for being honest) then set new targets to aim for in 3, 6 and 12 months from now. We will identify strategies throughout the remainder of this book that will help you score much better on future assessments.

 Make one small change to your busy lifestyle that promotes better health! It could be to sleep longer, eat less sugar, walk 2 km on the weekend, or actually stop and sit down for lunch at work regardless of how busy you feel. Write a single statement of commitment to take action around this new health initiative. Be as specific and realistic as you can. Share it with a loved one, fitness coach or colleague. Log your “Healthy Decisions” online at www.getyourselfbackinmotion.com/healthy decisions for ‘global’ accountability, recognition and encouragement. You never know, I may even follow you up sometime.

References

1 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) 2006. Chronic diseases and associated risk factors in Australia, 2006.

2 World Health Organisation (WHO) (2005) Preventing chronic disease: a vital investment: WHO global report. Geneva

3 National Health Priority Action Council (NHPAC) 2006. National Chronic Disease Strategy, Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing, Canberra.

4 Stollznow Research for Pfiser Australia: Chronic Pain. April 2010.

5 World Health Organisation (WHO) (2005) Preventing chronic disease: a vital investment: WHO global report. Geneva

6 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Health Expenditure Australia Report 2009-2010